To the Point - Caring key to equality
Nick Pearce, director, Institute for Public Policy Research
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
I found myself pleasantly surprised to read that Children and Families minister Tim Loughton had recently challenged public sector workers to avoid 'passive discrimination' against fathers.
I can vividly remember being turned out of the maternity ward on my son's first night when visiting time ended at the hospital, and ignored a few days later when the health visitor arrived to check up on mother and baby.
Yet if the Government really wants public servants to embrace fathers, it will have to address one of the fundamental causes of fathers' lack of engagement in their children's lives: the gross inequity in parental leave entitlements.
Fathers are entitled to only two weeks statutory paternity leave, paid at Income Support levels (£123 per week). In contrast, mothers are entitled to one year's maternity leave, with at least the first six weeks paid at 90% of earnings. This inequality locks mums and dads into traditional carer and breadwinner roles in the critical first year of a baby's life, setting the standard from which public services too often take their cue.
Fathers scrabble about adding holidays and unpaid leave to their paternity allowance, but it is usually too little, too late. Without a decent period of leave, paid at a rate near to their wages, fathers have no incentive to take time out of their jobs to look after their newborns. Allowing the mother to transfer six months of this leave to the father won't really change much: for most families, the gender pay gap means their household income would take too much of a hit if she did.
And so mothers become the first port of call for public services and fathers stay too distant from their children's everyday experience. Although men want to spend more time with their children, a combination of limited parental leave, inflexible employment and wider cultural norms confound their aspirations. Little wonder that Mr Loughton is left to bemoan how children's centres are too 'mum-centric'.
If we want women to achieve equality in the workplace, fathers will have to take on more caring responsibilities for the children. That means fathers must have more rights to properly paid paternity leave, enabling them to be equal partners in parenting, not just breadwinners.
