I was watching a news blurb about how many dads who have jobs that offer paternity leave don’t take it because they worry about the ‘stigma’ of taking off work for family reasons :rolleyes: . I think this is pretty silly, and it reeks of macho posturing and arbitrary gender roles (the misconception that a man who puts his family above work is seen as weak or effeminite). Only about 15% employers offer ANY family leave and even those that do have men that don’t even use it.
I think not taking it is bad, because it will discourage employers from offering it (since employees wont seem to see it as a ‘benefit’). My work offers 4 weeks of paternity leave and I am definitely going to use it when I have kids (and all the FMLA days I can use through the year).
Using paternity leave allows dads to bond with their kids. It also is a huge help for new moms by having a spouse around during the day to share the duties of child rearing.
It really depends on the company and the culture. The company I am with now (and which I am soon leaving) is notorious for treating our employees poorly. I co-worker had a baby a couple years ago, and her husband (who also works here) took three sick days after the birth to stay home with his wife and new baby. Upon returning, he had a “casual” hallway conversation with our HR manager, who inquired about his wife and new baby’s health and well-being. He reported both were fine. HR Manager went to his supervisor and instructed that, since the wife and baby were fine, that 3 vacation days should be used instead of sick days, since the wife and baby were not sick; he just wanted to spend some time with them.
On the other side of the coin, when my son was born he had to spend two weeks in Infant ICU. My manager told me to take as much time as I needed, just to call him every few days to check in so they wouldn’t worry about me or my family. I took two weeks off. They never dinged my vacation time or sick time. Never said a word about it, other than to express (genuine) concern for me and my family. That was a GREAT bunch of guys. I miss working with then, and I’m sorry the company disbanded.
Norway solved this handily by making 1/3 of the leave earmarked for dad. Total leave is 47 weeks at full pay or 57 weeks at 80% pay. 12 weeks are earmarked for the father, 9 for the mother, the rest can be split between them as they see fit. The earmarked weeks are “use them or loose them” and cannot be allocated to the other parent.
The “Daddy Quota” was institute specifically to give fathers better arguments towards employers. It is very much the done thing now - a father who wont take his leave is considered a cad and a bad father.
I’ve heard women disparaged for taking maternity leave. I’ve also heard the exact same people call another woman a cold B**** for not taking materity leave.
You can’t win with some people. The best you can do is try to find a situation in which they are not the ones with any real power in your life.
The best news though, is that they also tend to be the ones who move fairly quickly from one company to the next, as that’s the best way to get a large salary increase.
Where I work, I was allowed to take paternity leave for the same amount of time allowed for maternity leave, 12 weeks.
There is a stigma among a certain set of my co-workers, this being a male-oriented line of work, so most new fathers take little…I think a week or two is probably the average.
I didn’t experience any stigma when I took four months of paternity leave; Mrs Piper took the first eight months, I took the next four. I work for an employer who tops up the employment insurance benefit to close to full pay, so you don’t lose out financially.
I had to explain this point to a colleague whose wife had just had a baby, and he didn’t believe me at first; went to check with HR; when he came back, he said, “why wouldn’t I take paternity leave?” and off he went.
I took about four months paternity leave, as a combination of annual leave and leave without pay. My job is secure, as a federal employee, and since my agency is under a hiring freeze, they can’t hire a replacement and give my work away. And I did keep pitching in from time to time while I was out.
My colleagues were uniformly supportive, but few men in this office have taken any similar period of leave. It’s a very flat office hierarchy with few opportunities for advancement anyway, so it’s hard to say whether my taking leave would work against me in that arena.
I suspect this is as much the reason more men don’t take off as any potential stigma. Mom has to take time off, and if Dad does too, there’s no money coming in at a time they really need it.
I believe where I work you have to use up your vacation and sick leave first, so they’d have to burn up all their time to even get “paternity” leave, and mom’s probably used most of hers up too, so an emergency in the next few months could be a real problem.
I know in a competitive job, taking a lot of time off (for any reason) can be a disadvantage, but I’m lucky that its not an issue at my job. My wife’s job offers six months of maternity leave which she is planning on taking. I suggested I take mine the same as hers, but like how Piper did it, she wants to run it concurrently which would give us 7 months of continuous time with our future kid.
Also, in our case, its just guaranteed time off. We can use sick/vacation time to cover it, but that means both of us will have to hoard all our sick/vacation time the year before to cover it.
I know at my job, there is no stigma. Plenty of co workers take it off. Its actually win-win since being shorthanded at my job means more overtime for other people, which they generally want.
If you’re actually doing something useful at your job, then, depending on the nature of the job, your not being there for an extended period of time might cause trouble or inconvenience for your company or your coworkers. Couldn’t it be that that, rather than any “stigma,” discourages people from taking paternity leave?
If your company is organized in such a way that the absence of any one given person, no matter how skilled he or she might be, causes things to crash and burn, then it is poorly organized.
My employer offers up to 2 weeks of paid paternity leave, which I used back in March. Nobody said “boo.”
In case it needs to be said, I wasn’t arguing against taking paternity leave, just pointing out why some people might be less than enthusiastic about it.
I used to work for a company that had 6 weeks of paid maternity leave, and 3 days of paid paternity leave, which I thought was great. Most companies still don’t do that, nearly 20 years later, at least not in the States.
That company eventually folded, but we still have reunions every 2 years, and I’ve never encountered anyone who said they regretted working there.
Honestly, most people are not on a career track anyway, so I don’t see where the stigma comes from. And it wasn’t so many years ago that if a man requested paternity leave, he would have had his boss laugh in his face and been told not to come back. They were lucky to get the day of the birth off, KWIM? It’s not like nobody saw this coming, although except in rare cases, there’s no way to know exactly when the baby will be born and this can be an issue WRT staffing.
There do exist men who wouldn’t use their paternity leave for its intended purpose anyway; they would spend the time fishing, or bar-hopping, or playing World of Warcraft, or chasing the kind of women (or men) who don’t care that his wife just had a baby, or whatever, and the idea that he’s actually taking time off for reasons like that may be where the stigma originated.
What do companies like that expect to do if THAT PERSON dies, anyway?
I’ve worked with people who had low-level jobs, and they wouldn’t take sick leave because they thought they were that indispensable. Sorry, folks, if you did die, we’d go to your funeral and then come back and post your job opening. That’s the way the world operates. :rolleyes:
Are you talking about paid or unpaid leave for fathers? Any company with over 50 employees in one location has to provide the same 12 weeks of FMLA it provides to eligible female employees, but of course it is unpaid. If your company offers four weeks of paid leave for new fathers, that is quite generous for the U.S.
My previous employer offered two weeks of paid leave (concurrent with FMLA) for both parents. My current employer offers one week of pay. For mothers, this is in addition to any disability pay they may be eligible for as they recover from childbirth.
It’s worth pointing out that under FMLA, employers don’t have to allow you to spread out your 12 weeks of baby bonding leave. They can require that you take it all (or whatever you plan to use) all at once. In my experience this is the most common approach; it would be hard on many employers to cope with a parent who decided to take a week off every month for a year.
To provide a concise reply to the OP’s title question: whether or not there is a stigma depends entirely on the culture of the employee’s company and industry.
I was an FMLA administrator for 10 years until just recently.
