On average, organizations gave mothers 41 paid days of maternity leave, compared with 22 paid days of paternity leave for fathers. That statistic comes from 2016 Paid Leave in the Workplace, a survey recently conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management.
Does this disparity demonstrate discrimination against men?
Not necessarily.
If the maternity leave includes both time spent to bond with a newborn child and time for mom to recover from childbirth, then the comparison between maternity leave and paternity leave is not apples to apples.
Consider this guidance from the EEOC:
Leave related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions can be limited to women affected by those conditions. However, parental leave must be provided to similarly situated men and women on the same terms. If, for example, an employer extends leave to new mothers beyond the period of recuperation from childbirth (e.g. to provide the mothers time to bond with and/or care for the baby), it cannot lawfully fail to provide an equivalent amount of leave to new fathers for the same purpose.
Sounds likes a two-edged sword: one blade cuts women by reinforcing the stereotypical expectation of mom staying home to care for baby; the other blade cuts men by shortchanging them on bonding time with a newborn.
A U.S. Department of Labor Policy Brief offers these best practices:
When the work culture is supportive, fathers are more likely to take leave and to take longer leaves. Some employers are leading on paternity leave, including major tech firms that typically offer between 6 and 17 weeks of paid paternity leave. Paid paternity leave may be a key workplace benefit for retaining high-skilled workers. In a 2014 study of highly educated professional fathers in the U.S., nine of out ten reported that it would be important when looking for a new job that the employer offered paid parental leave, and six out of ten considered it very or extremely important. These numbers were even higher for millennial workers.
