A couple of weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg announced he will take two months of paternity leave upon his daughter’s birth. Similarly, Rep. Paul Ryan recently accepted the position of Speaker of the House on the condition that he would still be able to spend time with his family. My fellow Opinion columnist Matt Winesett has written a piece concerning the media’s reaction to Ryan’s move, explaining that conservative thought can position one in opposition of a federal mandate even for a practice he may support. Mandated or not, paternity leave could have beneficial implications for how we view the roles of men and women in society, in turn narrowing the wage gap. Businesses should also feel incentivized to adopt it due to the positive impacts it could have in performance.
Recently, quite a few notable companies have embraced paternity leave. Apart from Facebook, which offers its American employees up to four months of paid paternity leave, Netflix offers unlimited parental leave for up to a year. Still, the practice is rather uncommon. These are only two of the mere 17 percent of companies in the United States offering paid paternity leave in 2015, according to the Society of Human Resources Management.
It seems to me our society often displays a cultural bias against mothers in the office and fathers in the home, despite 40 percent of women being the sole or primary breadwinner of households with children. Those who proclaim the wage gap a myth cite the statistic not relying on “quality of work” as a factor, which is hard to properly measure. But this view ignores the implicit bias that women often face as they’re expected to naturally work less in order to place family above work. While employers read fathers as more stable and committed since they have a family to provide for, parenthood by women is conventionally seen as working less and becoming more distractible on the job. Looking to the typical scenario of women being less likely to be offered a higher position due to bearing the physical burden when having a child, it becomes clear that we place too little value on the father’s role beyond simply providing financial support.
This is shown in the “motherhood penalty.” Controlling for factors causing some not to believe in the wage gap, including hours worked, on average, men’s earnings increase more than 6 percent whey they have children, while women’s decrease 4 percent for each child. Furthermore, the explanation of fathers often working more has been found to explain at most 16 percent of that bonus, while mothers’ cutting back on hours or accepting more family friendly (and often lower paying) jobs explains a quarter to a third of this penalty. Making leave gender-neutral would help reduce that penalty.
Apart from social gains, adopting paternity leave can also more simply serve as a smart business move by leading to a more productive workplace. After California instituted paid maternity leave for mothers, 91 percent of employers said the policy either boosted profits and also noted improved productivity, higher morale and reduced turnover. This effect could be augmented with men participating as well. Nancy Altobello, the vice chair for talent at the consulting firm EY, explained that her firm encourages fathers to take leave because “it fosters a different sense of cooperation when the women and men are both taking leave and understanding what it’s like to have newborns at home.” Of course, the physical burden of bearing children for women needs to be accounted for, perhaps in amount of leave allotted. But when it’s only women who take parental leave, they’re less likely to be promoted and they tend to make less.By taking a more gender-neutral approach to parental leave, businesses could avoid costly turnover and retain valued expertise and skills, which would then be combined with the new perspectives those employees could bring to the table.
I understand it would probably take a fairly substantial amount of time for both men and women equally taking parental leave to become commonplace, as well as for associated biases facing both genders to notably diminish. Still, the option has to be available in order for it to be taken at all, and if paternity leave becoming a more mainstream practice is a step toward a society that values the roles of fathers and mothers equally, both at home and in the office, then it is one worth considering.
Alyssa Imam is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at a.imam@cavalierdaily.com.
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