Yes, you're valuable to your employer. But you're also valuable to your new baby.
In some ways, my two-week parental leave felt like an exercise in survivalist existence.
Mrs. Tepper and I spent the vast majority
of those cold, dark winter days bunkered in our two-bedroom apartment
with a seven-pound eating machine, venturing outside only on rare
occasions for food and essential supplies (like diaper cream).
Yet those 14 days also functioned as a way station to our new life.
We got to know each other as a family. We
learned to feed the tyke — which doesn’t come as easily as you’d think —
as well as bathe him, clothe him and hold him just so. We decoded which
sounds represented hunger and which ones meant sleepiness.
And then, after two weeks, I went back to work.
Thankfully Mrs. Tepper was allowed a
six-month leave from her job — mostly paid. During that time, while my
role transitioned from co-starring to supporting, my wife became Luke’s
primary caregiver and the parenting pressure intensified. She was the
one getting up in the middle of the night when Luke woke up crying,
primarily because of the nature of our differing leave benefits.
Which is weird.
Dads these days exhibit a kind of cognitive dissonance. Men say we want to spend more time with the kids,
and that parenting should be a 50/50 responsibility of both parents,
according to a Boston College Center for Work and Family study that
surveyed 1,000 fathers in nearly 300 companies. But even so, unequal
parental leave policies — many of which tie maternity leave to
short-term disability — often leave couples in “traditional”
arrangements with the wives primarily responsible for childcare.
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