It’s true. Since 2007, Spanish fathers have been able to take at least two weeks of fully paid paternity leave (increased to five weeks in 2018) – and researchers studying the results have noticed a strange pattern.
Even though the policy succeeded in getting more women to stay in the workforce, studies also showed that Spanish families who were eligible for the paternity leave were also less likely to have more kids.
Researchers found that just two years after the policy was introduced, parents who qualified were seven to 15 per cent less likely to have another child than parents who missed the eligibility cutoff – and they have an interesting theory as to why.
It seems that spending more time with their children (or the idea of having to) may have made men more aware of the effort associated with childrearing – and it talked them out of wanting any more.
This is backed up by the finding that women actually started preferencing slightly larger families – potentially because it seemed like an easier feat when the effort was balanced out by their male partner.
Now, it might be easy to scoff at ‘lazy’ Spanish fathers, but Australian dads aren’t much better.
According to recent analysis conducted by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, our Mums take 95 per cent of all primary carers leave – and just one in 20 Australian fathers will take paternity leave at all (a low portion by global standards).
Time to step it up, boys!
