Compulsory reading: Men At Work: Australia's Parenthood Trap, Annabel Crabb
Preface: I started writing this piece before the Australian government’s budget was released (6 Oct). It was fascinating to listen to Treasurer Frydenberg present and unpack the budget; mentioning the “need” for female employment to lift, but nothing about childcare investment, systemic issues or reforms to parental leave.
I started a new job three days after my daughter was born in August 2017.
Claire and I decided five months into the pregnancy that my editorial job at a magazine company wasn't going to work with having our first child. For those who don't know much about print media: workloads are suffocating due to ever-shrinking editorial teams. For someone like myself who has battled depression, anxiety and terrible sleeping issues, we tried to get in front of potential problems by deciding that a change was needed.
What we didn't realise was how difficult it would be to find another job.
Something else that concerned us was the work atmosphere at the magazine. My two senior editors were workaholics, divorced, and rarely saw family during daylight hours (weekends included). After hearing that I was expected to work media at a week-long event five days out from the expectant date, I decided asking for leave would equate to "poor form". I don't mean to judge; instead, I want to portray the work atmosphere and perceived attitudes towards family leave.
When I started the new job a few days after our Lily was born — at the same company my wife had taken maternity leave, no one bat an eyelid in my direction. I hadn't slept more than a few ticks since driving my wife and newborn home from the midwifery group clinic at 2:30 in the morning. Still, no one in the office asked any of the expected questions. I noticed a number of older men pass my cubicle, fellas who Claire recounted stories about over the years, but no one stopped and asked — not even after how Claire was doing.
Given how 2020 has played out, I’ve found myself oddly thankful to have experienced what I did in 2017 and 2018. Those arduous days, weeks and months paved the path to today: understanding that I can lose my job but maintain my wellbeing and mental health. It also means that I can share insights, offer support and raise awareness for those who are understandably struggling through 2020.
Having gone through what I did has also resulted in wanting to raise topics that need contemplation when it comes to mental health and wellbeing. ⤵
In this essay, I want to do something that isn’t done enough: look squarely at men and how they work, and how their working lives change - or rather, don’t change - when they become fathers. Too often, gender equity in workplaces is just a debate about what happens to women. How many of them get promoted, what the barriers are, and so on. But what about the expectations that the workplace imposes on fathers? What are the invisible rules that prevent men from seeking flexible work and parental leave the way women do? This is a worthwhile question just for men’s sake, and for the sake of their children. But it’s also worth asking for women’s sake. - Annabel Crabb
Two Takeaways from Men At Work: Australia’s Parenthood Trap
1. Equity involves men
What I needed to consider in reading Crabb’s essay is how three areas of work and life (‘employment’, ‘parenting/child care’ and ‘household work’) change for mothers and fathers after childbirth. ⤵
You don’t have to be a “graph guy/gal” to conclude that these results are shocking. Not only does it reveal how drastically a mother’s life changes in the distribution of hours spent “parenting” (a predictable outcome in the earliest years), it also shows how little a father’s life is comparatively altered. Instead of judging and jumping to conclusions, I reckon it’s more beneficial to ask and consider some why questions:
Why don’t “household work” hours change much for men over the twelve years tracked?
Why doesn’t “employment” rise faster for women considering the current two-parent working statistics?
Why don’t fathers possess the same spikes or drops over the twelve years?
These findings are even more compelling when we consider Crabb’s point that “between 1991 and 2016, the proportion of family households in which both parents work rose from 52 per cent to 61 per cent. Two-income families are now the norm.”
Wouldn’t more parents working result in similar hours spent “parenting” and “household work”?
And then there’s the consideration that women — quite unfairly — are more likely going to have to give up specialised careers for part-time or casual work due to the need for flexible arrangements built around parental commitments.
I knew that there would be differences between, say, my father and I — for example, I regularly prepare dinners and enjoy doing the family grocery shop on a Sunday morning — but what I wasn’t as conscious of were the differences between mothers and fathers today. After all, as Crabb points out in her introduction ⤵
Half a century of modern feminism has changed the way women conduct their lives almost beyond recognition.
I was under the impression that the changes we’ve seen in women’s rights would mean that mothers and fathers would possess and have access to similar leave opportunities and structures. Statistics, policies and surveys show that this is not the case. One key reason for this comes due to the feminist movement concentrating — quite reasonably — on “the elimination of barriers to women in the workplace, from the establishment of anti-discrimination and affirmative action laws to the development of paid maternity leave.”
So, what role do us fellas play in this equity equation when it comes to childcare and leave?
Crabb makes a compelling argument that women and men must play a considered role — and that both are negatively affected due to discriminatory practices and unhealthy views of work, childcare and family. For example, why in 2020 are “workplace expectations” and leave expectations so different between men and women? As I shared in Claire and my fears and issues leading up to the birth of our firstborn:
Why did we find workplace and social stigma so daunting and isolating when having our daughter, in regards to leave and childcare expectations?
Credit: Grattan Institute
2. Global contrasts hit home
We hear a considerable amount these days about how we can’t do things. About how changes that could yield social, health and wellbeing benefits can’t be enacted. It gets to the point where folks shouldn’t be considered odd for asking if ANYTHING can be done to improve top-down measures such as parental leave and childcare policies.
If nothing can be done other than continuing to subsidise an industry of childcare built for profit margins — a sector that clearly doesn’t prioritise wellbeing + social & development outcomes — then who and what is the government representing and supporting?
Now we’ve reached the part of the essay where we’re obliged to talk about Scandinavia. I’m so sorry about that. Really: it’s annoying that any time you get even halfway serious about discussing these issues, it’s inevitable that - with a heavy sigh - you eventually have to say “Well, of course, in Norway…”
I attended a women’s conference in Melbourne in 2017 where the Norwegian ambassador, Unni Klovstad, was a featured speaker. As she outlined the parental leave and child care systems in Norway — forty-six weeks at full pay, ten weeks reserved specifically for the co-parent, child care costs capped at 300 Euros a month — I heard the strangest noise emitting from the women in the crowd. It was a sort of moan of frustrated longing. Almost sexual, to be honest. — Crabb
Like Crabb, I also hear conservatives groaning when a Scandinavian country is offered up as an example ➡ “Scandinavian countries don’t count!” So, without diving too far into Scandinavian models and welfare state measures, what I do want to point to is how these countries “brought along changes in behaviour by designing parental leave systems that encourage fathers”.
An example of this came in Iceland, where public representatives enacted measures to improve the participation of fathers in childcare and unpaid work. The Icelandic government reformed its parental leave program and started offering families nine months of paid paternal leave — three months to one parent, three months for the other parent, and a further three months to be decided between them. And here’s the kicker: “The only stipulation is that the birth mother take two weeks immediately after the birth, and the other parent take at least three months; if he or she doesn’t elect to take that leave, it’s lost to the family altogether.”
Here’s an important finding out of Iceland:
In 1996, the rate of fathers taking parental leave was close to 0.
By 2006, it was up around 90 per cent (see: Nordic Labour Journal).
Researcher Ingólfur V. Gíslason further explained that encouraging men to have time alone with young children helped to address the tendency for fathers to be “helpers” rather than primary caregivers. ⤵
From a gender equality perspective it is desirable for the father to have the chance to be alone with the baby for a few months. The mother is usually in charge of care when both are at home. But it is good for a father to see just how much it is to take care of a baby. - Gíslason
Meanwhile, back in Norway research has found that “women’s participation in the workforce has increased, and according to the 2019 State of the World’s Fathers report, Norway is the second-ranked country in the world by ratio of women’s and men’s undertaking of unpaid caring and volunteer work.”
Two examples of changes made in countries outside of Scandinavia come inside the borders of Germany (yes, next door to Denmark and Scandinavia!) and Canada.
In Germany, changes were made to its parental leave system that offered “a salary substitute for the first year of a child’s life. In 2007, the scheme was tweaked to offer a further two months’ pay - but only if the other parent takes the time off. Before the change, 5 per cent of dads took paid parental leave. By 2014, that proportion had risen to 34 per cent.”
In Canada, the national system moved to give dads “shared access to leave with their partners, and leave is paid at about half the household’s wage, with a strict cap.” While not a perfect model, it’s far better than what little is on offer across Canada’s border in the United States.
Note: 2.3 per cent of Australian men took parental leave in 2018 (see: Workplace Gender Equality Agency). Australia also ranks as possessing the “second-least generous public parental leave scheme in the OECD”.
By examining and contemplating reforms in other countries (and what their priorities are and where they reside), we start to see that change is not impossible.
Before I conclude, I want to address one other rebuttal I can envision a free-market capitalist mate conjuring: "The private sector has already improved parental leave options for many Australian workers…"
While I accept that this is the case for workers in some companies and sectors, I want to point to what Emma Walsh from Parents At Work shared with Crabb:
The truth is that equality of opportunity for both flexible work and parental leave is coming quicker for well-paid white-collar workers than it is for other workers. That’s why we need to make sure the government is in step with the mood. Leave it to the private-sector has the effect of improving things only for a certain group. - Walsh
Crabb’s Sydney Morning Herald article is also worth checking out.
When asked about his government’s budget and why there was no additional funding for childcare or measures to address parents’ strains and issues on 7.30 Report last night, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Leigh Sales:
Prime Minister: There’s an 85 per cent [childcare] rebate for lower-and middle-income workers, and when we had this reform first introduced we saw the participation rates for women in the workforce reach record levels.
Leigh: Why do you assume I’m talking about women? Men are parents, too. Men are responsible for childcare, too. You’ve pivoted to talking about women, but men should be 50 per cent responsible for childcare, too.
Prime Minister: Well, I’m not disagreeing with that, Leigh. …
What stood out to me in this exchange wasn’t so much a potential “gotcha moment”; rather, the difference between two thinkers and distinctly different outlooks. And what I’d like to offer our Prime Minister is the opportunity to read Annabel Crabb’s Men At Work: Australia’s Parenthood Trap.
PS. I’ll cover the cost, Prime Minister.
