Over the past decades, paternity leave has moved way up in the list of favored family policies. For anyone interested in the well-being of contemporary families, that’s good news. On the most concrete level, fathers are a crucial form of support in a world where couples often live far from the female relatives who traditionally would have taken the night shift. It gives solace when mothers are still recuperating from childbirth, and, if I remember correctly, in a state of mild panic at the thought of being left alone with the little alien. It gives new moms a chance to go to a doctor’s appointment, to take a can’t-wait business call, and to satisfy a longing for a long, hot shower. It sets the stage for close father-child bonds, a bond with unique benefits for young children. In a deeper sense, paternity leave allows couples to share the shock of being catapulted into a new stage of life and to absorb the reality of their new, intertwined identity.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Institute for Family Studies
______________________
Kay S. Hymowitz is the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. She is the author of several books, most recently The New Brooklyn. Follow her on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in Institute for Family Studies