When Erik Kjell Berg’s first child Livia Dylan was born, he took 12 weeks of paid paternity leave from his role as cofounder and vice president of product at Tomorrow Ideas, a financial wellness company. When his wife Lela Lucht was pregnant, he took a class about being a conscious dad and learned the importance of bonding with the baby early on for both mothers and fathers. Instead of being booked with back-to-back meetings, Berg and Lucht coordinated a schedule that let them both have time for showering, sleeping, eating and working out. Berg went to bed around six or seven at night while his wife handled feedings and then he would wake up to spend an hour or two playing with Livia and doing tummy-time. When Livia napped, he did chores, made breakfast and did other things to set the family up for a successful day. Berg has friends who didn’t get paternity leave and he said they missed out on valuable bonding time. “They come home late after work and only experience the fussy hours — the ‘witching hours’ — when the baby is not at their best,” Berg said, “My morning hours are so special because she is happy and engaged and making eye contact. She is smiling and giggling and laughing. I’d miss out on all that time to bond.”
In the evenings, the family went for a walk in their Fremont, Seattle neighborhood or to an early outing. “There are a lot of times you can feel isolated and lonely when you are a mom of a newborn. Having my husband here to help at any hour of the day or night made me feel so supported and like I wasn’t doing this alone,” Lucht said. Lucht is a real estate broker and spends most of her time home with Livia.
Like many parents, Berg still checked in with work frequently during the 12 weeks. Although he has heard some people say that taking parental leave is like taking a long vacation, he said that’s definitely not the case. “The minute someone has a kid you realize it’s no walk in the park. It’s not a vacation,” Berg said, “We are taking care of a new human and taking care of ourselves and we are sleep-deprived and tired and cranky.”
Berg was fortunate. The U.S. is the only industrialized country that does not have a national paid parental leave policy, so it’s largely up to individual companies to set their own. While companies like Spotify, Netflix, American Express, Etsy and Facebook have made headlines for their generous paid parental leave policies, a lot of people are missing out. Last year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that only 17% of companies offered paid parental leave, 89% offer unpaid. It’s no surprise that loss of income is the most common reason people don’t take leave or go back to work sooner than the available time. According to a 2016 Pew Research survey, middle and higher-income workers are much more likely to have access to paid time off through employer-provided paid leave benefits or accrued time off than lower-income employees.
The Family and Medical Leave Act, a federal law signed by President Clinton in 1993, provides employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave per year and requires that health benefits be maintained. People can take leave for their own health issue, to be a caregiver to a family member or to take care of a new child. But the law only applies to employees who work at public agencies, public or private elementary and secondary schools or companies with 50 or more people. Employees must have worked at the company for at least 12 months and a certain number of hours within that time.
Some state legislatures have paid family leave laws. Paid leave doesn’t always mean people receive their total paycheck, some private organizations and state programs provide partial replacement pay. A 2014 Boston College survey found that 86% of men would not use paternity leave unless at least 70% of their salary was paid and 45% said the compensation would need to be 100%. In New York, which has the most generous program, parents receive only 10 weeks at 55% of their average weekly wage, up to a cap based on the statewide average.
In February, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat of New York, sponsored the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act. If the bill passes, employees would earn 66% of their monthly income, up to a cap, for up to 12 weeks. People could take leave for their own health issue, to be a caregiver to a family member or to take care of a new child. Employees, employers and self-employed people would fund the benefits and administrative costs by contributing a small amount of money from each paycheck to a fund managed by a new Office of Paid Family and Medical Leave. People could contribute and benefit from the fund regardless of the size of their employer or the amount of time they’ve worked at the company.
It won’t matter if there are excellent national or company-specific benefits if people don’t use them. In 2016, Pew Research Center found that American fathers took a median of one week off work; mothers took a median of 11 weeks. 49% of adults said employers put more pressure on fathers to return to work quickly. Policies are becoming more gender-neutral, and companies are moving away from creating separate paternity or maternity leave policies. Yet some companies still offer different benefits to primary and secondary caregivers. In heterosexual families, men are usually considered to be secondary caregivers. When the consulting firm Deloitte surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. workers last year, more than half of the men felt that taking paternity leave would be perceived as not being committed to their jobs and one in three said they worried that taking it would jeopardize their careers.
The worry is warranted. A 2013 University of Oregon study used data from 6,403 men in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to track the same individuals over the course of their careers. The study found that men experience a “flexibility stigma” for working fewer hours or taking parental leave. “Previous research shows that men work longer hours and earn more after becoming fathers, but if men are unemployed or reduce work hours for family reasons, their earnings and future career opportunities are more limited. Men who reduced their hours for family reasons faced a 15.5% reduction in earnings throughout their career. (Women experienced a 9.8% reduction.)
A 2013 Rutgers University study found that men who requested family leave were at greater risk for penalties like receiving a decreased salary, being demoted, getting passed over for a promotion or being laid off or fired. They were also less likely to be recommended for rewards like being suggested for a leadership role, getting a raise or promotion or receiving a high-profile project. The research showed that men also face a “femininity stigma” for taking leave. Men were seen as weak, uncertain, insecure and emotional—traits that are used to stigmatize women.
Although Berg hasn’t experienced the stigma first-hand, he has heard about the misconceptions like that it is not necessary for both parents to be home or that men use paternity leave as a vacation. One of the strongest ways to destigmatize paternity leave is for senior leaders like Berg to demonstrate that it is okay and encouraged to take leave. “It really has to be set from the leadership,” Berg said, “If I don’t demonstrate what our company is all about or that there isn’t negative repercussion, no one will take it. It’ll be a culture of fear.”
Increased engagement leads to better outcomes for children. A 2007 literature review by academics at Uppsala University in Sweden looked at longitudinal data and found that, “father engagement positively affects the social, behavioural, psychological and cognitive outcomes of children.” When men take paternity leave and are active parents, it can also decrease stress and rates of postpartum depression for women, according to a 2012 survey of French parents. “The findings from the present study showed the importance of paternal involvement in infant care during the first months postpartum. Indeed, the level of paternal involvement in childcare was linked to maternal well-being and maternal attitudes towards motherhood,” the researchers wrote.
Men who take paternity leave have more time to learn how to take care of the baby and are more likely to be an engaged parent even after they go back to work, according to a 2007 Columbia University study. The researchers surveyed fathers who took paternity leave and asked how involved they were nine months later. They found that fathers who took two or more weeks when the baby was born were significantly more involved in childcare activities when the baby was nine-months-old. When fathers took less than two weeks off they were not more engaged than fathers who did not take any paternity leave.
Taking paternity leave helped Berg understand how difficult it is for his wife to stay at home with Livia. “Now when I’m coming home from a hard day, I think ‘I had a hard day but yours was so much harder. How can I help?’ That’s one of the biggest things I learned from being with a newborn so early on,” Berg said, “I have friends who are uncomfortable and naively helpless at changing diapers and that’s a fail. It’s a fail for them for not learning how to do it, and it’s a huge burden on their partners.”
Today a majority of American two-parent families are dual-income and more gender equality at home can lead to more gender equality at work. The World Economic Forum’s 2018 Global Gender Gap Report notes that Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland are in the lead for closing the gender pay gap and all have generous parental leave policies. In America becoming a parent increases the wage gap. In 2010, Michelle J. Budig, a researcher at University of Massachusetts-Amherst found that the smallest gender gap is between childless men and women and that the gap gets wider when women have kids. The average woman incurs a wage loss of 4% per child. For low-wage workers, it rises to 6% per child. For high-paid women in the 90th percentile or above there is no decrease. The average man gets an increase of 6% when he becomes a father. Researchers have called this dichotomy a “motherhood penalty” and “fatherhood bonus.”
A 2018 Society for Human Resource Management survey found that 92% of workers said that paid leave is important to their overall job satisfaction and 29% of employees said their overall benefits package is a top reason to look for a new job in the next 12 months. “Paternity leave benefits women in the workplace, not only by leading toward more equal divisions of labor at home — making it more likely that the mother will engage more fully in her career — but also in that it de-genders and destigmatizes the taking of leave during one’s career,” said Lori Mihalich-Levin, a partner at the law firm Dentons U.S. and founder of Mindful Return, a blog and curriculum for parents reintegrating into the workplace after taking leave. Companies are able to better recruit and retain talent if they offer paid family leave and other policies that support working parents.
Everyone at Berg’s company has a flexible work schedule. The entire staff works from home on Wednesdays to allow time during the week for any necessary errands and medical appointments. Tomorrow Ideas’ employees can work from home when they need to or create a schedule that works for their family, such as starting early so they can leave by 3:30 p.m. to pick up their kids from school each day. When Lucht has something she needs to get done during the day, Berg brings Livia with him to the office.
It can be overwhelming to have a newborn and both Berg and Lucht relied on each other. “By the time Erik returned to work I felt fully confident in my ability to care for her alone and it was a smooth transition,” said Lucht, “If he had gone back earlier it would have been much harder for me emotionally and physically.”
