Two decades since paid parental leave was introduced, just over 1 per cent is taken by men – yet fathers say they want to spend at least three months at home with their babies. What’s standing in the way, and is dedicated dad leave the answer? Michelle Duff reports.

In the trenches. A shock to the system. Just trying to survive. Peter Theiler’s ​description of the first few months with a newborn uses the language of a battlefield, or a life-threatening emergency.

“It just sideswipes you, even though you think you’re prepared,” says the Auckland dad, who talks like a veteran now he’s made it out the other side twice.

When he and wife Marysa ​had their first baby, Alexa, ​Theiler took two weeks of unpaid leave. He left his daughter to return to work before she could properly focus on his face. Apart from her, he felt torn. He didn't want to leave Marysa on her own.

“I felt right from the start I had two important full-time jobs to maintain, at work and at home, and I found that pretty challenging,” says Theiler, 42, a transport engineer. “I felt I wanted to be there for my family, and I couldn’t put in the hours at work that I used to. It was stressful, and I felt like I was dropping all the balls.”

For round two, the couple did things differently. Marysa stayed home for the first six months and then Theiler took over the childcare, while Marysa built her small business.

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For four months, Theiler was it for his kids. Every nappy disaster, public tantrum, clothing mishap, and tired and hangry moment was his to manage.

He brought all his logistical and problem-solving knowledge to bear. “I work on some pretty complex projects, and I found that right up there. It takes all your energy to keep these two little beings alive and happy and not having meltdowns every day – you have to be on top of your game.”

Theiler grew a new appreciation for his wife, and she was less stressed. “Before that my experience in the morning was to set off to the haven of work – and honestly, it becomes a haven – where you get some form of normal, and it’s not chaos. When you get home it’s inevitably witching hour, and it’s not really quality awake time at three or four in the morning when you’re trying to get them back to sleep,” he says.

“That bonding time with the kids, the opportunity to connect, was so valuable. All men should have the opportunity to experience that.”

Theiler was able to take four months off because the company he works for, Aurecon, has a “shared care” policy where 14 weeks of fully-paid parental leave are available for parents of any gender.

“It just makes sense,” says Aurecon New Zealand managing director, Tracey Ryan. ​“We need to attract really good people into our industry and keep them, and this is just one piece of creating a more inclusive culture and normalising the roles of parents in looking after their children.”

Multiple studies show men want to spend more time with their families. The Growing up in New Zealand long-term study suggests fathers want to spend at least three months at home with their babies before the age of one.

The benefits are many. Fathers feel closer to their kids, it makes the workforce and home more equitable, empowers men as parents, and improves women’s post-birth health.

But barely any men get this chance.

Stuff has found the way the parental leave system is designed forces men back into work and families into traditional patterns of childrearing, where the man is the breadwinner and the woman the homemaker. This perpetuates the gender pay gap, places strain on relationships, and makes it harder for men to form bonds with their children, and for women to continue their careers.

And increasingly, it means it’s only available to those who can afford it.

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“It’s a really backwards system, which dictates who will and who won’t take leave based on gender bias, and it doesn’t give families a choice,” says Auckland University of Technology (AUT) social marketing researcher Patrick van Esch. ​“It’s not working for anyone, and we need to catch up.”

Lagging behind

As one of only four rich countries that offer no parental leave specifically ring-fenced for men, New Zealand is well behind. Most other countries in the OECD have some form of paid paternity leave, with eight countries offering more than three months.

Here, the paid parental leave entitlement of 26 weeks and the extended leave of 26 weeks is attached to the birth mother. Men are allowed two weeks of unpaid partner’s leave.

“You’re still working within a system where the woman is allowed the leave in the first place and having to transfer that leave to someone else,” says Dr Suzy Morrissey, a University of Auckland researcher who has done some of the most recent research into parental leave. “The man has no entitlement to paid leave in his own right.”

While the mother can transfer all or part of her year’s leave to a nominated “primary carer”, it is unclear how many people do this.

When the Government decided to extend the paid parental leave scheme from 18 to 26 weeks in 2017, the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) told then-workplace relations minister Iain Lees-Galloway the policy changes and labour market impacts would be closely monitored. But when Stuff asked how many men took unpaid partner’s leave, and how many men were transferred any balance of primary carer leave, MBIE said it did not keep data on either.

The most recent figures from IRD show 504 men took the paid portion of parental leave in the last financial year, compared to 34,184 women. (Around 800 people didn’t state their gender.) That’s up from 324 men in 2017.

As a proportion of all those taking parental leave since the scheme began in 2003, it has barely changed, rising only slightly from 1.3 to 1.6 per cent.

Most of the hopeful dads in the Growing Up in New Zealand​ study - the ones who wanted three months – ended up taking two weeks around the birth of their babies, usually paid for by cobbling together some annual and sick leave.

In a way, it makes sense that a smaller number of men would take paid parental leave in the first six months, when the World Health Organisation recommends babies are fully breastfed.

But no-one collects data on who is taking the second 26 weeks, when anecdotally more men do step in to caring roles, and how financial and social pressures influence their choice. (Data suggest that overall, around 15 per cent of those who stay home with children of all ages are men. In March this year around 20,000 men said they were out of the workforce looking after a child, compared to 128,000 women.)

”They obviously haven’t identified a need to know it,” says Morrissey. “The fact is, we’re asking men to take this leave even though it’s unrealistic, they’re having to take it most likely for a pay cut, and with no other support or encouragement.

“How acceptable or easy do we make it for men to be parents?”

‘Oh my god, the paperwork’

Wellington dad Matt Marsh, 38, felt like he was battling the system to get the balance of his partner Rose Patterson’s leave transferred to him when he wanted to spend six months at home with son Riker, now two and a half.

“Oh my god, the paperwork,” he says. “We had to go back to the HR department a couple of times like – how do we fill out this form?”

A 2018 study found that even within the public service, people found the process for taking leave for one person confusing. (When asked about this, IRD said forms were updated for online accessibility earlier this year.)

“They’re basically maternity leave forms. It’s a small thing, but it was really alienating, and it just shows how men are ostracised from the beginning. Right from the get-go it puts you on two different paths.”

The couple’s second child, Indy, is five days old. Marsh, a learning consultant, is taking a month off, using partner’s leave and annual leave, and Patterson, a service designer, will again transfer her 26 weeks extended leave to him when Indy is six months old.

“It starts you off on such a solid footing,” Marsh says. “Rose and I are now completely interchangeable parents, we take turn about with putting them down [to sleep] and we’ve both spent time back at work.”

Both Marsh and Patterson are professionals with comparable salaries. Marsh thinks for many men, taking the leave would not be so much of a choice. “For the guy to take time off they’re probably sacrificing money. But surely you want to get the man involved with their children as early as you can, so they’re involved forever.”

’It’s been amazing, and it’s been horrible’

As far back as 2008, two government reports said the “time is right” for a paid parental leave entitlement to be ring-fenced for fathers.

“There is a sizeable gap between the aspirations of parents that fathers spend more time caring for their children, and the actual time fathers spend with their babies and children,” the authors wrote.

Yet changes since then have only tweaked the system or added more time for the primary carer.

Dr Suzy Morrissey says the financial barriers to men taking paid parental leave are considerable. Men still typically earn more than women. Paid parental leave has a cap of $606.46, compared to a median average weekly income of $1085.51.

Research from the OECD shows men don’t take leave if it’s not well-paid. The fact it’s paid so low, at an equivalent of 30 hours a week at minimum wage, reflects how little care work is valued, Morrissey says. Compare this to ACC, which provides much more generous wage replacement for an injury, which also requires time off work. “It suggests reluctance to view this as an employment-related policy,” she says.

“There needs to be increased leave for fathers or partners, instead of the mother giving it up.”

For Austin Pomana, ​a supportive workplace and financial security was key to him feeling confident to take the second half of wife Angela’s parental leave to look after twins Amelia and Jack. Plus, it was important he was there. “I’m getting on, and the men in my family have this habit of dying early. I want to spend that time with them while I can,” Pomana, 46, says.

“I see a lot of my friends missing out on that stuff because they're at work, and I didn't want that. It made perfect sense.”

He and Angela are both professional firefighters, earning the same base salary. Now they share the care; they both work two nights and two days each alternately at Palmerston North fire station, with a nanny to fill in the gaps.

“If I was younger I don’t think I’d be able to do it, just the whole idea of staying at home with babies in the first months of their lives would have been way too scary for me and you know, blokes don't really grow up until they're in their thirties,” Pomana says.

“It’s been amazing, and it’s been horrible. Why human beings choose to do this to themselves is beyond me. But the rewards are all there.

“If there was more incentive for men to stay at home with their babies for a period, I’m pretty sure they would.”

Marsh says he gets angry now when he hears people talking about women on parental leave as being “on holiday”.

“It’s relentless, you don’t even get to go to the toilet by yourself. You’re responsible for this being who is just on you or near you 24-7. You have those days where you spend an hour and a half getting baby to sleep, and they sleep for 15 minutes, and your partner gets home, and you’re like ‘oh my god, I haven’t even had a coffee’.

“But I would also say it was one of the most rewarding things I’ll ever do in my entire life.”

Bringing the change

But it’s not just policy that needs to shift. Workplaces and men themselves need to change societal expectations and values around caregiving, AUT’s Patrick van Esch says.

He and co-authors Sarah Duffy and Murooj Yousef found changing workplace norms were a key factor in creating flexible work arrangements and increasing parental leave uptake. Even in Sweden, where parents have 240 days between them, gender roles remain entrenched and women still take the majority of the leave not ring-fenced for men.

Theiler’s employer, Aurecon, is one of an increasing number of companies who have developed their own growing parental leave schemes, including “big-four” accounting firm Ernst & Young​.

Ernst & Young offers 16 weeks of fully-paid leave that parents can take any time within the first two years, which extends to non-biological parents. Four years ago, just five per cent of those who took up this policy were men. This year, it’s 35 per cent, taking an average of six weeks.

“The feedback we get is “this is awesome, this is great, this takes the pressure off”, says Managing Partner Jo Ogg. “Post-Covid, our ability to attract and retain talent is an important task. We find people are genuinely appreciative of the time with their children, the financial support, and then come back to work and want to share that.”

And Van Esch says men need to drive change too. “It’s pretty rare that a man, when looking at a job contract, will say ‘what’s their parental leave policy like?’ but men need to stop thinking about just themselves, and start thinking about their families.”

Societal expectations around men’s roles mean that when men do take leave, they are often still called into the office or expected to be available. “It was almost like they weren’t allowed to take it.”

And when they do, they are often over-praised, he says. “Men all of a sudden look like rockstars for doing it for a couple of weeks, when women have been doing it for hundreds of years.”

Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Michael Wood, who took time off when his sons were born, says he plans to look at the paid parental leave policy later in the term. “I expect we would look at issues like ring-fencing and partner-specific leave then.”

He says the Government wants more men to take parental leave, but many still didn’t “for a range of reasons,” including a difference in earnings.

Wood says the Government is working to close the gender pay gap, has introduced a $60 best-start credit for families, and the maximum PPL rate will rise again to $621.76 per week as of July 1.

“I believe we are moving slowly in the right direction.”