Paid Paternity Leave

Drennan 1

Nikita Drennan

English 1103

Weatherly

November 15, 2016

Should the United States Require Employers to Provide Paid Paternity Leave?

In the United States, new parents are not given any paid time off. When most new parents have a newborn, they must take off work. In which, when they do take off from their job they are making a no income. This can lead to unemployment for mothers and fathers. New parents will need to bond, raise, and discipline their children for the first year or two of his/her life. Most people will have a caregiving responsibility in their life but, most of those caregivers will be the parents of the child. The United States need to implement paid leave and the medical leave program because, it will grant many

But, what about the father that is in the picture? The father of the family would also like to have free time to dedicate to their newborn child. In the United States, fathers can take such a leave, but they will be deprived of being paid their wages during this period of time. This seems to be rather unfair to the father of the child, since mothers can take leave but, fathers have to lose vacation time that they have saved up. If the United States implemented the act of paternity leave for the fathers of the children then, men would be able to take the leave when they are needed to without having to worry about losing their job or the current salary pay that they are

Men have more time and opportunities to focus on their wives and children without any thoughts about work in the background, and which paternity leave is one of the factors that help to develop and maintain long-lasting family relationships. The study that was taken in Australia, Great Britain, United States and Denmark, fathers that take a paternity leave for a long period of time (about one year) after a child is born to tend to engage into more child-caring activities and tasks. Their children will display better cognitive development skills and will be more involved with school-related activities. (Miletic). Daniella Miletic states in her article that Jennifer Baxter says that, "Father's leave is linked to more involvement in childcare activities such as helping a baby to eat, changing nappies, getting up in the night, bathing and reading to a child, compared to fathers who took no leave. There was some evidence of children having better cognitive outcomes when fathers were more involved early on in their lives."

Paid paternity leave also contribute's to economies as well. First, it helps women return to their workplaces at a quicker rate; secondly, paternity leave strengthens family relationships as stated in my first paragraph. This is also great for companies, because when you have happy