EN3100: Week 3 – Assignment: Argumentative Essay
06/24/2012
Ciera Clark
National American University

Should Father’s Receive Paid Paternity Leave

In this day in age we find ourselves wondering if is feasible for men to get paid paternity leave, since women get paid maternity leave after they have their baby. You have to really think about this though, because not all companies pay women to take maternity leave. So why would we pay our men to take paternity leave when not all women get paid when they have no choice but to take off after having a baby. So I want you to ask yourself, “Should father’s get paid for paternity leave?” There are some good aspects to having the father take paternity leave. Say, companies did offer
Right now only about half of all first-time moms in the US are able to take any paid leave after childbirth; and just a fifth of working women with young children received leave with full pay, according to a review of the most recent census data by the Washington, DC-based advocacy group National Partnership for Women & Families. The United States is one out of five countries not to offer paid parental leave. Let’s take a look at other countries who offer both maternity and paternity leave to both women and men. The British government offers fathers three months of paid paternity leave if their partner returns to work. The women receive nine-months paid leave, if the fathers can take their last three months, as well as they would be eligible for an additional three month of unpaid leave. The reason for this is to allow mothers who earn more than their partners to return earlier to work than it has otherwise been possible. The new British plan is to allow 12 months’ leave, with the first six months exclusively for the mother and the remainder available to either parent-it is similar to the Danish system. In Sweden and Norway, dads are forced to carry their share of the baby burden: if the men decline the paid leave for them, the family loses its entitlement to those weeks altogether. The main point is to have both parents together