Full time dad
I have been a parent for a little over a year, but it is only recently that I have felt what it’s like to be a mother. Before you attack me for being sexist, hear me out. My better half has gone back to work full time, which means I have been doing the bulk of the invisible and unlimited household work most commonly picked up by mums. My day is made up of mundane tasks like: scooping up toys that spawn invisibly from underneath every item of furniture; making small talk at the playground; trying to find childcare for when my partner and I both go back to work; feigning interest in other parents’ children; preparing baby food, and scrubbing it off the floor on all fours. I have been tempted, but have yet to reach for the shelter of mothers little helper, or even a mothers ruin with a dash of tonic and lime. But let’s see.
Mental load
The term “mental load” neatly encapsulates a life defined by constantly hitting refresh on your mental to-do list and juggling a series of often unrewarding tasks. There is little to no recognition or reward for this work, especially when compared to the sense of achievement that is so often linked to our careers. Every mother, and perhaps some dads, are nodding whilst reading this. So why am I telling you something that you already know? Because most men, in most countries have no idea. That’s because they have never cared for their child 11 hours a day for an extended period of time. This certainly includes a proportion of dads for whom the status quo is a convenient way to avoid the less glamorous elements of parenting. A common refrain goes “there isn’t much I can do in the first years of life anyway”.
But even for a new generation of dads who want to be more involved in bringing up their children there are still a number of structural and social barriers that stand in the way.
Firstly, pay inequality between the sexes often means it makes more sense for the dad to go back to work full time before the mother. The wage gap between the median earnings of full-time working women and men stands at 13% across OECD countries. But the median disguises bigger inequalities in countries like South Korea, Israel, Great Britain and Germany where the pay gap is closer to 20%. Until we crack this problem, the realities of pay inequality and household budgets will reinforce social norms around who should be the primary caregiver and who should be the breadwinner. Once the exorbitant (and rising) costs of childcare are added in it leaves many families with little choice, even if they aspire to a fairer distribution of duties.
Secondly, social norms are stubborn and hard to shift. Mums continue to be configured as caregivers, and dad’s as breadwinners, even in households where women earn more than their partner. As the Atlantic declares “Even Breadwinning Wives Don’t Get Equality at Home”. I speak from experience when I say that the easiest fix would be to support more dad’s to walk in the shoes of their spouses and feel the sometimes overwhelming effects of the mental load. Many men would gain a a newfound respect for the invisible life of many mums.
The thing is, most countries worldwide continue to limit the role fathers are able to play by offering less than two weeks paid paternity leave. Only very few provide anything near parity with the mother. I have friends, relatives and colleagues raising kids in different corners of the globe — the UK, Chile, France, Canada, USA, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Australia — and have been surprised by how different our experiences of fatherhood have been. Much of this difference can be accounted for by how much support the governments of these respective countries provide to mums and dads. Sure, there are a few employers — mostly Big Tech and Professional Services firms with a smattering of well capitalised start ups— that are plugging this gap as an employee benefit, but the majority of parents are neither Google engineers, nor Bain consultants. Most are simply unable to afford extended periods of unpaid parental leave.
I was equally surprised by how difficult it is to find reliable, open source data on paternity leave entitlements between countries. So I decided to use my daughter’s nap times to compile an index of different countries ranked in descending order from “most generous” to “least generous”. (If nothing else it helped keep me off the gin and valium):
The luck of where you are born
This research threw up a few surprises. Croatia and Spain, although being comparatively poorer OECD countries, do more to support dads compared to wealthier countries like Austria. Similarly, a rich country like the UK provides less governmental support for dads to participate in the early years of their child’s life than Burkina Faso, one of poorest on the planet.
With this data at hand I now feel even more fortunate that our daughter was born in Germany, not London. The difference is stark. I have been able to take a total of 5 months paid parental leave during her first 14 months of life. This has yielded a number of benefits for our family: my partner has been able to go back to work full time earlier, something that has boosted her well-being and self esteem; I have developed an amazing bond with my daughter; and although far from perfect, I feel we are balancing the mental load that comes with having a child more equally.
My daughter was unavailable for comment when asked if she thought I had become a better dad as a result of parental leave, but I do know that my better half thinks I have become a more conscientious, empathetic partner. (Albeit from a low base, but progress is progress).
Does having a child make you happier?
I expected having a cute little baby at home would make us happier. And it has, most of the time. A few weeks of bad sleep are quickly forgotten, and once you figure out a routine things get easier. I still miss that I have little to no “me” time, but I am working on it. What is very interesting, and perhaps no coincidence, is that parents in countries with more generous child benefit policies — such as paid time off and childcare subsidies — are significantly happier than non-parents.
The reverse is true in countries with limited parental leave allowances. I can’t speak for those with a coterie of nannies and lifestyle support staff, but in this instance the artist formerly known as Puff Daddy, who I presume is also a dad, has it wrong. Mo Money = Fewer Childcare Problems.
The reasons underlying the correlation between child benefit policies and parental happiness are taboo. So better to whisper them. Childcare is often dull, repetitive and exhausting. There, I said it, report me to mumsnet. Which is why finding reliable, accessible and affordable childcare continues to be the number one challenge facing working families. Yet, we pay child care professionals a pittance whilst labour market economists continue to categorise these jobs as “low skilled”.
Undervalued
I have spent a lot of hours in playgrounds and crèches over the summer, and have ended up meeting many childcare professionals. All say the same thing: their profession carries no social cachet, is poorly paid and really hard work. The skills and virtues they display everyday — patience, empathy, generosity, creativity, problem solving and a good sense of humour — don’t equate to good pay or a clear career track. Remuneration in the care sector is simply not reflective of social utility. It should not be treated as glorified babysitting but a key pillar of our early years education system. Undersupply and high levels of staff turnover means many families try to get by via a patchwork of childcare solutions that are financially and emotionally unsustainable. As the Washington Post points out, the ramifications are huge, and largely misunderstood:
“The common denominator behind [current labour shortages] is a lack of public investment causing huge scarcity in the child-care sector. That scarcity, in turn, is keeping parents — especially mothers — from full participation in the labor force, exacerbating labor shortages”
Alas, the labour market squeeze we are witnessing is not the product of millennials “quietly quitting” to become life coaches, but mums leaving the workforce to fill a gap in childcare provision.
More productive parents
We know that our economies benefit from happy, productive and supported parents, yet most countries are underinvesting in areas that would enable this outcome. OECD countries spend on average just over 0.7% of GDP on early childhood education and care. Only France (at 1.0%) and the Nordic countries (at 1.5%+) are spending anywhere near the levels required to properly support working parents.
So where does this leave us as a species? Well, we can continue as we are, with women shouldering most of the load, but the data suggests that in developing countries this could act as a brake on birth rates. In countries where fathers fulfil more of their childcare obligations their partners are more likely to agree on having more than one child.
This is an important trend because populations worldwide are ageing and we will soon reach an inflection point where we fall below the replacement rate, which means fewer working adults supporting a growing number of older people requiring more care. In other words, a demographic time bomb.
Falling fertility rates
Although relevant to this discussion, we don’t have time to get into Malthusian questions of overpopulation, or the ethics of bringing a child into a burning, flooding world.
But let me leave you with this thought. It would be a good thing if there were fewer dads like Boris Johnson (a compulsively lying seed spreading omnishagger) or Elon Musk (let’s just call him an absent father). Instead, if more countries and employers supported dads to be more involved in the early years of their child’s upbringing, we might have a shot at accelerating gender equality and catalysing a more caring expression of masculinity.
Masculinity 2.0 if you will. Virility without the toxicity. Fatherhood without the absence. Strength enveloped in tenderness.
This doesn’t mean every bloke needs to start baking, but it should mean turning up for your spouse and kid(s) in a way many men don’t. It should also engender directing traditionally masculine traits like strength, bravery and stoicism to towards the challenges of holding the fort at home. Something that is far tougher, and more noble, than it looks.
