In Australia, anyone who’s spent at least a year with their employer is entitled to take 12 months of unpaid parental leave. That’s 12 months per parent. And yet caring for young children looks like a woman’s game. In the playgrounds, the playgroups, the cafes and libraries all I see is women. Only 1 in 20 Australian fathers take leave to be the primary carer. 85% of fathers and partners take less than four weeks leave total. (Australian Institute for Family Studies primer here)
Introducing one remedy: The Switcheroo.
When the birth parent goes back to work, the other steps out to do full time child care for a few months.
Let me start by addressing the elephant in the room: $$$
The common refrain is “who’s going to pay for it?”. The means-tested government paid parental leave scheme is 18 weeks at minimum wage. Employer-funded schemes vary, from nothing to a generous 20 weeks. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s sets a minimum of 8 weeks for employers reaching for Employer of Choice status. So unless the baby is going into full time care after the first few months, someone is taking unpaid leave. For some reason we’re comfortable with women doing this, but not men. Regardless of who earns the most, whichever spouse takes 3-6 months of unpaid leave, the impact on the lifetime household income* is almost identical. (*By having a child you’ve permanently integrated your life. Integrate your finances. Dedicated post to come.)
The impact on equal parenting – well I’m glad you asked:
- Facilitating the return to work.
Entire books have been written on the exquisite difficulty of returning to work, juggling change across all domains: baby, body, brain chemistry, career, care arrangements, life admin. The best possible time to return to work is when you have a stay-at-home spouse. - Smoothing the transition to child care
Having a career means handing over the baby at some point, usually to a child care centre or nanny. Babies and mums (thanks to related hormones) are biologically programmed to have a strong emotional reaction to this. Managing this transition should be men’s work. - Holding the full mental load
This means handing over responsibility for the mental and administrative burden of having a family – ALL the to-do lists and long term projects, be they managing medical issues, tracking developmental milestones, baby-proofing the house or moving into size 0 onesies. The Switcheroo ensures both parents learn and appreciate the weight and breadth of the mental load. - Enshrining the interchangeability
As a full time parent, you have to know how to do everything, from giving paracetamol to cleaning the sippy cup straw to how many bananas will result in constipation. The Switcheroo is an opportunity to demonstrate to everyone – the kid, your doctor, your extended family and each other – that as parents, you are truly interchangeable. Mum is not the answer. - Normalising parental leave
It’s important to call it what it is – child care. Not a holiday, and definitely not dad’s “summer of fun”. When parental leave becomes something that people take – regardless of the shape of their genitals – we erode the perception that working women are a liability and working men have reliability. We also normalise men – gasp – actually spending time with their children.
Which brings us to the bigger picture
So we’ve established: Long term impact on family finances: negligible. Short term impact on equal parenting: huge. Long term impact on equal parenting: let’s find out. Long term impact on gender equality: brace for my bold claim.
OECD countries are increasingly reserving part of their government-funded parental leave for fathers. Some have ‘bonus periods’, where if the father takes leave, the family receives bonus paid weeks to share. I’m not going to quote stats at you because “don’t look at Scando/Nordic policies in isolation” is social policy 101 (culture, context and taxation rate matters. A lot.) But it’s promising.
Bold claim: mainstreaming The Switcheroo would have a measurable impact on gender equality across society. But we can’t tie this to debates about paid parental leave. Firstly, it may not happen. Secondly, the Switcheroo meets the cost-benefit analysis, regardless who foots the bill.
Having a baby is one of life’s great experiences, like skydiving or taking ayahuasca. It’s also what you signed up for. Take some time off and take it seriously.
Further reading: “Where are all the dads?” – an article by Ari Sharp