Paternity Leave

When low-income families have babies they rely on overabundance of hours working to have some kind of income. Since the mother can not work because she just gave birth the father has to step up and make the money. “48% of men working full time reported job demands interfered with family life sometimes or often” (United States Department of Labor, 2015). Because men have to step up and take the responsibility of earning some type of income, they will work hard and long hours, which interfere with family time. Work should not be the reason why fathers do not have a good bond with their child. If men were able to take the same amount of time off as woman and it was paid then they would be able to have quality family time which will lead to a father and child bond.

Since mothers are always seen as less committed to their job because they had a child fathers should take paternity leave so mothers could work. If a mother works and the father stays home the child will have a bond with him. “Finally, when father take more paternity leave, it may increase the ability

of mother to engage in paid work, with positive effect on female labor force participation and wages” (United States Department of Labor, 2015). Right now, fathers are the ones who work all the time if this is changed then the mother could work just as much as the father. This way they can both spend equal time with their child. This will also change the woman should be stay at home moms and men should be the breadwinner idea.
Around the household women are usually the ones doing the chores and taking care of the child.

With parental leave fathers will help around the house and help with the child during their time off and they will keep helping long after returning to work. “When men increase their use of paternity leave, time studies show that the amount of household work fathers and mother perform may become more gender balanced over time, with the men spending longer amounts of time per day on household chores and childcare” (United States Department of Labor, 2015). Paternity leave makes fathers help around the house and be more a part of the family. With fathers helping around the house they give mothers less things to worry about and they will be able to recover faster because they will have time to rest. Paid parental leave will let fathers help mothers with childcare and the father will build a strong bond with their

child.
Depression is one cause for mothers neglecting their child. Paid parental leave policies will give woman less of a chance to suffer from depression. “Women who were exposed to a more generous maternity leave policy were 18% less likely to suffer from depression 30 years later when they were 50 or older” ( Wallace, 2015). Parental leave helps mothers be happy by being with her child which will decrease her chance of getting diagnosed with postpartum depression. This is a plus for her child and husband too because then she will be able to be focus on her family so she can create a great bond with the child. Not suffering from depression will guarantee that the child’s mother will not neglect the child because paid parental leave will decrease the chance of the mother getting depression in the future.
Aside from the fact that paid parental leave will benefit parents and children, paid parental leave will benefit businesses too. Google increased its paid maternity leave and the results of this change were great. “When Google increased its paid maternity leave from 12 weeks to 18 weeks in 2007, its employee retention rate for mothers went up by 50%” (Spiggle, 2018). Since Google increased its paid parental leave workers decided to stay because if they wanted to start a family they would not lose their job and they would be paid while on leave. For Google’s employee retention rate to go up is a great thing for Google because they will not have to waste money looking for new employees. If employers were to follow in Google’s footsteps they would be happy with their results.