The politics of paternity leave: do men deserve it?

March 16, 2014 was the turn of Chief Inspector Emojel Okemer to become a father.

A Kenya Prisons officer of his rank could possibly not be worried about his wife’s delivery. This is a man who has spent his entire career dealing with hard-core criminals, something he says makes a man’s soul tougher than steel.

And if he were to follow the cultural dictates of his community, he should have been going on with his normal duties that month.

But Mr Okemer believes there are roles a man should not delegate when his wife is giving birth. That is why he was in hospital when his wife Irene Iseren delivered twins through caesarean section.

“When we went for a scan, we were told we would get boys but when they came, it was a boy and a girl. So, shopping for new clothes had to be done and my wife could not do it. This is not something you can send your house help,” he told Lifestyle.

He adds: “When you are young, nobody tells you that this is what you are supposed to do when you get your own children. So, both of you have to learn everything from experience.”

Mr Okemer shared his story at a time when the debate on the roles fathers play was rekindled, thanks to the employers’ federation boss.

Ms Jacqueline Mugo, the executive director of the Federation of Kenya Employers (FKE), said on Wednesday that Kenyan investors were suffering losses due to the length of child birth leaves.

EXTRAVAGANT LEAVE

“The labour laws governing paternity and maternity leave, in our view, have increased the cost of doing business by 15 per cent,” she says.

In Ms Mugo’s view, Kenya has longer maternity and paternity leave than most developing countries and because the employees earn normal salaries when they are away, employers suffer.

And in an interview with Lifestyle, Ms Mugo explains that Tanzania and Uganda give fathers a maximum of five days as paternity leave.

She says that the 14 days Kenya has designated for paternal leave are extravagant, noting that the situation could be made worse by a Bill currently in its third reading at the Senate, which proposes to amend the current one that has been in operation since 2007.

Ms Mugo notes that the Employment Act (Amendment) Bill 2015, introduced by Nominated Senator Martha Wangari, stipulates that the days be counted while excluding weekends.

“If you move to [counting] working days, you are actually enhancing it further,” she says.

She adds that fathers do not do much when they are on paternity leave.

“How many men stay home checking that the baby is safe? So, they are not helping the mother anyway. So, what’s the point?” she asks.

But there is a couple in Nairobi that believes the FKE does not appreciate the importance of a father being close to the new-born during the child’s early days of birth.

Mr Kennedy Gathu and Ms Doreen Kagwiria say a father requires at least one week to bond with his new-born or the relationship with the child will forever be lukewarm.

Mr Gathu, the head of finance at Fatrain Films, a Nairobi-based company, is glad that his employer granted him a 21-day leave when his wife gave birth to their first-born daughter Blessing Wambui, who is now 10 months old.

“In fact, the 21 days were not enough if you ask me,” Mr Gathu says in an interview at their home in Nairobi’s Kasarani. “At that time you feel so much attached to the child.”

His wife says a man needs to be close to his child during those early days to form a lifelong bond.

“It is good that you build a rapport with the infant — talking to her, holding her — so that you have contact with the child,” says Ms Kagwiria, a businesswoman.

After their daughter was born on June 3, 2015, Mr Gathu spent the next seven days doing household chores.

“I would assist with cleaning the utensils, the house and all the domestic work. At that time she needs most of your (husband’s) support and that’s the time you show her that you can do everything,” he says.

His wife, responding to a suggestion that the paternity leave be reduced to five days, says the first few days after childbirth are hectic and will need combined effort.

“Five days are very few. You need a lot of things when you have a child. Often, the child doesn’t sleep at night. At other times, she sleeps during daytime, so we assist each other. You also need to eat, and you can’t go cooking in the kitchen. He is the one who would cook,” she says.

LEGAL LIMITS

But it is not just Mr Gathu’s family which feels that employers should forget about reducing the number of days awarded for paternity.

Mr Francis Atwoli, the secretary-general of the Central Organisation of Trade Unions (Cotu), challenges Ms Mugo to prove the costs that have risen due to the leave laws.

“When she says paternity leave is increasing operational costs, she hasn’t told us since when and how because these laws have been there since 2007,” Mr Atwoli says.

He adds that if employers want to remove paternity leave “or any other leave for that matter, they can only do it over our (workers’) dead bodies”

“These employers are looking for ways of intimidating workers. When they want to declare workers redundant they start coming up with funny excuses,” he says.

A recent survey by KPMG, an audit company, found that recruiting and training new employees to replace those who leave after giving birth costs multinationals approximately $47 billion (Sh4.7 trillion) every year.

The report also noted that offering women 16 weeks of fully paid leave, as opposed to the minimum legal limit, would cost the firms an extra $28 billion (Sh2.8 trillion) every year.

According to Mr Atwoli, workers’ unions fought a vicious battle to ensure the leave days were part of Kenya’s laws.

“We didn’t just get the leave days for free. We fought for them,” he says, adding that Kenyan lawmakers should in fact increase the number of leave days.

The firebrand unionist also takes a swipe at Ms Mugo.

“The person talking is a woman who should be defending her fellow women because they need help in taking care of children,” he says.

In response, Ms Mugo says that as a woman, she has no qualms about longer maternity and paternity leaves, only that the economic realities do not permit it.

“I’m a mother; I’ve gone on maternity leave. In an ideal scenario, I would like to stay home for the first year of childbirth. And I actually did. I took unpaid leave when my first two children were born,” she says.

She adds: “If I put on my hat of a mother, I fully understand. If I put on my hat as a businessperson, looking at 50 or 60 per cent of our population being out of employment, then I say we have to be able to finance this thing in a rational way… It is the financing of the benefits that’s an issue; because everything is pushed to business.”

Ms Mugo’s biggest bother, which she says provoked her Wednesday remarks, is Senator Wangari’s Bill that proposes to award leave days even to mothers who adopt children.

Cost of employing females

She says that because the Bill proposes counting maternity leave days except on weekends, it will add 24 more days to women and four to men on child birth leaves.

“If these are passed and assented to, then the cost of employing females will increase further and could act as a deterrent for employing women in the child bearing age,” she said.

Cultural analyst Joyce Nyairo is of a similar opinion, saying some of the laws are “full of pretence”.

“We wrote laws with so many pretensions to being a welfare state but this is not matched by the production end of things,” she says. “Any serious investor has no choice but to think very seriously about how many child-bearing women a profit-making company can reasonably afford to hire. How is the state compensating employers for the many lost hours?”

But Dr Nyairo was in support of the 14-day paternity, also lauding initiatives by some Kenyan-based companies in opening a breast-feeding room in its premises.

Ms Mugo, the FKE boss, says such initiatives could help increase productivity in work places instead of employers suffering losses.

“This is something that is happening globally and it allows a mother to breast-feed the child and go back to work,” she told Lifestyle.

She explains that the idea of flexible working hours is also acceptable.

“A mother can work, say from 9am to 3pm, and go back home early; or job sharing where one job is done by two people — one does morning, one does the afternoon shift  — or whatever pattern fits the employer,” she says.

The flexible working arrangement is what Mr Gathu used last year for 14 out of the 21 days he was on leave.

However, some men have not been successful in securing paternity leave.

Mr Alex Orenge, a father of two, was only given a week off last year when his wife Diana Chepkoech gave birth to their first born in March, last year, because he did not have a marriage certificate. At that time he was working as a safety officer for a construction firm.

“Even in that one week, the company was calling me all the time asking me what was happening and telling me to issue reports. It was like I was working but from my house,” recalled the Kericho resident.

MARRIED FATHERS

Mr Orenge says the company told him it could have given him a two-week off like all other new fathers but he could not prove that he was legally married.

“They also told me it would be difficult for them to find someone to replace me if I had gone for the entire two weeks — that work in my section would stall, which would be dangerous for a construction company,” he says.

Section 29 of the Employment Act 2007 is explicit on the conditions under which a woman who has given birth can get maternal leave but on men it only says, “A male employee shall be entitled to two weeks paternity leave with full pay.” 

Mr Orenge argues that paternal leave is necessary because the presence of the father in the house gives the new mother moral support.

“The first few weeks are very critical for the child and it is necessary for the father to be around and assist in taking care of the child because not everyone can afford a house help,” he says.

This is especially important for first-time parents, he explains, since the mother may be inexperienced in handling basic issues.

Family lawyer Judy Thongori says Mr Orenge’s treatment by his former employer was uncalled for.

“Paternity is based on the existence of a child. So, it will be discriminatory to say it is only married fathers who can get the leave,” Ms Thongori says.

She adds: “There can be nothing more expensive to the economy than having children whose fathers have not participated in their lives and this is a value that should be encouraged.”

But the main problem, the employers’ federation says, is the lack of a national financial system to ensure that the salary that an employee gets while on maternity or paternity leave is borne by the government.

“The employers do not object to employees getting benefits, getting time off, getting leave. Our issue is that we need to have a national social protection scheme, which can finance these added benefits. Because right now, they all get pushed to business,” says Ms Mugo.

But even as more and more men seek the right to be close to their wives during childbirth, a study by anthropologist John Mbiti reveals that events that happen during that time are traditionally considered a woman-only affair.

In his 1990 book African Religions and Philosophy, he says men were only involved in the cultural rights that accompanied child birth and nothing more.

“Shortly after having given birth, the mother announces the child by screaming: four times if the child is a girl, and five times if it is a boy. The numbers are no coincidence, for they total nine, which is the sacred number,” he writes of the Agikuyu community.

For the Nandi, he says, the new fathers played no role at all during and after childbirth until after the naming ceremony which took place after a week. During this time they were even kept in the dark about the baby’s sex and it was the women who decided which name to give to the child.

“Naming took place inside the mother’s hut and men who had been kept in the dark regarding the child’s sex waited outside. The women placed snuff on the baby’s nose and called a spirit’s name to watch over the baby. The baby is supposed to sneeze to indicate that the name has been accepted. Snuff ‘helps’ the sneezing amid the women’s laughter,” he writes.

Arguing against the notion that the modern working man can leave such functions to women as some traditions dictate, Mr Gathu said his conscience cannot allow him.

“Psychologically, when you are at work and she is with the newborn you don’t feel comfortable. And your output will be minimal because most of the time your thoughts are at home.”

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What international firms do

AS KENYAN FATHERS struggle to get paid leave after the birth of their children, there is growing global recognition on the role the father plays in the life of a new born.

Several countries and companies have in the last few years been changing their policies to enhance the fatherhood experience for their male employees on the thought that it increases productivity.

In the US, after the birth of his daughter in November last year, Mr Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of social media giant Facebook, commenced on his two-month paternity leave and announced that all the company’s male employees will be entitled to a four-month leave.

Three months before Facebook’s announcement, Virgin’s boss Richard Branson said his company would from the beginning of this year offer new dads up to 12 months leave on full pay.

Video streaming service Netflix soon followed by introducing an unlimited leave policy for all parents allowing them to take as much time as they would want off in the first year of their new born child or after adoption on full pay.

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), “paternity leave has positive effects on the child’s development and helps break down traditional social attitudes of men as breadwinners and women as caregivers, which are damaging to both sexes.”

The organisations last year ranked South Korea, Japan, France, Luxembourg and Netherlands as the best countries to work for men, as they variously offer between 21 and 53 weeks of paid leave for new dads.

Fatherly.com, a website that ranks the best companies to work for if you are a father, says Google, Facebook, Bank of America, Pentagonia and financial advisor State Street are the best companies to work for.

Google, which also has offices in Kenya, offers seven weeks for new fathers if their partners are also employed and 12 weeks if they are the sole breadwinners. As part of the package, new fathers get $500 (Sh52,000) for baby bonding and in case of your death your wife gets 50 per cent of your salary for 10 years and each of your children gets $1000 (Sh105,000) per month till they reach 19.

Facebook gives its male employees $4000 (Sh420,000) new child benefits while skiing equipment manufacturer Pantagonia gives it male employees two months paid leave and installs for them an onsite child care centre in their homes and provides after school pick-ups from local schools till they are nine.