Paternity leave: an unexpected COVID casualty

New fathers are thought to have been put off tak­ing pater­ni­ty leave dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, fear­ful of los­ing their jobs.

With the UK’s unem­ploy­ment rate set to rise above 7 per cent in 2021, accord­ing to the Organ­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-oper­a­tion and Devel­op­ment, experts believe fathers and non-birth par­ents could be less will­ing to take time off after a birth or adop­tion for some time to come.

“In terms of take-up of parental leave over the fur­lough peri­od, I would expect there to be a sig­nif­i­cant decline in the num­bers of peo­ple tak­ing it,” says Jon Tay­lor, employ­ment law spe­cial­ist at EMW.

Tay­lor believes the eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty cre­at­ed by coro­n­avirus would encour­age work­ers to “keep their heads down and not cre­ate has­sle for their employ­er”. Although there is no hard data yet to sup­port this asser­tion, oth­ers share the same view.

“For peo­ple wor­ried about los­ing their jobs or who are more at risk of becom­ing unem­ployed, I could imag­ine that such peo­ple would try to avoid pater­ni­ty leave,” says Dr Christo­pher Rauh, lec­tur­er in Eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge.

In par­tic­u­lar, this would be the case for shared parental leave, which allows par­ents to split 50 weeks of leave after a birth or adop­tion, and is avail­able beyond the statu­to­ry two weeks qual­i­fy­ing fathers and non-birth par­ents are enti­tled to when their child arrives. Beyond time off, pater­ni­ty leave gives fathers the chance to con­nect with and feel respon­si­ble for their child.

It’s more than paternity leave and pay

Rauh says research shows the pos­i­tive effects of pater­ni­ty leave on the nor­mal­i­sa­tion of gen­der roles. “When men take pater­ni­ty leave, they are more like­ly to take on house­hold duties and more like­ly to spend time with the chil­dren,” he says. “The risk [with the pan­dem­ic] is that we see a rever­sal of this, with the move away from tra­di­tion­al roles being put at threat by the cri­sis.”

In addi­tion, women are more like­ly to have lost their jobs dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and so have tak­en on child­care respon­si­bil­i­ties, says Rauh. His research indi­cates women were more like­ly to either ini­ti­ate being fur­loughed or put on fur­lough, main­ly due to their role as moth­ers.

“I sus­pect many thought it would be tem­po­rary, but it might lead to per­ma­nent changes in the gen­der bal­ance because if you spend time out of work, it reduces your chances of get­ting work, and your wages, in the future,” he says.

Dads are home more but still working

Lock­downs have afford­ed many work­ing fathers more time at home with their chil­dren. But this has large­ly been in place of the com­mute they no longer do, rather than a for­mal break from work and doing more around the home.

“Anec­do­tal evi­dence sug­gests the moth­er has still been the one expect­ed to do all the home-school­ing, while the father has worked from his home office,” says Helen Astill, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Cher­ing­ton HR, adding that while she had not wit­nessed a drop-off in statu­to­ry pater­ni­ty leave, shared parental leave remained extreme­ly rare.

Even before the pan­dem­ic, two thirds of new fathers were fail­ing to take pater­ni­ty pay in the year to March 31 because of the low lev­el of statu­to­ry com­pen­sa­tion.

At £151.20 a week, or 90 per cent of their aver­age week­ly earn­ings, whichev­er is low­er, the finan­cial dis­in­cen­tive is usu­al­ly a cru­cial imped­i­ment to fathers tak­ing pater­ni­ty leave. And an eco­nom­ic down­turn could exac­er­bate this.

“The prob­lem is that men often feel they need to fit into the soci­etal role of the bread­win­ner for their fam­i­ly and, with a glob­al cri­sis and an eco­nom­ic down­turn to con­tend with, it can be hard to ratio­nalise tak­ing time off work when they could be earn­ing mon­ey,” says Jamie Macken­zie at employ­ee ben­e­fits spe­cial­ist Sodexo Engage.

“Busi­ness­es there­fore need to be sen­si­tive to this fact when dis­cussing pater­ni­ty leave with employ­ees and out­lin­ing the options on offer.”

Support those entitled to paternity leave

For com­pa­nies keen to mod­ernise their pater­ni­ty leave poli­cies, experts say it’s impor­tant man­agers lis­ten to their staff about what they want.

FTSE 100-list­ed insur­er Avi­va offers all new par­ents a year’s leave with the first 26 weeks on full pay, some­thing which has led to an equal 50–50 split in male and female staff tak­ing parental-relat­ed leave in the year to the end of Octo­ber.

Such a gen­er­ous offer is rare in the UK, but Antho­ny Fitz­patrick, Aviva’s employ­ee rela­tions and glob­al pol­i­cy lead, says any improve­ment to parental leave poli­cies is pos­i­tive.

“Not every organ­i­sa­tion can offer mem­bers of staff paid leave for 26 weeks, but if they lis­ten and engage with their employ­ees, they can make a small change that’s rel­e­vant to their com­pa­ny and afford­able,” he says. “Small changes can make a huge impact on the lives of employ­ees and their fam­i­lies.”

Understanding parents are equally responsible for the child

An impor­tant step is to make pater­ni­ty and mater­ni­ty leave pack­ages con­sis­tent and  ensure shared parental respon­si­bil­i­ties are rep­re­sent­ed in a company’s cul­ture.

Firms must also active­ly share infor­ma­tion on pater­ni­ty and shared leave, espe­cial­ly as research by meet­ing provider Pow­WowNow in March showed just a quar­ter (25.9 per cent) of firms pro­vid­ed details with­out being asked.

This lack of trans­paren­cy could help explain why just 3.8 per cent of eli­gi­ble cou­ples applied to use shared parental leave in the 2018–19 tax year, accord­ing to HM Rev­enue & Cus­toms.

And coro­n­avirus isn’t help­ing. Jobs web­site DirectlyAp­ply found the num­ber of job posts on its site that men­tioned pater­ni­ty leave fell by 90 per cent between Jan­u­ary and Octo­ber this year.

Com­men­ta­tors agree the onus is on the indi­vid­ual to take parental leave. But they also believe work­places must sup­port fathers and non-birth par­ents to take leave to help in the dri­ve for gen­der equal­i­ty, some­thing that will ben­e­fit every­one in the long run.