Why two weeks paternity leave will never be enough for today's dads

Billy Beech was at work when his phone buzzed. Opening the message, it was a video his wife had sent him of their baby daughter’s first-ever babble of words.

His heart sank. Another milestone missed because he was at work.

‘Something like that just makes you long to be at home to be in those moments, not just seeing them on the screen,’ recalls Billy.

While the issues of high childcare costs and inflexible working conditions have received wide coverage and action in recent years, it’s something that is still continues to be thought of as a ‘women’s issue’.

‘It’s very much framed as the mother’s problem,’ says Jeremy Davies, who runs the Fatherhood Institute think tank. ‘It would be helpful for people to be really careful when childcare issues are discussed and debated – and for it not to be talked about a women’s issue.

‘Mothers have been dealing with unsupportive workplaces for decades and maternity discrimination remains a major issue. The challenge now for employers is to move away from sexist assumptions that affects both fathers and mothers and start to level the playing field.’

For men who want to be hands-on fathers, there is little understanding in the workplace surrounding the reasons why dads, not just mums, need increased flexibility in the weeks after birth right through the earliest years of a child’s life.

Indeed, research from the campaigning group Pregnant Then Screwed found that 8 in 10 dads say their employer wasn’t not doing enough to support fathers in the workplace.

‘Children with highly involved fathers tend to benefit enormously from their input, but these benefits aren’t limited to children who live with their fathers full-time,’ Jeremy tells Metro.co.uk. ‘Children in separated families can also flourish, especially if mum and dad learn how to co-parent effectively across households.’

Before fans started rolling into the Premiere League Football stadium on game day, groundsman Billy Beech could be found making sure the pitch was perfect.

‘We’d often be working seven days a week,’ the 33-year-old says. ‘If we were preparing for a game, we’d be there at 6am and not leave until 9pm at night. They were very long days. It was a really demanding job.’

When Billy and his wife Sam had their first daughter Penny in February 2019, the couple decided that Sam would stay at home to avoid paying the high price of childcare.

‘I got the standard two weeks off of work when Penny was born, and then was back to work,’ he says. After that, the only days off he had with ‘his girls’ were when he’d work a 16-hour match day which was followed up with a day off in lieu.

He was contracted to work from Monday to Friday, and often worked weekends, only occasionally given a weekend off on the rota.

During his two weeks of paternity leave, Billy made every effort to bond with Penny, soaking up the time that was quickly running out. When his time was up, he went back to work, leaving his wife to figure out how to parent alone.

‘It felt like snapping back to the real world,’ he remembers. ‘It was a shock to the system to be apart suddenly. This amazing new chapter we started together was continuing on without me on weekdays.”

Billy remembers how his return to work impacted Sam, who was recovering from a C-section delivery and struggling with her mental health.

‘It was hard on her. I was away weeks on end,’ he recalls. ‘It’s difficult with postnatal depression and the exhaustion of being with that child.’

For the first two years of Penny’s life, Billy felt he missed out on so many key moments, often coming home after a week at work seeing his daughter looked different than at the start of the week.

As a father, he wanted to support his family financially, but felt it was coming at the expense of connection with them, he explains.

‘The way we’ve been raised is that we have to work and sacrifice to give our families what they deserve,’ says Billy. ‘But then we give all our time to someone else so we can earn enough to give them that life we think they deserve.’

At the start of 2021, he decided to leave his career and join his wife, who had recently started a childminding business out of their home.

‘Penny just became a person,’ Billy says of his daughter, who is now four. ‘In the early stages, they are babies. Then toddlers. Then all the sudden, they’re this little person. I would have missed that.’

Along with Billy, the childcare initiative tiney has seen a rise in the number of men training to be childminders out of their homes.

‘The pandemic and the new ways of working it ushered in has caused many parents to re-evaluate their careers and prompted them to seek out jobs that truly do fit around family life,’ explains Brett Wigdortz, founder of tiney. ‘It’s no surprise that many of them landed on childminding: it’s an opportunity to run your own business whilst spending time with your own children. Even more so than a regular home working role, childminding means that fathers are making a living by directly engaging with their little ones. They no longer have to worry about missing out.’

The first connections a father forms with his child are some of the most precious, however at present, 80% of fathers are only offered two weeks off for paternity leave in the UK. According to data from Pregnant Then Screwed, one in four dads don’t even manage to take the full two weeks, saying they couldn’t afford to take it, as Paternity Pay is set at just £172.48 per week.

‘The evidence suggests that what happens in the first year of life is really important for the rest of childhood,’ says Jeremy. ‘Year one is when patterns of behaviour becomes fixed and can be difficult to shift. It is why parental leave is so important. Men and women are set off on different courses from the start.

‘The father becomes this slightly marginal figure who isn’t as good at a lot of it as the mother because he isn’t there,’ he continues. ‘Whereas the mum is getting really good at knowing what the baby wants. She’s been thrown in the deep end and has worked out a whole load about how the baby ticks and how to meet its needs. Whether she wants to or not, she becomes the expert, the fount of all knowledge about the household.’

However, if dads had increased amounts of time off in those early weeks and months of childhood, the ongoing load of parenthood has potential to be carried with increased levels of equity.

‘When fathers and partners take paternity leave, it supports the mother’s return to the labour market,’ Joeli Brearley, CEO of Pregnant Then Screwed, tells Metro.co.uk. ‘But when it comes to paternity leave, fathers are being hugely let down in the workplace – just 18% of Brits think that the current paternity leave is long enough.’

Data from a YouGov survey supports Brearley’s claim. It found that 65% of mothers with children under the age of 12 thought that increasing paid paternity leave would have a positive impact on mothers’ readiness to return to work.

In a new groundbreaking report from Pregnant Then Screwed and the Centre for Progressive Policy, it was reported that a six week increase of paternity leave and pay could reduce the gender pay gap and help equalise men and women’s participation in the labour market.

Another solution would be for delayed paternity leave.

‘Our model of what a supportive employer and government could offer. Fathers would have their own chunk of leave paid at a good rate later on in year one, a minimum of a month,’ Davies adds. ‘It’s for him. It allows him the possibility of taking a good chunk of time off and developing his own relationship with the baby solo.’

It’s thought that not only would this proposal gives fathers time to make their own routines, but also embolden mothers with the confidence to head back to work.

It isn’t only the first year of life that fathers need support from the workplace though.

Recent research from Dr. Jasmine Kelland at the University of Plymouth shows that fathers more involved with their children’s lives face forfeits at work – they get fewer opportunities to progress, less support from management, and are more likely to be mistreated socially.

While many mums would argue this isn’t an issue exclusive to fathers, dads aretwice as likely to have their flexible working requests turned down than mothers.

‘There’s no doubt that fathers who become more involved in caregiving can experience challenges in the workplace,’ says Kyle Green of the charity Working Families. ‘A lot of this is down to culture. Creating a place where fathers are supported at work is vital to combatting gender inequality and the gender pay gap, ensuring better family outcomes, and—on the employer’s side—improving talent attraction and retention.’

For Dr Anas Nader, even before he had his own child, he knew his job as an A&E doctor wouldn’t be conducive to having children.

‘It’s a rigid career, very prescriptive – especially for trainee doctors,’ the 38-year-old tells Metro.co.uk. ‘It’s unpredictable and lacks a lot of stability you would want as a parent as to choosing when to work and where to work.’

When he was working, he recalls dads in the common rooms talking about how their kids were growing up and they wished they could see them more often.

‘The NHS has made progress in supporting mothers, but not so much with dads,’ adds Anas. ‘I think it’s primarily stemming from the traditional definition of parenting between mums and dads. Although I think the younger generation of employees who really do value being hands on dads, our institutions aren’t catching up fast enough.’

Daydreaming about the future of having his own children, Anas accepted he would have to sacrifice either parts of his career or his parenting.

‘I’d be missing critical, magical moments in those early years,’ he says. ‘I guess it’s part of the trade off you make in a career like that, but I think we need to move beyond that narrative, I think with better recruitment and retention, we can distribute workforce so people aren’t missing as many weeks and nights away from their kids.’

Reaching the point of burnout in 2017 when working up to 60 hours a week and seeing the issues around the lack of flexible working for employees within the NHS, Anas decided to start his own company – Patchwork Health – helping healthcare staff access flexible work.

‘The difference [in the job I’m doing now] is the level of flexibility and control I have compared to my role in the NHS,’ Anas says. ‘Without any power over how and when our hours are worked, it can be impossible for healthcare staff to fit work around other commitments and responsibilities, like being a parent.’

It was timely, because in 2021, his first daughter was born. In his new role, he could be involved with morning, evening, and weekend routines, and has the pleasure of helping other parents access the same flexibility.

‘I’ll never not be grateful for the time I was able to spend with our daughter,’ he says. ‘It also enabled me to support my wife in ways I may not have been able to otherwise.

‘Whether that was being there with our daughter in the morning so she could catch up on sleep after staying up to do the night feeds, or taking care of life admin while she focused on the baby. Being able to show up fully as a partner and support both her and our daughter during those early days was so important to me, and I’m grateful to have had the flexibility to do this.’

Since he’s become a father, many of his past NHS colleagues have been in touch in touch, telling Anas how they are struggling to fit parenthood around their workloads.

‘This shouldn’t be the case,’ he says. ‘Both fathers and mothers working within the NHS should be able to access a more flexible way of working that enables them to maintain the careers they have worked so hard for while being the parents they also want to be.

‘It has reinforced for me just how rigid the options around work and parenthood have traditionally been,’ he adds.

‘While we’ve moved away from the all-or-nothing attitude which has historically seen women expected to give up work completely in order to have children, many parents are still having to make significant career sacrifices.’

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