CG asks:
[C]ould [you] do a deliberately controversial post about whether or not male academics should get a semester of parental leave when their partners have babies? I have some conflicting thoughts on that which I will leave for another day. And there is relevant research.
I feel like they should because otherwise their wives end up doing all the childcare stuff and the husbands don’t do any (#SwedenResearch). HOWEVER, the economist guys I know definitely abuse this and come into the department as if they don’t have a kid at all, they’re just not teaching and their SAHM wife just takes care of everything. One of them even sent his wife and newborn to another state to stay with extended family(!) But there’s not really any way to fix this situation. Forcing people to say they’re the primary caregiver just leads people to lying. And my DH was an equal co-parent and that should be encouraged. There’s just going to be either type 1 or type 2 error no matter what you end up deciding. Personally, I’d rather err on the side of the wives not doing all of the childcare. In some cases dad getting a semester off could mean mom gets to keep her job. It also means the babies are more likely to bond with dad which will make dad feel more valued and want to continue interacting, which is good for everyone.
That said, we did hire mother’s helpers when we had the semester off from teaching for DC2 and I think DH was even briefly unemployed during DC2’s infancy and I was able to keep my research agenda going. But teaching with DC1 as an infant (no leave), even with the mother’s helpers, was pretty impossible. We had more than one load of laundry that went moldy and once I ran out of gas at work and DH had to bring some so I could make it to the gas station and come home.
CG adds:
I’ve been feeling cranky about the prof in our dept with a SAHM wife who is taking parental leave and claiming he’s the primary caregiver. And also remembering my first maternity leave where DH was traveling for work 4 days a week and I had to manage a toddler (first kid was born during grad school) and a baby mostly on my own while definitely NOT doing any work but also feeling guilty about it. I don’t think my crankiness about my colleague is necessarily fair or coming from a rational place and I’ve been struggling to articulate why I’m so salty about it.
xykademiqz adds:
Maybe there are men who pull their weight around newborns as much as their wives do, but honestly I have yet to meet one IRL. My husband sure didn’t, and none of my male colleagues seem to. They have a baby and are back at work immediately, like nothing happened. Most men I know seem to treat anything having to do with kids as opt-in; they elect to opt into some aspects but not others, and get to pat themselves on the back for being unusually virtuous and egalitarian. But women never have the option to opt out. This makes me seethe whenever I allow myself to think about it.
I also hate that the physical effects of childbirth are somehow not on the table when people discuss parental leave. A woman who gave birth needs 6+ weeks for minimum physical recovery; this cannot be transferred to any parent who did not, in fact, give birth. Yes, having a new kid is disruptive to the whole household. But it’s definitely drastically more disruptive to the person who just had their insides explode.
#1 counters: My body was ok at 2 weeks for both kids, but I was young and had very easy natural childbirths (literally an hour of pushing for each, which I understand is unusual). C-sections are actual surgeries and obviously need as much recovery time as any surgery.
My husband was also doing as much for our newborns as I was, if not more. I mostly did inputs and some daytime stuff. He took outputs and nighttime stuff, along with some daytime stuff (for DC1 we alternated days since neither of us had any leave). And we hired college students. But he’s not an economist.
CG reiterates that #1 is an exception:
I had 2 very tough vaginal births with major blood loss and physical injury both times and one c-section. The c-section was the easiest recovery, which gives you some idea of the extent of the damage the first two times. I was young and in good shape, just really unlucky. Twice. So yeah, the physical effects of childbirth are definitely a way in which it might not be equivalent for birthing and non-birthing parents…
Grumpy Nation, what do you think?