Dive Brief:

• A new Indeed survey, released ahead of Father’s Day, highlights that it’s not just moms who have work life changes after having a child: 88% of dads said having a child changed how they viewed their career, with 87% citing different career goals and 77% saying they had new views on corporate culture.
• New dads got, on average, seven weeks of leave after the birth of a child, but felt they needed 10 weeks. More than half (51%) of future dads considered a company’s paternity leave policy before they were expecting. While many dads said it was a challenge balancing work and home, they were 30% less likely to say so than working moms. According to the survey, working moms are twice as likely to say they do most of the chores and childcare at home.
• Sixty percent of surveyed dads said employers should formalize a set number of flexible hours for parents to use to attend mid-day activities, with an equal number saying employers should have a policy allowing parents to use their sick days to stay home when their children are sick. And more than half (53%) said employers should allow more flexibility to work from home.

Dive Insight:

One of the best ways to help women advance at work could be to provide dads with paid leave.

When Ernst & Young (EY) standardized its parental leave program, giving new fathers 16 weeks of paid leave, both the number and percentage of men taking the full amount of leave more than doubled in two years. Additionally, turnover among female employees declined, dropping from 15% higher than men 15 years ago to between 0% to 2% higher now; EY believes this decrease can be at least partially attributed to the leave program.

Similarly, Bloomberg LP has expanded its parental leave policy for primary caregivers from 18 to 26 weeks; the leave is fully paid and gender neutral.

Working moms tend to earn less than other women, but men with kids earn more than other men. As the Indeed study noted, an unbalanced distribution of household duties — both housework and childcare — persists, and this could be a contributing factor. Equal leave for both moms and dads helps even out this disproportionate burden.

As with other policies, it’s important to avoid potentially discriminatory assumptions or generalizations when administering a parental leave program. JPMorgan Chase recently got into hot water when it allegedly presumed that women were the primary caregivers, and therefore eligible for up to 16 weeks of paid leave following the birth of a child, while fathers were eligible for only two weeks unless their partners were incapacitated or had returned to work.