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Paternity Leave - A Way to Lower Divorce Rates?
In the developed and Westernized world, women are doing it all these days – successful careers, high paid jobs, positions of power AND having families and raising kids. This has coincided with the rise of divorce rates, but the reason isn't necessarily because working women have the ability to walk out without becoming destitute -- more likely it's because mens' roles in society and the family have not evolved in the hundred or so years while womens' roles have grown to encompass more rights and responsibilities. In a sense, men and women are living parallel lives, but with very different internalized sets of social traditions and expectations.
Women have fought long and hard for the right to stand as equals to men, at least to have the right to vote, own property, to indeed, be considered as capable of logical thinking and adult decision making. It's been said that the Women's Movement has just one final battle to win (in this Third Wave of the Feminist Movement) -- that of equal wages. But the truth is, it's just not true. First, because whilest women have taken on more responsibilities and evolved into more independent beings, men's roles and expectations have remained for the most part unchanged. While women have marched for and won the right to do "men's work", traditional “women’s work,” domestic things such as cooking, cleaning, and child rearing have remained the near exclusive domain of women. This means that working women in the modern world, go to work (still getting paid less than a man in the same workplace doing the same work), and yet, when she gets home with her paycheck, she is still expect to cook for her family and do its washing, shopping, and nurturing of the children's physical, emotional and scholastic needs.
Sexism in the home and office is still alive and strong, perhaps less in younger men more used to seeing women in the workplace, and in positions of influence and power, than in the generation who grew up watching "Leave it to Beaver" on television. It's possible that if men felt more connected to their families, and their children, and were more considerate of their wives, there would be a concurrent drop in divorce rates.
WHY MEN NEED PATERNITY LEAVE
Employers are often biased against hiring women because of maternity leave, though this is not particularly easy to prove. This is directly related to a prevalent attitude that paternity leave is like taking a vacation or free time-off, which is very far from the truth. Paternity leave is perhaps more important than maternity leave, because fathers haven't carried the baby for nine months like mothers typically have, hence fathers need to take time to bond with the child once it has been born. Paternity leave is meant to encourage family bonding, because first time fathers often report feeling neglected when new mothers spend all their waking hours tending the newborn children.
The Women’s Movement has been a catalyst for change in terms of gender roles in the family. But not much has been done to address the changing role of men as fathers, until now. Carol Lapin, Director of Prevention Services for Family Nurturing Center in Florence, Kentucky heads up the “Nurturing Fathers Program,” which provides an environment for men to learn how to share their thoughts and feelings about fatherhood.
According to Lapin, “… society has suggested that the father’s role is dispensable and not necessary for rearing healthy children. The Nurturing Fathers Program supports the importance of fathers (or a male role model) in the lives of children by showing how fathers teach little boys how to be men/fathers, and teach daughters how to relate to men and to know they deserve love and respect in their relationship with men,” explains Lapin.
 REAL MEN DON'T HAVE FEELINGS (True or False)
"Does being a nurturer make a man less masculine?"
Not likely, unless one defines masculinity as brutish-machismo.
In fact, evidence shows that the more nurturing the father, the better off the child is when it comes to coping, solving problems, adapting, and staying in school. This then is evidence in favor of fathers taking an active interest in taking care of his children, it enhances the successful carrying out of his "biological imperative". A real man has strength of character and upholds just and fair values, protects the weak and vulnerable from exploitation, and is willing to fight to protect his family, his values, his friends and his community. None of those qualities says a man cannot also be nurturing, nor express love and affection.
THE LAW FAVORS MATERNITY OVER PATERNITY LEAVE
In the U.S., maternity and paternity leave are both grouped under “unpaid leave.” A federal mandate called the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires that most companies give their employees up to 12 weeks unpaid family leave after the birth of their child. This is applicable to both men and women. However, there are exceptions that release a company from this obligation, such as if a company has less than 50 employees, the time that an employee has worked at a company (typically 12 months), and employees with incomes that constitute the top 10% of the company’s wages. Some states have family leave acts that are more expansive than the federal mandate and offer paid leave or partial paid leave.
The fact that the law does not require at least partial paid leave at every company is working against couples. This may put couples in a position where one spouse must take leave (oftentimes the mother) while the father continues to work in order to receive pay and support the family. Once again the woman is thrust at the forefront of child rearing and the man -again- takes a backseat as the moneymaker (especially because men are still paid more for equal work than their female counterparts). Not many people like to be treated like nothing more than a money tree.
In the UK, the government has passed the Additional Paternity Leave (APL) policy that allows both parents to share time off during their baby’s first year. Currently women are granted six months of Ordinary Maternity Leave and an additional six months of Additional Maternity Leave (AML), giving the mother one full year. The government is aiming to extend these measures to create a completely flexible system of shared parental leave in 2015, giving parents six months each, in addition to the two weeks of ordinary paternity leave. This can only be taken 20 or more weeks after the child’s birth, and once the mother has returned to work after taking her six months of ordinary maternity leave. The pay rate is a meager £128.73 a week, or 90% of average weekly earnings if that is less.
 A survey of 1,300 companies conducted by the British Chambers of Commerce showed that over half of participants believed that giving additional paternity leave to fathers would be detrimental to business, especially to small businesses. Unfortunately, this attitude is what drives the notion that men are somehow not responsible to take time off from work to care for their own children, and defeats the purpose of having paternity leave in the first place. But if we intend to use the economic measure cost to productivity/profitability, then, what has been -and- is, the cost of work disruptions caused by martial discord, infidelity and divorce?
Other European countries like Norway offer higher wages while parents take their leave. They offer 46 weeks of parental leave at 100% pay and 56 weeks at 80% pay. Ten weeks of total leave is reserved for the father.
In Iceland each parents qualifies for a three-month maternity/paternity leave with 80% of their salary following a birth or adoption. Each parent can take an additional three months for an unpaid parental leave of 12 months in total (6 paid and 6 unpaid).
WOMEN's RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS, BECAUSE WOMEN ARE HUMAN
Besides the generational divide mentioned at the start of this article, there is a huge and notable cultural divide. Not all cultures encourage or embrace gender equality, and this is where the global women’s movement has much left to do, to end "traditions" like dowry-killings, honor-killings, stoning or whipping of women who commit adultery whilest the men with whom they commit adultery remain hidden and protected from punishment. These so-called "traditions" seem neither JUST nor HONORABLE, and one wonders why they still exist. It seems the question here is, should women be put to death to protect the fragile yet over-inflated egos of men?
IN the context of the modern world, where we have such advanced understanding of the Psychology of Oppression, isn't it unconscionable for human-kind to accept such medieval practices as stoning? Do we really believe that accepting such practices in any culture means we are being culturally sensitive or embracing diversity? Are we not guilty of condoning such practices by our failure to address these crimes against humanity, when we do nothing to stop them from continuing?
Sources and References:
http://www.americanpregnancy.org/
http://www.familynurture.org/
http://www.education.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.catalyst.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism
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