[Eamon Delaney with his son Ciaran and a Modigliani]
Fine Gael Minister Frances Fitzgerald’s proposal to split the current standard State maternity benefit of 26 weeks between both partners is welcome, writes Eamon Delaney.
Sometimes it’s as if nothing has changed. When did you last read an article or survey asking if men are ‘helping out with the housework’? Or posing a question in relation to a father’s ‘involvement’ in the lives of his children? Not very long ago, I’d guess. Like the father was some kind of fire brigade service, only needed in emergencies, rather than a full time presence, doing every bit as much as the mother does. For this, surely, is what most parenting actually amounts to in the modern era: a 50/50 split between two partners. Indeed, any man not fully sharing the housework nowadays should be shown the door.
….I would be a good example of this family ‘work set-up. I work from home as a freelance writer, while my wife has two separate job assignments, in film and social media, that require her to leave the house for two or three days a week. If I have to go to a radio or TV station, she can be at home. We have two children, a five-year-old who has started school and a three-year-old still at home, so we see a lot of the kids, which is fantastic and, far from disturbing our work, it benefits both our parenting lives and our work lives.
When the kids were born, there is no doubt that both of us could have done with parental leave had we been in full-time jobs. Most of the follow-up demands of parenthood are suffered (if that is the word) equally, by both parents – sleep deprivation, general disruption and full-on child maintenance.”
“…Currently, some 23,000 women take maternity leave every year at a cost of €300 million to the State. But the reality is that many women do not feel that they need the full amount of leave and are, in fact, anxious to get back to work. Many feel indeed that such a long period of leave can also act as an inducement to stay away from the workplace altogether, reinforcing that old fashioned concept of atending to ‘motherly duties.’”
“…But Minister Fitzgerald’s proposal would have a wider societal significance since it would challenge the idea of the mother as principal child-raiser, which is quite simply now an outdated idea, plainly unfair, and still holding women back. Some employers discriminate against women in job interviews because of fears that six months of maternity leave will at some stage become a reality. So the Minister’s proposal has an obvious benefit – employers would view prospective workers equally, irrespective of gender, as male and female workers would get equal access to leave.”
Need it be said….FIGHT!
Giving maternity leave to both parents would empower both and recognise reality (Eamon Delaney)
