Are you curious about the laws around paternity leave? Becoming a parent is undoubtedly one of the most life-altering and profound experiences in a person’s existence and forming a loving bond in the crucial first few months of an infant’s life can have a dramatic effect on their future development.

But for the longest time, and still, to this day somewhat, it was only mothers who were mandated time off for maternity leave in order to care for their newborns. 

Thankfully in the last decade or so, societal attitudes have changed toward the traditional roles of mothers and fathers in family units, recognizing that maternal bonds are just as important as paternal bonds between parents and their children.

Eligibility and Rights for Paternity Leave: A Guide for Fathers

However, laws in many countries and regions surrounding mandated paternity leave remain quite varied and unclear, raising a few obvious but important questions about the rules of mandated parental leave for both employers and employees.

If mothers are allowed to take months off work after having a child in most places, can dads get paternity leave?

Depending on what country, state, or province you live in, paternity leave regulations can differ quite wildly. As well, private employers may have their own parental leave policies that go beyond government regulations, while public and government institutions may have different rules depending on collective agreements with unions of which their employees are members. 

How does paternity leave in Canada and the United States?

The Government of Canada, for its part, runs a maternity and parental leave program of its own through its Employment Insurance benefits system. People who take time off work during their pregnancy or after a recent birth or adoption of a child are eligible for financial assistance under the program.

Parents taking time off work to attend to a newborn or newly adopted child are able to get up to $638 a week in EI maternity and parental benefits, or 55 percent of their typical weekly earnings. 

Maternity benefits under the federal EI program are solely for the parent who takes time off because they’re pregnant or have recently had a baby, but they can also access parental benefits, for which there are two options.

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New parents must choose either standard or extended parental benefits and both are required to fill out an individual application, though they must pick the same type of benefits. 

They can receive the money concurrently or split the payments up, though they must be taken within a year of birth or adoption for standard benefits, or 78 weeks for extended benefits.

The federal government advises new parents to make sure they choose the right option because it can’t be changed after the fact once they’ve received a payment under the parental benefits EI program. 

Do dads have the right to leave benefits?

For maternity benefits, the program offers up to 15 weeks of payments at 55 percent of your regular weekly income up to $638. Meanwhile, the standard parental benefits option allows for up to 40 weeks of payments at the same rate and weekly maximum and can be split up between partners.

However, one parent isn’t allowed to get more than 35 weeks of payments, while the extended parental benefits plan under Employment Insurance offers up to 69 weeks of payments, but only at a rate of a third of a parent’s weekly wages, for a maximum of $383 per week. 

Obviously, those payments seem quite low in the face of record inflation, so the EI parental leave benefits program might not be adequate for most new parents to rely upon all on its own.

Exploring the Possibility of Paternity Leave

But those applying for maternity leave benefits can also apply for parental leave benefits at the same time and qualify for both if they meet the requirements set out by the federal government. 

Allowing dads to take parental leave and share benefits under this program is relatively new, having been adopted by the Canadian government in 2018 as part of its annual budget.

At the time, the government touted it as a measure to tackle gender inequality, while also being inclusive for couples that adopt children as well as same-sex partners.

The sharing aspect of the EI parental leave benefits program was purportedly implemented because most parental leave claims, up to 85 percent, were made by women, and it aimed to incentivize all parents to take advantage of parental leave benefits upon the birth or adoption of a new child.

How many weeks of parental leave?

The Canadian government’s adoption of the parental leave-sharing scheme is consistent with international findings that robust and accessible leave programs contribute to important sustainability and international “social protection” goals.

According to the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation’s World Social Protection Report released in 2017, paid parental leave programs ideally recognize the unique and equally important roles of both parents and should promote the “more equitable sharing of care responsibilities.” 

According to the ILO’s report, policies related to “maternity protection” have been mainly adopted because of a mother’s “biological role” in caring for infants such as breastfeeding.

Fathers’ Rights to Paternity Leave: What You Need to Know

But the splitting of other child-rearing responsibilities between mothers and fathers is an important contributing factor to combatting the pervasive gender inequality of the past.

This fact has led to dozens of countries adopting paternity leave policies to not only encourage more paternal involvement in a child’s early care but also to incentivize more fathers to take leaves of absence on par with women, who have historically taken leaves in far greater numbers related to pregnancy and child-rearing. 

The agency found that only 40 nations had codified paternity leave policies in the mid-90s, a number that grew to more than 90 countries by 2015, including Myanmar, Uruguay, Iran, Bolivia, Mexico, Portugal, and Nicaragua. 

Employment standards and vacation entitlements

According to Statistics Canada, more than two million Canadians went on parental leave in some form between 2012 and 2017. In that period, the agency found that women took maternity or parental leaves of absence from their jobs at twice the rate of fathers, and their leaves also lasted longer than their parental counterparts.

While StatsCan reported that 88 percent of mothers took leaves in that five-year period, only 46 percent of fathers did the same. 

However, that number continues to trend upward, the agency reported that only 34 percent of fathers took parental leaves in the five-year period from 2001 to 2006.

Breaking Down Paternity Leave: Insights

Many fathers of newborns or newly adopted children opted not to take parental or paternity leaves but rather took vacation time or other forms of unpaid leave after the birth or adoption of a child. 

As is often the case in Canada, the outlier among these statistics was the province of Quebec, where mothers and fathers took leaves related to parental duties at roughly the same rate as mothers, more than 90 percent.

This is most likely because the province has its own program offering an additional five weeks of paternity leave to fathers, above and beyond the 35 weeks available in all provinces at the time of Statistics Canada’s survey. 

Entitlement without pay

The province of Quebec’s paternity leave program allows working fathers to take up to five consecutive weeks off upon the birth of a child. Although that entitlement is “without pay,” the province’s rules protect a father’s job and also may entitle a new father to benefits under the province’s parental insurance plan.

It compels employers to keep making contributions to insurance and pension plans, as long as the worker keeps up the contributions during his time off work. Moreover, after the provincially mandated paternity leave period ends, new fathers may also take advantage of parental leave benefits offered in Quebec. 

Fathers can start the leave period within a week of the child being born, and it doesn’t have to be consecutive but must be completed within 78 weeks of the birth.

That period was reduced to a year, or 52 weeks, for children before January 2021. The paternity leave period can be put on hold or divided up or even extended in cases where a child’s health is at stake.

Furthermore, paternity leave time cannot be transferred or shared between partners in Quebec. Expectant fathers also must give their employer’s written notice of the start and expected end dates of the leave, and that notice must be given at least three weeks before he intends to start the leave of absence, but there are exceptions in case the baby is born earlier than the expected due date. 

Return from paternity leave

Employers in Quebec, are required to hold and give an employee their old job back at the same wage and benefit rate after they return from paternity leave.

Should a new father want to come back to work earlier than planned, they also have to notify their employer at least three weeks beforehand.

Meanwhile, if a company eliminates a worker’s job while they’re on paternity leave, employees retain “the same rights and privileges … had he remained at work.” Though if an employee who takes paternity leave doesn’t return to work on the date given, a company is allowed to consider him to have resigned.

The provincial government in Quebec, though, notes that it’s “preferable” for an employer to confirm the date of return with the worker before determining that they’ve left their job. 

Insights for Expecting Dads

The benefits of new fathers taking paternity leave are well documented, and research shows that new dads who take advantage of parental leave benefits enjoy longer and more stable relationships with their partners versus dads who keep going to work following the birth of a child.

In a study published in 2019, for example, researchers found that even as little as two weeks of paternity leave can have relationship benefits, making them up to 25 percent less likely to see their relationships end in the six years after the birth of a child.

According to the study’s abstract, the findings are significant from a public policy perspective, showing the wide range of potential benefits of new fathers taking even a couple of weeks off in terms of “family stability.”

Organizations penalizing employees

Of course, different states and provinces have varied parental leave programs and policies, but most cater to expectant mothers. For example, the province of Ontario allows pregnant people to take up to 17 weeks off work, but that time is unpaid.

The province doesn’t require paid leave periods for employees, but it does entitle all new parents to take time off under its parental leave policies. Birth mothers can take up to 61 weeks of parental leave, in addition to the 17 weeks of pregnancy leave. 

Pregnancy leaves and parental leave are available to expectant mothers in Ontario, and both are said to be “separate” rights and allow fathers to take parental leave during a mother’s pregnancy leave period. 

The province requires employers to hold employees’ jobs for the duration of leaves of absence and prohibits companies and organizations from penalizing employees “in any way” due to taking a pregnancy or parental leave. 

United States Maternity Leave

In the United States, parental leave policies are also all over the map. The State of California, for instance, offers a paid leave for fathers program through its state disability insurance scheme. The state’s paid family leave for fathers regime allows those eligible to take time off to bond with a newly born child by offering “short-term wage replacement benefits.”

Workers in California who lose wages due to the need to take time off to care for a child can get up to eight weeks of payments at a rate of between 60 and 70 percent of their regular weekly wages.

 However, the United States is a black sheep among countries in the OECD, where every other nation offers at least 12 weeks of paid maternity leave, and half of its member nations offer some type of paid paternity leave or parental leave.

As of 2015, the OECD average for paid leave programs for fathers was eight weeks, with Korea and Japan being at the top of the list by offering a year of paid leave to newly minted fathers.

The problem, the OECD found, lies with countries failing to adopt paid-leave programs for fathers, instead only mandating unpaid leave periods that lead to lower uptake of parental leave claims in countries like the U.S., Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand, and Ireland. 

Dads get paternity leave conclusion

Having a new baby is a part-time or full-time job in itself, with no vacation days. It’s really important to get legal advice when dealing with a family law or employment law issue.

Get legal information from a lawyer in your area, legal advice from New York will be different than legal advice in Florida. Below are some things that you might want to talk to a law firm about:

• Do adoptive parents of a baby also have employment standard rights?
• How does the Medical Leave Act affect fatherhood and leave options?
• Can family members split leave time in the first year? This is known as shared parental leave.
• Are there any benefits for those that are self-employed through Service Canada?
• What is the number of weeks that you can get off of work? When will the leave end?

Do dads get paternity leave?

With societal attitudes continually evolving toward the traditional gender roles of parents in the past, countries all over the globe have begun to recognize the importance of offering leaves of absence to new fathers as well as new mothers.

As it’s often said, it takes a village to raise a child, but that can only happen effectively when new parents are given the time and breathing room to establish a childcare routine that caters to a newborn’s considerable needs.

Parental and paternity leave programs, therefore, need to be both robust and protective of a worker’s rights and not penalize people, especially fathers, who take time off to form crucial early-life bonds with their children.