Like maternity leave, it isn’t federally mandated in the U.S.
Here’s why advocates say fathers should be entitled to paid parental leave too ...
Here’s why advocates say fathers should be entitled to paid parental leave too ...
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00:00Pete Buttigieg has been on leave from his job since August after adopting a child, paternity
00:05leave, they call it, trying to figure out how to breastfeed, no word on how that went.
00:08I'm not going to apologize to Tucker Carlson or anyone else for taking care of my premature
00:17newborn infant twins.
00:30I know that there are some that will say, well, you know, what is a father going to
00:37do during that first couple of weeks the child is born?
00:41That's a really important part of a child's life.
00:45And it's a really important part of the development of being a father, in part because we know
00:51moms tend to start to develop a maternal attitude during pregnancy, right?
00:58That is why that those early days and early weeks are really, really critical for fathers
01:05to develop an attitude of caregiving and to really develop those routines that help them
01:11develop a strong attitude and positive attitude about being a father.
01:26We have no guaranteed paid maternity leave.
01:28We have no guaranteed paid paternity leave.
01:32It's the only rich nation in the world that does not guarantee some sort of paid paternity
01:37leave.
01:41I think what you're getting at here is this question about whether men, parents, women
01:59should have paternity and maternity leave.
02:02And the answer is absolutely yes.
02:04In our view, that is the policy of this administration.
02:07Today, the vast, vast, vast majority of fathers want to be involved.
02:12They want to be engaged in the lives of their kids.
02:13They want to provide care for their kids.
02:17And the fact of the matter is, is that there are many, many barriers set in place that
02:22prevent fathers from really being as highly involved and engaged as they want to be.
02:27And paternity leave is a way that sort of upends many of those barriers.
02:35Early on, we know that paternity leave is associated with improved family functioning.
02:40We know it's associated with improved relationship quality.
02:44We know that it's associated with improved maternal health, particularly in the period
02:50directly after the child is born.
02:54We know that it's associated with an increased likelihood that fathers will be involved in
02:58the lives of their children.
03:15The connection with the child, I think, is much better than probably a lot of other countries
03:20that don't have as much paternity leave, because I get to spend so much time with him alone.
03:25I get to feed him, take care of him, change diapers, everything.
03:29We also get to be a father figure, for real, not just somebody who's off working and come
03:36home to punish a lazy child or something.
03:38I need to go back to work.
03:40I don't want to lose my career and I want to continue working.
03:44Of course, often I think employers expect that you are gone not more than a year, because
03:53the remaining period, it's a father's time.
03:56Scandinavian countries are particularly good at getting fathers to take paternity leave.
04:01In Canada, Quebec has about 80% uptake among fathers on paternity leave.
04:07So they've also been particularly good at getting this.
04:11And in fact, Quebec has been so good at it that they've gotten the rest of Canada to
04:16implement the same policy around paid paternity leave.
04:22Five to six weeks on the set-aside, I think, is usually sort of a standard that we've seen
04:27across European, North American, and other countries, other high-income countries throughout
04:33the world.
04:35So I think that that's really where the target is on the set-aside.
04:53In our latest budget proposal, a paid family leave policy has been included.
05:00I know that there's a lot of debate about that policy, particularly in the U.S. Senate,
05:09regarding the inclusion of that policy in the larger bill.
05:14But I do think that there's growing momentum among the electorate for this policy.
05:21The question is, do politicians, do elected officials, do they have the will to pass this legislation?