Soon-to-be parents Amy Mathers and Paul Kearney, of Limerick, Ireland, were in Florence recently visiting Mathers’ family. Mathers and Kearney are expecting their first child in September. The two said they talk about moving to the U.S. to raise a family, but Ireland can offer them a better work-life balance with less financial stress.
“I think this country’s crazy,” said Kearney, 39, while grabbing a bite with Mathers at Cup and Top in Florence. “The way we look at family [in Ireland] is different. I think our social policies are more about keeping the family intact, where in the U.S. it’s more about business.”
After visiting for a few weeks, the couple will head back to the land of green, where Mathers will enjoy six months paid maternity leave once their baby is born. Paid paternity leave is on the horizon for Ireland and Kearney said that although it’s not legislated yet, new dads already tend to take a month or so off with their newborns. They also said that in Ireland, parents receive a monthly check of $135 until the child turns 18 to offset the costs of raising children.
“The whole point is that you raise a healthy child that pays into the tax system,” said Kearney.
Massachusetts’ child care laws took a step back from “crazy” a few months ago when legislation went into effect that expands on the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, enabling new fathers who work at companies with as few as six employees to take up to eight weeks of unpaid leave.
New dads were already entitled to the same leave allotted new moms — 12 weeks under the federal law — but only if they worked at a company with 50 or more employees. The new state law, which took effect in April, extends leave requirements to smaller businesses. While hits to small businesses are always a concern when passing new laws that provide more employee benefits, local researchers said there’s resounding evidence paternity leave is not only a positive for families, but also for employers.
In 2004, California became the first state in the country to offer paid leave for families, deploying an employee-paid payroll tax system. Since then, two additional states have followed suit — New Jersey in 2009 and Rhode Island in 2014. Still, nearly a third of fathers in the U.S. still have no access to leave, let alone paid leave, according to a 2014 White House report, “The Economics of Fatherhood and Work.” The commonwealth’s new law may be a step in the right direction, but it still puts paternity leave out of reach for new dads who can’t afford to take unpaid time off of work. It also means a lot of small businesses will have to figure out a way to make it through the weeks they may be down a man.
Many lower-income families don’t realize paternity leave is an option, and even if they’re aware of such provisions, they can’t afford to take the unpaid time, said Maureen Perry-Jenkins, UMass psychology professor and director of the Center for Research on Families. That, she said, makes existing policies moot.
Even those men who can afford to take the leave often don’t for fear they’ll be viewed as less than dedicated to their work, said Joya Misra, UMass sociology professor and editor of Gender and Society.
“We found that men were very unlikely to take the leave even if they were eligible,” said Misra. This point is corroborated by the aforementioned White House report, which found men were 15 percent more likely than women to decline a leave when they needed it for professional reasons. Misra said that, because the gender wage gap is rooted in the stigma associated with mothers having to take time off to care for their children, the more that burden is shared between parents, the smaller the gap. “That study suggests that men are a little bit anxious about taking leave because they don’t want to be perceived as less focused on work. If we think about the wage difference between men and women — the more men take paternity leave, the lower those differences are. Overcoming that stigma has really positive effects on women.”
Rob Okun, co-chairman of the Men’s Resource Center in Amherst and editor and publisher of Voice Male, said the lack of leave policies for U.S. parents is “outrageous” when compared with the rest of the world.
“Not having paternity leave is a mistake that has a ripple effect across many issues on every level of social development,” said Okun. “We should as a culture see it as so important that it’s part of the fabric of what we provide as a society — in the same way we provide good roads and street lamps.”
Indeed, not allowing time for a father to bond with a new child harms families.
Fathers taking leave has benefits on the division of responsibilities within the family, Misra said, especially when new parents take their leaves separately. That, she said, allows a father to take on all of the responsibilities of child care and establish long-term parenting patterns.
Perry-Jenkins said that studies show longer paternity leave is correlated with better mental health for parents. Also, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development data shows children with involved fathers perform better in cognitive tests.
The White House report states that employees at businesses lacking work-life balance policies “report lower job satisfaction, lower engagement, and worse morale.” Companies with low employee morale, the report continues, have “stock returns that are 20 percent lower.” The report also states that implementation of such policies decreases worker turnover — which costs a firm an average of 20 percent of the employee’s annual salary — as well as increases shareholder returns.
“To enable a parent of either gender to establish a more firm foundation for their family helps the company, too,” said Ira Bryck, director of the UMass Amherst Family Business Center. “So as a society we need to support those efforts. And so small businesses need to figure out how to make that work.”
Bryck said small businesses should start cross-training for paternity leave fill-ins. In the months before the leave, Bryck said employers can organize projects that allow parents taking leave to contribute in advance, bring in an intern to train to temporarily fill the position, and encourage a mentoring program in which parents taking leave train a lower-level employee to help fill the void.
Joan Trudell, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts District Office of the Small Business Association, declined to comment for this article.
Supporting employees outside of the workplace is just good business, said Don Todrin, owner of Second Wind Consultants in Northampton. Unfortunately, he said, too few business owners realize that.
“They give more, they do more, and they care more,” said Todrin of the business impacts work-family policies like the new state law have on employees. “Business owners need to get hip to the fact that if they treat their employees with the utmost respect, the return will be there. If everybody got that it would be a better world.”•
Contact Amanda Drane at adrane@valleyadvocate.com.
