Parental leave
In Nussbaum's model, states should provide the resources and freedoms to ensure people have the opportunity to achieve a minimum threshold of each central capability.
"[12] Paid parental leave incentivizes labor market attachment for women both before and after birth, affecting the GDP and national productivity, as the workforce is larger.
[20][21] To counteract this, some countries have introduced policies to increase rates of paternity leave to spread the cost impact more evenly across the labor market.
[22] If women take long parental leaves, the neoclassical model would predict that their lifetime earnings and opportunities for promotion will be less than their male or childfree counterparts—the "motherhood penalty".
[28] Other psychological perspectives summarise evidence and find that the role of a father in child development is very similar to that of a mother, counteracting the concern that greater paternal involvement in childcare could lead to unforeseen negative consequences.
[29] Criticism is often less concerned about the idea of paternity leave itself, but condemns the fact that father's quota policies do not allow that time to be allocated to the mother instead.
Additionally, there is a greater likelihood for first-generation immigrants to lack access to information concerning parental leave can contribute to the decrease in uptake from this demographic.
[45] In Australia it has been argued, by Georgie Dent, that the uptake of parental leave by fathers could enable the workforce participation of women, leading to improved economic outcomes for families as well as the country.
[47] By utilizing an employment-based measure, scholars have noted that this creates barriers for currently unemployed mothers to receive an opportunity to take more time off looking for a job and care for their child.
[55] The effects of parental leave on the labor market include an increase in employment, changes in wages, and fluctuations in the rate of employees returning to work.
[56] Other studies of shorter leave periods show that parents no longer need to quit their jobs in order to care for their children, so employment return increases.
[15] According to a 2016 study, the expansion of government-funded maternity leave in Norway from 18 to 35 weeks led mothers to spend more time at home without a reduction in family income.
[66] While uncommon on a world scale, some countries do reserve parts of the paid leave for the father, meaning it can't be transferred to the mother and lapses unless he uses it.
These countries lack a unified concept of paternity leave, each imposing different conditions, ratios and timescales, but are regarded as among the most generous in the world.
[15] To evaluate this change, Rønsen and Kitterød looked at the rate and timing of women's return to work after giving birth, and the effect on this of the new parental leave policy.
When paternity leave is made available to fathers, parents increasingly support gender-egalitarian socioeconomic policies and women's rights issues.
The authors point to similar results of full-time, short paid parental leave observed in Canada in 2008 by Baker and Milligan,[72] and in Germany in 2009 by Kluve and Tamm.
[9] A Harvard report cited research showing paid maternity leave "facilitates breastfeeding and reduces risk of infection"[55] but is not associated with changes in immunization rate.
[77] The United States, which does not have a paid parental leave law, ranked 56th in the world in 2014 in terms of infant mortality rates, with 6.17 deaths per every 1,000 children born.
[5] Evidence from selected countries in Western Europe suggests that moderate levels of parental leave can encourage mothers to reenter the work force after having children, promoting national economic development.
[90][91][92][93] As more women have joined the formal labor force, the lack of men's participation in parenting has been called out as a key example of gender inequality.
[96] Economist Christopher Ruhm argues that men's involvement in childcare at the same level as women is essential for eliminating differences in gender roles.
[97] The Norwegian Association for Women's Rights, summarizing different studies, states that there is only limited evidence to support a relationship between the father's quota and gender equality; the few relevant studies point in different directions;[90] the association's former president, psychologist and former chairman of UNICEF Torild Skard, argues that psychological research does not support the assertion that mothers can be replaced by fathers in the first year.
[98][99] In 2014, the European Parliament concluded that, by promoting the uptake of parental leave and paternity leave by fathers, governments can aim to facilitate a more gender-equal distribution of care work, support mothers' return to the labor market, equalize the circumstances in which women and men enter the labor market,[100] and improve the work–life balance of families.
[113] Since then, the government has provided child care support for parents who want them in order to encourage mothers to return to full-time jobs earlier, and it is effective to a certain extent.
This was part of a "sustainable family policy" promoted by German unification and European integration with the underlying objective to raise birth rates by providing financial incentive.
[136] Black people are substantially less likely to take maternity or parental leave, which is due to structural factors including racial and ethnic discrimination in the workforce.
[139] But like most places around the world, studies done in Australia show that the inequality still persists within the family, and that women spend more time doing unpaid work (like parenting) compared to men.
[60] The Institute for Women's Policy Research issued a report in 2009 encouraging Congress to give federal workers four weeks of paid parental leave.
[243] According 2013 OECD data, public expenditure on maternal and paternal leaves on per child born was the most in Luxembourg out of almost all the European counties at the 35,000 at prices and PPPs of 2013 in USD.
