‘I never thought of you as someone who does DIY,’ was my Dad’s reaction to the news that I’d managed to fix our washing machine. Inspired by the YouTube videos of eSpares.co.uk, I successfully replaced the carbon brushes in our Bosch washer; I keep the worn-out coils in a souvenir box like baby’s first kiss-curls. My Dad was right, I’d never imagined myself that I would be able to repair any kind of domestic appliance, but unable to get a professional round during the Covid crisis, it was time to roll up my sleeves and have a crack at it.

My sleeves were already rolled up from a few weeks of handwashing laundry in our bathtub; at one point I even considered investing in a mangle to squeeze more water out of the dripping wet clothes and towels. Covid lockdown was becoming a stark reality-check on the basics of living together as a family. From laundry and cleaning, constant cooking and washing up, to face-masked grocery shopping, all while trying to keep the kids on track with school, and the ball rolling with work. And I am one of the lucky ones, with a job that I can do from home … on the eye-tiring screen of my laptop, and with a WiFi connection that regularly crashes.

Instability has been a theme for me during Covid, not just for the internet, but psychologically in terms of mental strain, and physically for the health and safety of my family. Before the start of lockdown I was terrified that one of my children was going to catch the virus, and I lay awake at 3am thinking through how I could nurse him, while avoiding contaminating the whole family. The next day, once the children were finally off school, I fed them oranges in the hope of boosting their immune systems, to stand more of a chance of fighting Corona if they got it. As a loving father, I have always tried to shield my children from danger.

Setting boundaries is an important part of parenting, and kids can feel more secure when they have a boundary to kick against. During Covid I also set boundaries for myself, on when I am going to be online with work, when I am present with the family, and frankly when I need time to disconnect on my own. When everyone is on top of each other and going stir crazy, it’s inevitable that tensions will flare up, so communication has been vital, trying to recognise and express our needs to each other. If I have video calls for work, I chalk the times on the IKEA blackboard in our kitchen, alongside our “Family Member of the Day” award (we vote on a winner, and they get a song from Alexa and choose what we watch on Netflix).

A major part of my mental perseveration during Covid, beyond social media distancing, has been walking in our local Luxembourg forests. Taking time each morning to get outdoors, in amazing weather, has been an effective way to clear my head and keep things in balance. It is definitely something that I will try to keep as we emerge into a new normal. There are many things about flexible working and engaging with my family that I’d like to continue, although working from home is certainly going to be less stressful once the kids are back at school. I have mixed feelings about going back to the office, top of mind is booking a holiday! For this Father’s Day, I will be content with the simple pleasure of an empty laundry basket.

By Brian Ballantyne

Author of Confessions of a Working Father

When I was growing up in a market town in Somerset, dads went to work and provided, and mums looked after the house and made sure everyone was fed.  We didn’t know any gangsters, so my dad was the first person I knew who had a Carphone (back when The Carphone Warehouse seemed like the obvious name for a business).

He was a surveyor, out on the road in Somerset – calling in his reports over the phone to be typed up in the office. But despite the technology there never seemed any danger of being ‘always on’, technology was an enabler.

In fact, my dad even had flexible working – he scheduled his own diary of house surveyor visits and frequently made his schedule fit the away sports matches my brother and I were involved in on Wednesdays.

30 years on I can look back and appreciate that he had the type of hands on involved parenting opportunity that many men today are striving to achieve.

Flexible working and Paternity Leave initiatives are bound up together. They both represent potential opportunities to support the desire of a new generation of men to have greater involvement in raising their children and by doing so to move towards equality of opportunity in the home and the workplace for both genders.

There’s a long way to go to normalise equality of choice when it comes to parenting but on International Men’s Day it’s good to reflect on some of the key milestones towards parenting equality.

Key Milestones

• 1999 Set up of the Fatherhood Institute – “a great dad for every child”
• 2003 Statutory Paternity Leave

In 2001, Gordon Brown included men’s right to paternity leave in his Budget and, from 2003, male employees received paid statutory paternity leave for the first time.

• 2011 Additional Paternity Leave

Fathers were given the right to take six months statutory paternity leave while their partners returned to work, in effect taking the place of the mother at home.

• 2014 Flexible Working Rights

The right to request flexible working was extended to all UK employees with at least 26 weeks’ service with the same employer on 30 June 2014.

• 2015 Shared Parental Leave

Shared Parental Leave allows you to share up to 50 weeks’ parental leave and 37 weeks’ pay with your partner. Each parent can take up to three blocks of leave, more if their employer allows, interspersed with periods of work.

• 2017 Aviva set the bar high for parental leave

From November 2017 Aviva became the first UK firm to offer up to one year of leave, of which 26 weeks’ is at full basic pay for each parent employed by the company within the first 12 months of a child’s arrival.

• 2018 NZ Prime Minister takes Maternity Leave

Jacinda Arden took 6 weeks of maternity leave while in office and then her partner, a TV presenter, became a stay-at-home dad to baby Neve, a great example of showing that no job is too big for spending time with your children.

• 2019 Standard Life Aberdeen raised the parental leave bar still higher

When they became the first to offer 9 months full pay parental leave.

More to be done

I was amazed to discover that paid paternity leave has only been around since 2003 in the UK and even 15 years on, when a child is born the dad (or the other parent or partner) gets just two weeks statutory paternity leave paid at £148.68 per week, less than half of minimum wage. 

Shared parental leave uptake is very low:

Analysis by the University of Birmingham found only 9,200 new parents (just over 1% of those entitled) took shared parental leave in 2017-18. That increased to 10,700 in the financial year 2018-19.

Just as additional leave suffered too

“Just 1.4% of new fathers taking it in 2012-13. In 2011-12, the first year the scheme was in operation, just 0.8% of eligible dads took advantage of it.”

What can be done

Two things need to be addressed

1. Financial constraints – Fathers are much more likely to already be earning more than their partners and therefore find it harder to take leave at statutory rates
2. Cultural constraints – the question of where society, employers and men perceive they belong. Too often we casually default to assume men to be the main breadwinners and women as the primary carers.

The Labour party pledge in 2015 to double the length and pay of statutory paternity leave had potential to be a big step in the right direction https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31253409. but has sadly disappeared to be replaced by increased maternity leave – to find out why that is problematic you’ll need to read this https://www.daddilife.com/labour-maternity-and-men/

Moves around the fringes of government are important indications as to which way the wind is blowing – even if parliamentary time seems taken up with other activity…

October 2018

In October 2018 the government announced that it planned to consult on a bill that would require large employers to publish their parental leave package. Read more here

July 2019

Helen Whately, Conservative MP for Faversham and Mid Kent a introduced the flexible working bill, to make all jobs flexible by default unless the employer has a sound business reason why particular hours in a particular place are required. Read more here about what this #FlexforAll bill is all about.

Some good moves but in the UK we remain a way away from the gold standard of well paid, protected parental leave for fathers.

Why does parental leave matter?

Men Gain Empathy & Awareness of Bias

“Would my job be safe? What would it mean for my career? How would it impact my team?” Then, he adds: “It hit me like a freight train. These are worries that women in the workplace have been facing for generations”.

Source: FT – Time off for new fathers raises bias awareness

Not only that, but dads accessing parental leave has significant and long-lasting benefits towards equality in the household.

In households where men were given the opportunity to use this benefit, fathers’ daily time in household work was 23 percent higher, long after the leave period ended. 

Source: Council on Contemporary Families

Well paid protected leave is a key part of breaking cultural assumptions which perceive childcare as a woman’s job, it supports equality of choice in families and is good for mental health, relationships and women’s income prospects.

On International Men’s Day we should be setting the bar much higher than 2 weeks of below minimum wage leave. It does nothing for families, for fathers or for mothers.

This is what society and business needs:

1. Day one flexible working as a default position for all.
2. Equalise parental leave provisions for new parents.
3. Provide men with paternity coaching before and after their paternity leave.
4. Identify and support senior fatherhood role models.
5. Create, support and persevere with fatherhood community initiatives in the workplace.

guest post by Ian Dinwiddy founder of Inspiring Dads

Having just had Father’s Day, it’s worth reflecting on what dads really want. We know a lie in would be good, socks even better and maybe a novelty selection of real ales. But in terms of the workplace, dads just want to have options. Options about how to organise their working lives, without being told that they can’t raise their children or that being a committed dad means you can’t be committed to work.

A New Generation of Dads

A whole new generation of men want to be much more actively involved in raising their children. They expect equality in the workplace and at home and they are frustrated when their needs and the needs of their families can’t be met.

In short they want to be great dads and have great careers.

GQ magazine found that the number 1 aspect of modern masculinity, identified by 66% of Men was “being a present father”.

 Source: GQ Magazine

But it can be tough when this desire to be an active present father is dismissed or not taken seriously…

Dads are changing jobs to get what they want.

 

Daddilife and Deliotte Report – THE MILLENNIAL DAD AT WORK

The Millennial Dad at Work

Not all men or families are the same.

Income and childcare priorities change and for many heterosexual couples the certainty of a man being fully committed to his career, while a female partner takes on the majority of the childcare can give great comfort and certainty.

However we do an enormous disservice to society, the workplace and individuals when we assume that men don’t want to be fully involved as parents. That attitude is no more valid or helpful than assuming that women only want to stay at home and look after children.

Choices!

We need to allow couples to make genuine choices – both for their own benefit and for benefits of building gender diverse workplaces.

When we cannot tell whether a man or a woman is more likely to take parental leave or seek flexible working, gender ceases to be an issue in hiring and promotion decisions.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

As a man access to flexible work can be difficult to achieve. It can be seen as a perk of seniority or as something that solves a female childcare ‘issue’.

72% feared their employer’s reaction if they asked for flexible working.

Source: Workingdads.co.uk

But when it works well the benefits to the man, the family and their partner are clear to see as the ‘Good’ storyof Susha and Magnus and will show. The example of the ‘Bad’ show how a lack of flexibility for Dads will cost businesses their talent and the motivation and good will of their staff. Finally the ‘Ugly’ shines a light on the type of casual dismissive bias that one man faced trying to access part time work. It shows how attitudes towards men’s flexible and part time working desires can directly and negatively effect women’s aspirations.

Things will change but this Father’s Day we need to think about the next generation of Father’s Day.

“The current crop of male, mid-fifties business leaders are completely out of touch in respect to the changes to the role of the father that have taken place in the two decades since they were young dads.”

Source: Evening Standard Colo

The Good

Susha Chandrasekhar is a Senior Lawyer at the Department for Business.

Her husband is Dr Magnus Ryner, Professor of International Political Economy and Head of the Department of European & International Studies at Kings College, London

Their son is called Axel.

Susha kindly shared their story…

“I am a lawyer working part-time which is demanding since my responsibilities include EU issues. Fortunately, my husband’s (more than) full-time work can be carried out flexibly. He comes into and leaves the office at different times, works from home, and catches up on things in the evenings on the days he does the school pick-up. My husband is an academic which helps but professors have to teach, attend meetings, supervise students, undertake research etc. which require a physical presence in the office or a library. It’s still a juggling act.”

Here are the top 7 ways in which my husband’s flexible pattern improves my life.

1. Morning mayhem

My husband does the morning shift and the school run. That pressure is off me as soon as I wake up which is always a good start. I do the evening routine of bath-book-bed.

2. School pick-up

My husband does two school pick-ups a week so there are least two days on which:

·         I do not have to rush home and can deal with last minute work emergencies;

·         My husband helps our son with his reading and maths homework; and

·         There is dinner on the table for me when I come through the front door.

The other 3 weekdays on which I do the pick-ups, my husband gets these benefits in return.

3. Dealing with illness

It is not the default position that I drop everything and deal with a sick child. We see whose schedule is the more flexible. Sometimes it’s his.

4. Caring for Grandparents

There comes a time when our own parents need care. I value the chance to do this.

5. Finances

As we do the childcare ourselves, we do not need to employ a nanny which is expensive.

6. Reliability

If my husband says he will do something, he has the flexibility to do it. I feel assured it will be done without having to check up on it.

7. Frazzle factor

I can deal with the organisation of raising a child e.g. costumes, presents, dental appointments without too much stress. I also enjoy time with my family and friends instead of fretting non-stop about everything that needs to be done.

“No system is perfect and ours breaks down once in a while when the adventures of life are thrown at it. But one thing makes us truly happy. When our son cries out when he has a nightmare or has fallen over, he doesn’t just call for “Mummy, Mummy”, he calls for “Mummy-Daddy, Mummy-Daddy.” To him, we’re equally present, equally important. To us, his opinion is the most important one.”

The Bad – Losing Talented Staff

James wanted flexible working after the birth of his baby

He worked long hours for a private jet firm, but wanted more flexibility after his baby was born. While the official office hours were 9am to 6pm, in reality everyone was in the office until 8.30pm.

“If you didn’t do that it was frowned upon. I was struggling,” he says. He had been at the firm for four years and was one of its top sellers, so he asked for flexible working and expecting a positive response.

“I tried to talk to them several times, but it was always a blanket ‘no’ because they said others would want to do it too.”

In the end, he quit, and now the 28-year-old works for his father’s firm Bloomsbury Estates where he says he’s happy to work at home on weekends to catch up from when he leaves early in the week.

Source: BBC website

The Ugly – Trying to Get Part Time Work

‘Phil’ tried to get part time work in SW England so that he could support his partner’s work expansion plans by taking on more of the childcare responsibilities, including looking after a boy on the autism spectrum.

He struggled badly in the recruitment process and ended up having to take a full-time role.

Overqualified and bored?

Farcical the amount of times I have heard “overqualified” or “you would be bored” or “your skills wouldnt be used” in spite of yelling into peoples faces that I only wanted part time and 2 days a week would not be boring.

Could it be because you are a man?

It definitely is. One of the interviews I had I actually was told that I would probably be embarrassed being shown the systems by a 20 year old girl. “Considering my experience.”Ironically, i would say the most dismissive were female HR professionals, which makes it even more of a joke.ICasual sexism?

I think more unconscious bias as the notion that a white middle aged straight male with no disability under the Equality Act could feel discriminated against is laughable. I flip it round as well…  are we saying that part time ‘easy’ office work is the only thing young women or mums can do?

Unconscious Bias

As a footnote, the role I secured is the 1st full time role I applied for. But that was secured through a friend in recruitment who could see off the bias before it was made…

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What do we need to do

Let’s forget the socks and real ale gift sets this year…

✅ Encourage and support dads to talk about the pressures they face.

✅ Normalise flexible and part time work for men.

✅ Senior men to lead by example – embracing flexible working opportunities – making it ok for men in the workplace to spend time with their kids.

✅ Change the working culture so that raising happy, successful children isn’t just a female thing.

Dads will be happier and more fulfilled and the opportunities for families to choose how best to arrange their working lives will increase.

Guest post by Ian Dinwiddy of Inspiring Dads