This started out as a blog about work-life balance* but it quickly morphed into a monologue about parenthood and its interaction with work. It’s a subject I’m so passionate that sometimes pure rationality takes a back seat! Anyone who can look into the eyes of their child, a mini-you, and stay completely rational needs their emotions examining.

Before I dive in let’s acknowledge the difficulty in separating gender issues and mother v father issues. That’s a near impossible task but I’ve tried to stick to latter. I also don’t want to understate the physical needs of mothers, particularly post-birth. I’ve first hand seen what mothers go through to bring a new life into the world and it’s nothing short of a breath-taking herculean task that understandably requires significant recovery time if in particular things don’t go smoothly as they often don’t. Also, let’s not forget the evolutionary and anthropological drives in the traditional mother and father roles. Anyway, let’s dive in….

Analysing and reflecting why I have such a strong emotional response, it’s because I feel so unfairly treated. Don’t get me wrong mothers are treated unfairly by work, I’ve seen the punishment (I don’t think that word is too strong) doled out to women, stunted careers, depressed pay and a lack of recognition and sympathy. However, gender equality drives including things like the gender pay gap are trying to do something about that. Equalise the difference between mothers and men. I use the word men deliberately because I don’t see fathers included in the gender equality drive.

I know people will look to shared parental leave, but this is a clear inequality. Employers (thankfully) are paying women 100% or close for longer and longer periods because it’s the right thing to do. Controversially, much of the evidence I have seen is the improved provisions for mothers are increasing the gender pay gap, making mothers take more leave and the associated career costs and fathers to stay in work. In Sweden, it has been estimated that each additional month of parental leave taken by the father increases the mother’s earnings by 6.7%. I believe that the quickest win society has to long term correction of the gender pay gap is to equalise how it pays both parents if they take leave. In effect, to stop forcing new mothers out of the workforce because of finances.

A colleague at work mentioned to me recently that if we as societies all over the world were to think truly long term then investment in early childhood development and support would be the place that would make the most difference. This bears out in the stats;

–         Australian children whose fathers take long leave after their birth perform better in cognitive development tests and are more likely to be prepared for school at ages four and five.

–         In the UK, fathers’ not using paternity leave or not sharing childcare responsibilities are associated with an increased likelihood of their three-year-old having developmental problems.

These are supported by numerous other studies with similar findings. So why are we incentivising mothers to stay at home and support their children but not fathers?

I know I’m in the minority in that my partner and I co-parent. This is where we try to not have a mother and a father role to our children but 2 parents, both of whom are caregivers, disciplinarians, ouchy kissers, cooks etc. This requires me to do my fair share of bedtimes, bath times and the rest. There is a growing percentage of men doing this and, according to The Times, well over half of men now have some sort of childcare responsibilities. I know there are more traditional models which work well as well, but shouldn’t we have a choice? Why should fathers be forced to work, and women forced to not work financially?

I’ve focussed on the structures but our issues around this subject lie deeper than that, they are as much cultural as anything else. I have a 10-month-old second child, but 2 months before she was due, I was made redundant. By an employer that boasts that it is family friendly. If I was a pregnant mother do you think they would have dared to risk that reputation or PR sting? I’m going to leave that to sink in a moment. I don’t blame the employer but unfortunately in most workplaces family friendly actually means mother-friendly not father-friendly. 

Next, I then began looking for my new job. However, what I found was most concerning, on 2 occasions CEOs of major asset managers were taken aback when I discussed working from home 1-2 days a week in order to perform my childcare duties. One even asked why, if my partner was on maternity leave, I would need to do that. So, I tempered my expectations and started discussing only 1 day working from home. If my discussions were to be believed a senior position and working from home are incompatible, despite my having just done it! I also tempered my expectations of the seniority I could achieve if I was prioritising my family commitments. The latter I have struggled with as a person with an ego and high level of ambition. But at least that’s a choice I could make (although whether it should be is another matter). I think there are mothers out there who would, rightly, say this has been a choice they have had made for them for years and I agree, however, focus both political and economical is on getting women onto boards, gender splits in senior management and to date, I believe men who want to take a significant active role with their children and therefore draw boundaries have been indirectly held back in silence.

I did finally find a role with a boss and company that was progressive and understood that all of life has balances and priorities. But despite this in the first week when leaving to pick up my child from nursery I got the age old “half day” comment. For, most not all, mothers this has been stamped out, in my experience, but the passive aggressive comment still seems to be fair game for fathers. In defence of the individual they were horrified when I brought it up with them and they’ve been a great supporter of my boundaries since. However, I guess the point here is not about the individual but about the micro-behaviours and societal norms that still assume fathers don’t have these sorts of responsibilities.

The final point I want to make is that parental equality should not just be a goal because it’s morally important, it actually affects childhood development as we’ve seen. One factor that, in most cases, over-rides the impact of fathers’ leave-taking on fathers’ time spent with children later is mothers’ employment: the more hours mothers work and the more they earn, the more involved fathers tend to be, whether or not they took much leave in the first year. In simple terms, the more successful mothers are the more balanced the family dynamic is, which as we’ve seen is good for everyone in the family.

So, after all that, if you’re still with me, what am I trying to say? What is my call to arms? I don’t have all the solutions, but I do think some are easy to implement, hard to sell. Equalising maternity and paternity leave in one all-encompassing parental leave that makes it illegal to discriminate on the financials based on which parent, would seem to make rational sense. There is a long-term education piece to help us understand the importance of a father’s relationship with his children and how that should have its own focus. We can probably borrow a few lessons from our Scandinavian neighbours here. I’m sure there are many others out there and please share them in the comments below. It’s too late for my generation in changing culture but imagine a world where we really focussed on early childhood and we gave parents, both parents, the time and support to raise kids who could maximise their potential. Even for a personally ambitious person like myself, I’d consider that a success. 

* The work life balance blog to come in due course……