There were many hostile reactions to my suggestion, apparently an expression of mainstream feminism (not something of which I am often accused), that a father should be able to take paternity leave at any point up until the child is 18, rather than necessarily in the child's early infancy. And I think I know why.
Yes, there is the fact that this would kill off a good skive. Just what is he doing while, in particular, the child is still being breastfed? I mean, apart from being paid?
And yes, there is the fact that this is a challenge to one of the flagships or totems of New Labour smugness, namely paternity leave as presently arranged. They are terribly, terribly proud of having introduced it, and they simply assume, as is their wont, that everyone agrees with them.
But there are two rather deeper reasons for my interlocutors' ire.
One is that I want the ability to sit around watching the television and feeling self-satisfied while the wife changes nappies to be replaced with an ability, and thus a firm expectation, that proper paternal authority will be exercised, not least in adolescence.
And the other is that that authority requires an economic basis, namely high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs such as only the State can ever guarantee, and such as very often only the State can actually deliver.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Yes, there is the fact that this would kill off a good skive. Just what is he doing while, in particular, the child is still being breastfed?
ReplyDeleteWell, this rather depends on the individual, and on whether the mother is a complete doormat, but I'd suggest something along the lines of cooking, cleaning, shopping, all other household chores that can't be comfortably done by someone who's just passed the equivalent of a small watermelon through her chuff (or been cut open and stitched up), interspersed with nappy-changing and baby-bathing. Oh, and bottle preparation and sterilisation if (as is often the case) either the mother or the baby turn out not to be very keen on breastfeeding.
I'm hazarding a guess that you have no actual experience of any of this?
And whjy, exactly, it is it suddenly necessary to have him around doing these things, when it never was in the past?
ReplyDeleteI say again, this is about avoiding paternal responsibility later on in development, and about avoiding the always State-guaranteed and often State-delivered economic basis necessary for paternal authority.
I think you'll find that a great many fathers were around during the first week or two, only they had to take annual leave or resort to other stratagems.
ReplyDeleteI say again, this is about avoiding paternal responsibility later on in development, and about avoiding the always State-guaranteed and often State-delivered economic basis necessary for paternal authority.
Well, I'm not surprised you feel that way, since even the most cursory perusal of this blog reveals an inordinate fondness for conspiracy theories and a rather touching belief that our leaders are even vaguely capable of thinking strategically and long-term along the lines that you suggest.
I'd say that it seems far more reasonable to suppose that the granting of paternity leave (which is pretty piddling, all things considered: mine was a week on full pay and a second week at £100) is far more likely to encourage bonding between the parents at a crucially important time in their relationship - because it's only when the baby actually arrives that the sheer weight of responsibility really hits you.
I'm sure, but I still don't see what that has to do with the present point.
ReplyDeleteIt is a very middle-class and recent practice indeed for fathers to take time off when babies are born without complication. They never did in the days when paternal authority was much stronger than it is now. Because, of course, that authority's economic basis was secured by the State. THAT is what really matters.
Incidentally, arising from your first comment, you do realise that passing "the equivalent of a small watermelon through" the orifice to which you refer is in fact what that orifice was designed for?
We have become so used to the idea that it is in fact a male recreational facility, with female fertility as literally a medicable condition and pregnancy an unwanted side-effect of sex. But that is not how these things were, and are, actually set up.