Equal Partnership? Why Companies Need to Ditch Maternity and Paternity Leave

Looking ahead to my maternity leave, all I could see was a situation that might as well have been cooked up specifically to send me straight into a down cycle. The lack of sleep, the lack of structure, the isolation, the anxiety of caring for a newborn for the first time—I assumed that I was in for it.

As it turns out, those five and a half months were some of the happiest of my life, and this can be credited to an edit to a couple paragraphs in the employee handbook at the agency where I worked at the time.

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Paternity leave is for moms

Halfway through my pregnancy, while in the throes of first-time parent research (i.e., Is there a difference between a bouncer and a swing? Do we need both?), my agency’s parent company completely revamped their maternity leave policy. In fact, they threw it out and replaced it with an equitable parental leave policy with longer leave for mothers and a huge increase for fathers, which equalized the amount of family bonding time for all parents. This last bit was critical for our family, since my husband worked at the same agency.

Suddenly, the picture of those months ahead with my newborn changed. There was new hope: I would have a partner who would actually be able to fulfill his role as partner.

There was even the possibility of going straight back to work if I wanted to. This freedom is traditionally extended to a man, one who knows his baby will be taken care of by his wife on her maternity leave while he resumes his career. This is when the idea was sown in my brain that paternity leave is for moms.

Inequality at home = inequality in the workplace

Of course, paternity leave is also for dads. The flipside-of-the-coin freedom traditionally extended to women, to stay home and to bond with a new child, is one that only recently a small number of men have begun to enjoy. And an alarming survey from this year reports that even this progress is being reversed, despite the findings that men who take longer paternity leave experience a closer relationship with their child for a lifetime.

Even when leave is offered, company culture often dissuades fathers from actually using the benefit. In our case, when my husband found out about the new leave policy and mentioned it to someone in upper management, that person scoffed and said, “Yeah, but you’re not going to take all of it, are you?” Thankfully, my husband scoffed right back that yes, he would.

But there are plenty of stories of men with generous leave packages of six months or more going back to the office after two weeks or even less—no more than a typical vacation. The pressure is real, and it needs to change.

It needs to change for fathers’ sake, but it also needs to change for the sake of the mothers. As long as inequality exists at home—as mothers accidentally and permanently assume the role of default primary parent, whether they or the father even intend for that to happen—inequality will exist in the workplace.

Is raising a happy family while working in advertising possible?

Our industry places a lot of demands on its employees, demands which are particularly felt by parents. There are long periods of travel. Late nights. Inflexible client meetings. While it is possible to be successful in advertising and raise a happy family—possible and also rewarding and worthy—it requires creative solutions at home. That means a fluidity of parenting dynamics that can only be achieved in an equal partnership.

The dangers to this equality at home begin with parental leave being reserved for women. Not only does taking it leave missed opportunity, visibility and promotion cycles at work, it fixes a pattern at the home of one-sided responsibility for the children.

Even for the most intentional couples, that pattern is almost impossible to shake once it has been established. And then there is the choice that many mothers make to take another year or two, or more, away from their careers to continue raising their family—after which it’s increasingly difficult to jump back in. And it’s no wonder that it’s the mothers that choose to extend that gap, as they’re the ones who are home already.

The impact of equality in parenting

Six years later, we’re expecting our second baby. And guess what? This time we don’t even need to worry about my husband’s leave. He has been the primary caregiver for our older daughter for the past three years, working only part-time as a freelance CD and fiction writer. He’s our default primary parent.

You may have noticed that all of this has been written from the perspective of a heteronormative family with a mother and a father. If we widen our view to embrace all types of parents, the need for treating all parental leave the same becomes even more apparent.

The only solution, and the one that benefits everyone, is for companies to ditch their maternity and paternity leave policies and replace them with adequate and equitable parental leave.

I cannot say we would have arrived here without those early months of equality in parenting. I recognize that we are incredibly privileged to be in this position. And at the same time, I wholly reject the idea that it should be a privilege at all. I hope that soon, every agency rejects it too.

As Brands Consider Workplace Flexibility, Keep Families in Mind