The Life of Dad

by Anna Machin

  Combine this societal block with a world that is increasingly focused on individual rather than governmental responsibility – leading to cuts in social and healthcare services and a rise in unstable employment practices – and you have a world where, despite the vast majority of men stating that they would work less if it meant they could spend more time with their kids – ranging from a low of 61 per cent in Croatia to a high of 77 per cent in Chile – any form of statutory paternity leave is only present in ninety-two of the world’s 196 countries. It is still the norm rather than the exception outside the West that the majority of men take no time off work after their children are born. This disparity between what men want and their reality must be laid, to a great extent, at the feet of our society. This lack of equality, and the impact it has, is regularly reflected in the experiences of fathers:

  Things are getting better for fathers in terms of their rights, but there is still a long way to go. I couldn’t afford for Clare to go back to work after six months and for me to take six months off, it’s just not feasible with a mortgage and stuff. Yet this is the time you miss the most, you miss all the little things.

  Dylan, dad to Freddie (six months)

  Because when you do support fathers, recognizing their importance and their need to be involved and providing the legislative and financial framework to empower them, revolution results. Even in that most individualistic of societies, the United States of America.

  The US is the richest country in the world but, when it comes to parental leave, it has the dubious honour of being among a handful of countries that offers the fewest rights. Since 1993, women have been entitled to twelve weeks of unpaid leave for each newborn or newly adopted child, but stipulations relating to the nature and duration of your employment mean that not all new mums are eligible. The federal nature of the political system in the US has meant that some states have voted to override a number of these restrictions, but in only three states has any legislation been passed that requires maternity leave to be funded, and in those cases the onus is on the employer, rather than the state, to carry the cost.

  But for some employers, an understanding of the strong link between commercial success and happy employees with well-balanced home and work lives has meant that they have proactively taken on this new responsibility. In April 2017, global management consultancy EY rolled out a new parental leave programme that meant that, for the first time, dads and mums were offered the same package of paid parental leave. Within the US, this meant that the generous sixteen weeks of leave on full pay that had previously only been offered to mum was now also an option for dad. This is an astonishing leap in corporate culture, not only within the US but globally. Within the first year of the programme, EY reported that on average new dads were taking six weeks of paid leave and eighty-two employees took the full sixteen weeks. And for EY, bringing equality to parenting rights and providing the financial support to make sure that it was accessible to all, regardless of income, was a no-brainer. A firm like theirs, which exists within the service industry, knows that their people are their product, so ensuring their well-being at the very start of their parenting journey means a workforce of contented, and extremely loyal, employees.

  EY’s model of equality between the sexes is beginning to be copied within other organizations, but it is a practice still largely restricted to the professional market, where a shortage of the best candidates means firms have to compete to provide the most attractive benefits package. This can result in extended paternity leave being the preserve of a privileged few, rather than all. And while on average EY’s new dads took up more leave after the introduction of the new scheme, it was still the case that only 38 per cent took more than six weeks, regardless of the economic support. Why is this? It could be that, while dads talk the talk of the involved dad, they are reluctant to put words into action. But the evidence would suggest otherwise. For, where fathers have a period of financially supported leave, ring-fenced for their sole use, the rate of uptake of extended paternity leave is astonishing. But the dads of EY are still embedded in a culture of employee presentism, where presence rather than outcomes is the true measure of success. Yet, empower men – with a bit of stick and a lot of carrot – to fight back against this attitude, and the rush to be there for their children is overwhelming.

  In January 2006, the Quebecois government legislated for a period of financially supported, ring-fenced paternity leave and the statistics speak for themselves. In the first year of the programme, Quebecois fathers had increased their uptake of paternity leave by 250 per cent. The length of that leave was increased by 150 per cent from two weeks to the full five weeks of paid leave that was available under the new scheme. Further, long after the leave had ended, dads were still partaking in household chores at a rate that was 23 per cent higher than their counterparts who had not taken the leave. Combine this with research from other studies that shows that if a son sees his father share in domestic work and childcare he is significantly more likely to do the same when he is an adult, and we have an influential mechanism for rebalancing gender inequality. These results stand in contrast to those from other Canadian provinces where dedicated paid paternity leave is not an option; here, less than one in five fathers takes any form of paid paternity leave.

  Why is non-transferable paid paternity leave so effective at changing the culture of fathering? It could be that its father-exclusive label reduces the stigma of taking it within the workplace – it becomes a societal expectation, and fathers feel emboldened to ask for their right. It could be because not taking something that is exclusively yours – there is no chance of anyone else being able to take it – means that there is guilt attached to refusing to enable your child to spend time with you during his or her formative years. And it is definitely because it is economically supported. The Quebecois authorities have seen fit to fund the scheme to the extent that 70 per cent of a dad’s income is paid, up to a weekly cap of $767. Fathers can rest easy in their role of carer, safe in the knowledge that the bills are being paid.

  It is this willingness to throw their legislative and economic might behind the scheme that has made the Quebecois system so successful. In adopting this model, they are following in the well-trodden footsteps of the Nordic countries, such as Norway and Sweden, who have practised a system of paid ‘use it or lose it’ paternity leave for a considerable number of years. In Sweden, where the very first paternity leave was introduced in 1974, ninety of the 480 days of parental leave are ring-fenced for the dad, although he can take more, and on average dads will be the primary carer for 25 per cent of the parental leave period – that is 120 days. In Norway – dad-friendly since 1993 – parental leave is forty-six weeks at full pay, and up to fourteen weeks of these are reserved for dad. And I would argue that it is this sort of scheme – which provides appropriate legislative and financial support – that other countries, including my own, are going to have to mimic if we are to put our money where our mouth is and truly adopt a model of involved, and supported, fathering.

  Having taken the temperature of dads-to-be, fathering organizations and employers, it is clear that the consensus among those of us who work with dads and are alive to their reality is that it is only with adequately funded, nontransferable paternity leave that fathers will be empowered to becoming more involved in the home, caring for their children and contributing to domestic life. The barriers to greater involvement are largely economic and cultural, and with these hurdles swept aside it will be easier for fathers to assert their rights to be present for their children from the very start. And maybe we also need to step back and let evolution take its course. Because all this cultural baggage is just that: baggage. Baggage is easy to shed if there is enough of a desire to do so. Compared to the power of biological evolution – the mechanism that has created us as a species and positively selected for involved fathers – culture is just the surface gloss. Biology trumps culture every time.

  The power rests with
fathers and their overwhelming love for their children because, after ten years of work, the evidence of academics and the lobbying of interest groups alone has made little headway in changing the culture among those who make and communicate policy. A lot of reports have been collated, meetings attended and coffee drunk, but progress has been frustratingly slow. So, it’s time for a change of tack. From here on in, with our support and robust evidence, the drive and initiative is going to have to come from dads. It’s time to man the barricades and get political. And luckily, there is an indication that this new generation may be more willing to voice their needs and desires when it comes to the importance of their role than any previous generation. My own experience interviewing younger fathers is that they are more switched on about what they can bring to their children’s lives, what their rights as dads are, and are more assertive in voicing these to their employers and the professionals they encounter. A recent study of 1,043 City of London professionals, a group we may imagine to be driven by career ambition, found that among the new generation of men, aged between twenty-one and thirty-five, 40 per cent stated that they had very little interest in climbing the career ladder to senior management, preferring to work a job that allowed space for a better work–life balance.

  I am hopeful that this current focus on the culture of fathering is not just a passing phase, but that we are in the midst of real societal change. And one of the aspects of that change that gives me cause for optimism is that the change is no longer local but global. As a consequence of social media, ideas and knowledge generated in our backyard can reach the rest of the world in a matter of seconds. And, in turn, we can see how others are pushing the boundaries and making change happen. While social media can have its downsides, what it has allowed us to do is break down the barriers of distance, language and culture to gain an insight into how our fellow humans live life. And that includes fathering. Before the advent of YouTube, we would have had little idea whether the beliefs we were developing about fathering – that it can be hands-on without threatening your masculinity – were unique to us. But today, simply try typing ‘dads dancing with babies’ into YouTube to join the hundreds of thousands of people around the world who have been uplifted by the sight of a group of thirty-something dads dancing in perfect time, in a school hall, babies strapped to their chests. Or if you want to share in some fathering knowledge, try viewing the many videos teaching dads how to do their daughters’ hair. The fact that these videos have views in the tens of thousands are testament to the thirst for information about being a fully involved, hands-on dad.

  Whether they are biological fathers, stepfathers, adoptive or foster fathers, or legal guardians, whether they are brothers, uncles or grandfathers, and whether they live with their children or not, men’s and boys’ participation in the daily care of others has a lasting influence on the lives of children, women and men, and an enduring impact on the world around them.

  MenCare 2015, ‘The State of the World’s Fathers’

  Fatherhood will always be changing, that’s part of its job description. At the moment, we are focused on trying to create the environment in which fathers can truly be involved with their children. But who knows what curveballs will be thrown at our species in the coming years? The fact that we seem to be living through particularly unstable times means anything could happen, the magnitude of which could take our eye off the ball. But I hope not. I hope that, with the increase in our knowledge, the desire of men to step up and the power of social media to spread our message around the world, whatever life throws at us, we will continue to pursue our goal. And that goal is actually very simple: to recognize that fathers are important to us all; individually and as members of society. And to create an environment in which they can be free to fulfil their evolved role. To protect, to teach and to tickle their children until they are incapable with hysterics. That’s the goal.

  AFTERWORD

  So, there we have it. Everything I can tell you about everything we, at the scientific end of things, know about being a father today. What have we learnt? That since his evolution half a million years ago, regardless of his environment, dad has been using his immense flexibility to ensure that he always fulfils his twin goals of protection and teaching. That his role has been shaped by a combination of forces, both social and biological, so that how he fathers is wonderfully diverse. That all fathers are motivated to care and invest by the same set of wonderful chemicals that, along with significant brain changes, mean that becoming a parent is just as biological and psychological an experience for dad as it is for mum. That dad is an essential and integral part of the parenting team needed to raise a healthy child, but that who dad actually is is not bound by biological relatedness; it is fulfilling the role that counts. That the involved father is not just a male mother, but that he carries out his task in a unique way, with a particular focus on preparing his child for the outside world. And that being a dad is a role that never ends; he is essential both to the developing social skills of his toddler and to the mental resilience of his teenager.

  I said at the start of this book that I had three key aims. The first was to shift the focus away from the so-called deadbeat dad, who has been the subject of headlines and studies for too long, to the – thankfully much more prevalent – stick-around dad. He who reads bedtime stories, prepares packed lunches and locates that rogue school sock. I wanted to rebalance the record on dads because I believe that they are not who we currently think they are. Dads – related or not, cohabiting or not and even one or many – are special and unique. They are a physiological and psychological phenomenon, they are flexible, they are developmental boundary-pushers, they are carers and, in the vast majority of cases, they are there.

  My second aim was, through my studies and those of my colleagues, to reassure fathers-to-be, new dads and established dads about their thoughts, feelings and experiences. To pinpoint the moments of tension or difficulty, to highlight the common feelings or thoughts, to explain the biology that is going to give them a helping hand and to reassure them that there is no right way to father, but that evolution has fitted you to be the best dad you can be for your child. And to give you permission to be silly and fun in the knowledge that you are playing a vital role in your child’s development.

  My last aim was to educate society. Dad is an integral part of every culture around the world but, compared to mum, generally we know so little about him. But we all have experience of either being or being with a dad, even if they are not ours, and we should really know more about them. That they have an impact on our society individually, as a parent and as a member of a family; they have something to offer us all. That they need our recognition, acknowledgement and support.

  And now you have read this book, I need your help to tell the dad story. So much has changed for dads in the ten years that I have been working with them and much of this has been driven by the men themselves, asserting their needs, rights and desires to be involved. But there is still so much to do. The science is there, we just need to encourage society to catch up. So, please pass on your new-found knowledge and, if you are a dad, be proud of who you are. You are the wonderful culmination of half a million years of evolution, selected for because you matter. But don’t take it from me. Take it from a real expert, John, dad to 4-year-old Joseph and 2-year-old Leo:

  Take confidence, you have an important role to play. Don’t feel belittled . . . It is an amazing opportunity, an amazing responsibility. Seize it.

  I couldn’t have put it better myself.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My first thanks need to go to my agent, Sally Holloway of Felicity Bryan Associates, who managed to see some promise in a very dry academic manuscript, beat some popular-science writing sense into me and has been there for help and advice throughout the completion of this book. Secondly, I would like to thank my editor, Claudia Connal at Simon & Schuster, for all her gentle guidance and excellent editing. She has been incredibly good at spotting
academic waffle and keeping me on track. My unending thanks go to my boss at Oxford, Professor Robin Dunbar, for being an inspirational scientist and author, supporting me throughout my academic career and allowing me to spend some time looking at dads when, really, I should have been doing something else. I also need to thank the members of my research group, the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group within the Department of Experimental Psychology, for their helpful discussions. In particular, my thanks go to Dr Ellie Pearce, who read and commented on early chapters of this book. I need to thank the National Childbirth Trust, and, in particular, Fran Hill and Jenny Barrett, who helped me to recruit dads and gave their input on survey design for my studies. I need to thank my funding body, the British Academy, for financing my first study and setting me on the road to fatherhood research. I need to thank my friends for always asking how it was going and offering tea and cake when the going got tough. In particular, my best friend F fiona, who ‘entertained’ herself on her many transatlantic flights with drafts of early chapters. To my work colleagues Moose, Bear and Sam: what they lack in conversation they make up for in slobber and hugs. And to all my family. But, in particular, to my mum and dad, who brought me up to believe that learning was a joy, who supported me emotionally and often financially through my degrees and who, by being amazing grandparents, enabled me to return to work and pursue my research. They have also been willing guinea-pig readers for many theses and book drafts – hopefully this was a bit easier to read than the PhD. To my beautiful stepdaughter, Lydia, and my gorgeous daughters, Hebe and Kitty. They are the point of my world. And to my husband, Julian. He was the inspiration for this book and has always been my greatest love and support. Thank you.