Fathers Who Care For Their Children Are Penalized At Work

[Teamster Jeff]

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Fathers who spend time caring for their children are treated worse than their peers whose family lives look more traditional, a new study finds.

Middle-class men who take on greater caregiving roles at home are more penalized at work than men who offload that work to their wives.
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As men have taken on greater caring roles, they have also experienced greater discrimination. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has reported a rise in discrimination claims against caregivers, with a growing share brought by men. The number of family responsibility discrimination cases brought by male plaintiffs rose 300 percent between 2006 and 2010.

Meanwhile, family policies often leave them out. While men are equally entitled to time off to take care of a child under the Family and Medical Leave Act, that leave is unpaid. Fourteen states include new fathers in laws that go beyond the federal floor to offer better policies, the remaining 36 either help new mothers or do nothing at all.
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http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/06/14/2162911/fathers-who-care-for-their-children-are-penalized-at-work/

[Squinch]

1. Yikes! Men who care for their children are being treated like women who care for their children!

We gotta do something about this!

[leftyohiolib]

2. the article is saying something different

Fourteen states include new fathers in laws that go beyond the federal floor to offer better policies, the remaining 36 either help new mothers or do nothing at all. in 36 states there are laws that help new mothers but nothing for new fathers.

[Squinch]

3. Well, not exactly.

The article says that fathers are equally entitled as mothers to time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act, that time is unpaid for both fathers and mothers.

Your bolded text about the 36 states that offer additional help for new mothers is not exactly what the article says about those 36 states. The actual quote from the article is: "Fourteen states include new fathers in laws that go beyond the federal floor to offer better policies, the remaining 36 either help new mothers or do nothing at all." (Italics are mine.)

This means that in 14 states, fathers and mothers get equal extra leave time.

In some of the remaining states (we don't know how many from the article) neither new mothers nor new fathers get extra leave.

In some of the remaining states (we don't know how many) the new mothers get extra leave, but we don't know if that extra leave is related to physical recovery from childbirth. This is what happens where I work; the mothers get sick time to recover from childbirth and then can take FMLA time in addition to the sick time. The fathers don't get sick time, because they haven't given birth. This seems reasonable and doesn't seem to me to be discriminatory against fathers.

I would be interested in how many states offer additional help to mothers that is NOT sick time and that is NOT offered to fathers. I would bet few to none.

So back to: Yikes! fathers are being discriminated against just like mothers! Horrors!