Twitter’s Agrawal and cricketer Virat Kohli might be happy changing nappies, but in India paternity leave is still controversial
- The tech titan and sporting hero were praised for taking time off for daddy duties, but society and the law make it easy for fathers to be uninvolved in child-rearing
- Private sector firms are under no obligation to provide any paternity leave. And when men do take time off, there’s a suspicion their real motivation is to watch TV and skive
When Mumbai-based engineer Shailesh Tomar, 32, became a father for the first time recently, he opted to work from home and help with childcare so his wife could return to work within three months after having their son.
But some relatives judged him for his choice to adopt the “hybrid work” model.
“They said you’re putting your wife’s career ahead of your own? You’ll repent it later. Women shouldn’t be given so much freedom that their husbands sit at home managing kids while they are at work.”
But for Tomar and his wife, who works as an event manager, the decision makes sense.
“She brings home a fatter pay packet, so we both decided that she’ll work full time,” he said.
Fathers shouldn’t be let off the hook easily
Many Indian netizens praised the 37-year-old for stepping in to do daddy duties, and normalising the practice of paternity leave in a country where child-rearing is still seen as a woman’s responsibility and there’s a stigma attached to such leave. Some even asked why he didn’t take more time off given that Twitter allows fathers up to 20 weeks of paternity leave.
Sharing a screenshot of Agrawal’s tweet on Instagram, Bollywood actor Anushka Sharma, who has 57.2 million followers, said it was “about time paternity leave is normalised”. The actor’s husband, cricketer Virat Kohli, had also taken time off when their child Vamika was born in January last year when Virat was captain of the Indian team. His decision triggered a national debate on what should be more important for a sportsman – the game or paternity leave – especially at a time when Kohli was required to lead India in a crucial international series.
A social problem, and a legal one
Much of this debate arises from the fact that both Indian society and law make it very easy for men to be uninvolved in child-rearing. While central Indian government employees get 15 days of paternity leave, there’s no such formal policy in the private sector. The Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, was amended in 2017 to allow female employees up to 26 weeks of paid maternity leave in establishments with more than 10 workers.
Asia’s paternity leave taboo: blame it on Confucius?
Indian activists said it was almost tragic that there was excitement over men taking time off to raise their own children.
“Isn’t raising babies a joint parental responsibility? So what’s the fuss?” asked Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research, a New Delhi based non-profit organisation that works for women’s empowerment. “In fact by law, men should be given as much leave as the women so that both parents can share this important duty together.”
However, Kumari added that Indian fathers who took time off were generally seen as being more likely to use that time to socialise or watch television rather than being a hands-on parent.
For paternity leave to have meaning, “the dad should be changing diapers, fixing bottle feeds and calming down a crying infant in the middle of the night just like mothers are expected to do”, she said.
“They shouldn’t be let off the hook easily.”
Sukriti Singh, a child psychologist and counsellor at New Delhi’s Max Hospital, said when fathers were present with their wives for the first few weeks of the newborn’s life, it had a positive impact on the family. It strengthened the bond parents had with the child and also the relationship between couples.
Yet for many families, this remains an ideal. The reality is that the burden of putting childcare entirely on women pushes them to take longer periods of leave from work, and in many cases, they quit working permanently.
A study titled Predicament Of Returning Mothers, conducted by Ashoka University’s Genpact Centre for Women Leadership and released last September, found that women who decided to continue working post-marriage were often forced to compromise on details such as job location, hours and industry.
Paternity leave law cries out for change
The research surveyed women from Delhi and Bengaluru, between the ages of 25 and 35. It included a mix of mothers with one or more than one child, those living in nuclear and extended families, those working in higher, middle and lower management and covered both the private and not-for-profit sectors.
The only way out of this situation, Sharma said, was to amend the law to make workplaces more gender sensitive.
With both societal norms and the law skewed against women, the savvier ones are fighting back. They are setting terms and conditions for their spouses to make it a level playing field for themselves.
Journalist Rima Mukherjee, 36, said that when she gave birth to her daughter last year, she had “made it clear to my husband that we’ll have kids only if he’s willing to invest equal quality time in parenting”.
“We consciously decided to take leave consecutively so we could both be with the baby for longer before resuming full time work,” she said. “After I exhausted my 26 weeks of leave at the newspaper I’m working for, my husband stepped in to take leave for another 20 weeks from his IT company.”
Mukherjee said this was a big change from when her mother “had to give up her job just to raise me and my brother because there was no help from dad”.
She said that while India was a long way off from the time when child rearing would be seen as a joint parental responsibility, things were changing, albeit slowly, “thanks to educated millennial men who are realising the importance of joint caregiving”.
