Paternity leave is a women’s rights issue

My memory of my first year at home with my daughter can best be described as a black hole. I can conjure images of the small Ikea rug on our living room floor where she and I spent countless hours staring at the ceiling together in companionable silence. When I think back, I recall mostly numbness from the boredom of exchanging one battery-powered toy for another, or how time was replaced by the metronome of beats from the same three or four Sesame Street songs repeated ad naseum throughout the day. But mostly I remember those last minutes of anticipation around 7:15pm when my husband would come home from work and I could finally pass the baby into another pair of arms.

This isn’t to say motherhood came with no thrills. Those first smiles and words shattered the monotony of my days, but through it all I couldn’t help but think how much easier it would have been if my husband had been home to help me in those first few months, or at least make me feel like the burden of keeping a new human being alive didn’t fall entirely on my shoulders. It wasn’t until my daughter was three years old that I came to understand the numbness I felt goes by the name of postpartum depression, a disease which is the number one cause of death in mothers in the year following birth. Turns out my feelings of exhaustion and numbness are not unique. A paper from last August reviewed  studies on maternal mental health and found a correlation between increased paternity leave and lower rates of postpartum depression in mothers. When men are home to help with the childcare, mothers are more likely to seek help for depression and more likely to breastfeed.

I gave birth in 2013 in France where I was entitled to four months paid leave for the birth of my first child, and then unpaid leave for another eight months. My husband was given two weeks. In 2020 President Macron upped the paternity leave to one month. Although I believe both parents should be given equal time off to care for their babies, even having an extra two weeks at home with my partner after my daughter’s birth would have relieved some of the exhaustion I felt and helped me be more emotionally present for our daughter.

As bad as paternity  leave is in France, it is even worse in the UK. Britain has the least generous statutory paternity leave in all of Europe at only two weeks remunerated at £184.03 a week or 90% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower . By contrast, in Spain fathers are given four months at full pay, and in Denmark half a year. I can hear the arguments in my head from certain corners of the political spectrum against raising paternity leave in the UK: a country experiencing sluggish economic growth can hardly afford to extend time off to men; the government has already made efforts to make childcare cheaper; hiring is at a post pandemic low and an extra burden on employers could make it fall further. The problem with these arguments is they only see one half of the economic equation. Placing the childcare burden uniquely on mothers also comes at a huge cost.

The UK Office for National Statistics found a “motherhood penalty” whereby women lose an average of £65,618 in pay by the time their first child turns five. Figures found a mother’s average earnings had fallen by 42 percent five years after the birth of her first baby, compared with her pay one year before the birth. Because the UK ranks among the most expensive countries in the world for childcare costs, many mothers decide it is cheaper not to return to work once their maternity leave ends. This translates into decades of lost earnings and pension savings, not to mention financial dependence on their partners. Financial dependence is not a sentimental concern: it shapes women’s ability to leave unhappy relationships, to build savings, to retire with dignity. It narrows choices in ways that ripple across a lifetime.

A recent study from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that extending paternity leave to six weeks at 90 percent pay would not only be good for young families but also spark economic growth. Modelling shows that extending paternity leave would cost HMRC £1.1 billion but spark economy wide growth of around £2.5 billion due to gains from women returning to work. This does not include the emotional gains that are unquantifiable from men having more time to bond with their newborns. Nor does it capture the long-term cultural shift that occurs when fathers are expected to take leave as a matter of course, rather than as an indulgence.

Extending paternity leave is also essential for the working class, who often have the least flexibility and the least financial cushion. Professional couples may be able to patch together savings or rely on generous employers. A delivery driver, a warehouse worker, a self-employed tradesman often cannot. For many men in low paid or insecure work, two weeks at statutory pay is not financially viable. Some return to work days after the birth of their child. That reality reinforces inequality not just between men and women, but between families of different incomes. A policy that assumes fathers can absorb weeks of reduced pay privileges the middle class. A fair system would recognise that bonding with a newborn and supporting a recovering partner should not be a luxury good.

When childcare is shared more evenly from the beginning, both men and women have more genuine choice about whether and when to return to work. Choice is the language often invoked in debates about family life, yet it is hollow if only one parent can afford to exercise it. If fathers are expected to remain breadwinners from week two, and mothers are expected to absorb the shock of sleepless nights and physical recovery alone, then the decision about who steps back from paid work has already been made.

Sharing leave more equally would not only ease the mental health burden on mothers in those fragile first months. It would also send a clear message to the next generation watching us. If they see fathers taking substantial leave and attending paediatric appointments, if they see mothers returning to work without apology, they internalise a different script about adulthood. They learn that care and ambition are not gendered traits.

I am grateful I had those four months with my daughter and two weeks with my husband at the start of her life. As an American I am aware that most women in my home country are not so fortunate. At the same time, I will always wonder how my daughter’s earliest months would have turned out differently if she had both parents at home more looking after her. Perhaps a better way to frame paternity leave isn’t so much as a right for fathers, but for each child to have the best possible start in life bonding with both parents.