Employers of Working Fathers: It’s Time to Get in the Game
They’re cooking dinner while answering emails while the laundry is running while a toddler is on their hip. They’re attending their local school board meetings, desperate for information on e-learning plans. They’re coordinating plans for their children to safely and distantly hang out with their friends. They’re arranging at-home e-learning spaces, they’re frantically scheduling flu vaccinations, and they’re figuring out how to pick up a prescription from the pharmacy in the 15 minutes they have free tomorrow.
Obviously, they are women.
The COVID-19 pandemic has left no mystery to the roles working mothers play in holding our families’ daily lives together. The statistics detailing our burdens are both staggering and unsurprising. Women ages 25 to 44 are nearly three times as likely as men to not be employed due to childcare. Nearly one-third of women who are not working are not working because of childcare. When e-learning began in the spring, women immediately began working less than their male partners.
We knew it was coming.
The romanticization of being a working mother indulges an abundance of assumptions: that a child will grow up in a dual-income home, that the parents’ work responsibilities end when they walk through their door, that families have access to safe, quality child care, and that a child will be healthy and avoid need for medical or therapeutic intervention. It’s a tidy vision that adheres to the American dream — where hard work pays off and, on the rare bad day, we can simply pour a larger glass of wine.
The failings of the U.S. government in regard to working parenthood are well documented and unquestionable. Unlike every other developed country, we have no paid leave policy. We have a childcare crisis, one that has been elasticized and torn during the COVID-19 pandemic. Maternity care is not guaranteed. Systemic racism, sexism, and vast inequities plague our institutions, beginning before a baby is even born. The Trump administration’s lack of support for families is abundantly clear.
The system faced by working mothers isn’t broken. It never worked in the first place.
As I am confronted with my own changed and challenging life–managing a business while having an e-learning kindergartener and toddler at home–I question where we draw the line.
Whose responsibility is it to make working and parenting more simultaneously compatible?
At an individual level, working moms have maneuvered, planned, finagled their daily lives to accommodate their jobs and their children. There is nothing more to give. We cannot lean in or job share or flex our hours further. We cannot add any more onto our (over)load at home. We cannot squeeze one more minute out of our days. There are no “hacks” to fit into a system that was not designed for us nor appears to want us.
Given the lack of support provided by our public institutions, we know what working mothers want from their workplaces. Just as importantly, now we need our partners — and their employers — to step up.
How can working dads make a system work as well for their partners as it does for them? What can employers do to make working parenthood successful for mothers and fathers in the absence of support from public policy?
1. Provide ample paid parental leave for both mothers and fathers.
As Alexis Ohanian points out, many fathers do not take paid leave even when it is offered due to fear and stigma. When leave for fathers is minimized or negligible, the burden of caregiving is immediately placed on mothers.
2. Be transparent about the time commitment required for a job, and encourage all employees to adhere.
For every 10 extra hours a father is working, his partner is adding to her imbalance of childcare and household work. By not valuing excessive clocked hours, employers can emphasize their understanding and support for working parents.
3. Take actionable steps to minimizing motherhood bias.
The motherhood penalty is real. If you are a dad in a position of leadership, be transparent about leaving early for a parent-teacher conference. Create a culture of support for parents, a process through which steadying career and family responsibilities is the norm.
There are fathers out there who want to do more, and many have no other choice but to shoulder more in light of the pandemic. There are, of course, many who still need something between a friendly nudge and a forceful shove toward doing their due. We can’t continue to force working moms to carry the prod alone. Employers have the power to light the path and lead the way.
