What About Dads?

involved as work allows me to be. Well, the truth of the matter is, during the week, not a whole hell of a lot, and it's not fair to anyone. Really. What is frustrating about being a working dad pretty much everything. When we talk about the pay gap, we're talking about

a ratio how much women make compared to men. We spend a lot of time talking about one side of that equation, women, But to understand why women take a pay cut when they have kids, we have to look at what happens to men when they become Dad's what's frustrating about being a working dad. It's really about, you know, the things in the middle of the day, things at school, volunteering at school that other parents are able to do that usually, I am not able to do it when

you work. Yeah, I guess that's frustrating about being a working dad. He's just not seeing them as much, you know, only seeing them for maybe an hour in the morning, an hour at night, a couple of hours a day. Really, it's not much. Rebecca Glaubert is a sociologist at the University of New Hampshire who studies a phenomenon known as the fatherhood bonus. Having kids, she says, is good for men's careers. I'm not saying that suddenly with the birth of a child, you know, a man is called into

a supervisor's office and immediately given a raise. It has more to do with over the course of that year and the following year's fathers tend to see their wages rise a bit more quickly relative to childless men. Men's earnings increase more than six percent when they have children, even controlling for factors like experience, education, hours worked, and

spousal incomes. While employers see motherhood as something distracting, they see fatherhood as something that makes men better at their jobs. The assumption is that those men will work hard to support their families. They're more stable, more committed. But where does that leave women? Their incomes decrease four percent for each child that they have. Yes, even controlling for all of those same factors, these stats are related. Men's careers can take off because women are taking the pay hit.

We've spent the first half of the season talking about women, but we can't end the motherhood penalty or close the gender pay gap without debts of men have no access to leave of any kind for the birth of a child. The gender lie helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a case you should never say I'm ready to have a baby. Am I ready to lose my job? There's no single industry where women aren't punished or appropriated. When men have children, they experience a pay bump. When

women have children, the opposite happens. Fathers with partners who also work say they find it difficult to find a balance between home and work. Gender is no longer the factor creating the greatest way to discrepancy in this country. Motherhood is welcome to the paycheck. I'm Rebecca Greenfield. In a two parent household, it makes sense in theory that both parents would share the burdens of childcare equally. And split the professional consequences us. But it doesn't work that way.

The same structures that discourage moms from working also discourage men from spending more time with their kids. Historically, it's been hard to get men in positions of power to see how these gender roles have hurt women. What's been a lot more convincing is showing how these gender roles hurt men too. One of the first people to show how effective this argument is was Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In nineteen seventy two, she took up her very first gender

discrimination case. Charles Morritts was a single man who took care of his elderly mother, so when he filed his taxes, he took a deduction for money he spent on her caretakers. But the RS rejected his claim and they said, well, if we're talking about caregivers, then this must be women. That's Daniel Steepleman, who wrote the Ruth Bader Ginsberg biopic on the Basis of Sex. He also happens to be Ruth bader Ginsberg's nephew. Daniel says that the caretaker benefit

was really written with women in mind. The great irony of so many of these laws. Is that it came from a place of men thinking they were being helpful, and in their mind, if you were a woman, you were the caregiver to your family. Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued the case under the Civil Rights Act, which says you

can't discriminate on the basis of sex. She wasn't the first person to point out that gender discrimination is unfair and holds people back and hurts people financially, but she was the first person to do it in a way

to convince a panel of men. One was that it was the first time that this argument was made on behalf of a man um This argument had been made before over the course of a hundred years arguing against gender discrimination, but always from the perspective of a woman who had been treated unfairly, and male judges just couldn't see it. They couldn't understand what the big deal was.

She won the case. It was a big deal not just because men could claim in new tax deduction, but because this little provision in the tax code no longer assumed that women were the only caretakers, an assumption that hurts both men and women by keeping men out of the home and women out of the workplace. It was an even bigger deal because it opened up the door for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and others to challenge any law that viewed men and women differently, and there were a

lot of them. The Charles Mart's case became Ruth Bader Ginsberg's playbook for the next decade. She argued and won dozens of cases that struck down gendered laws by showing how they hurt men, which was a shortcut to equality for women. There was a series of landmark decisions in which they basically made it harder and harder for a law that discriminates on the basis of sex to be

deemed constitutional. So fast forward to the nineties, legislators were drafting the Family Medical Leave Act, and because of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's fight, they purposefully used gender neutral language. The law allows primary caregivers that can be a man, a woman, or anyone to take off twelve weeks of unpaid leave to care for a newborn or a sick family member. The idea was if men take time off, women might not take as much of a career hit when they do.

They won't face the same penalties and pay our opportunities, but changing the laws is just the beginning. Kevin Knusman was one of the first men to try and take advantage of fm l A, and it didn't go well. Susan Burfield is a reporter at Bloomberg. She spoke to Kevin about what happened when he wanted to stay home to take care of his daughter. Kevin Knusman grew up with an involved dad, off work at four home by four ten. Kevin wanted to be the same kind of father.

We've been married, I guess about nine or ten years, and so we were very happy to be expecting our daughter. I intended to take an extended leave following her birth. That's Kevin. He was working as a police officer in flight paramedic in Maryland and expected to be able to take time off to help his wife, Kim, care for their newborn. But near the end of her pregnancy, Kim got sick and her doctor said she would need extra rest after the birth, Kevin would have to do even

more for their daughter. This was a year earlier, President Bill Clinton had signed the Family Medical Leave Act into law, the first and only federal leave law the US has entitled parents to take up to twelve weeks of unpaid time off to care for a newborn or an ill family member. This bill will strengthen our families, and I believe it will strengthen our businesses and our economy as well. When Kevin's wife got pregnant, he asked the state police for at least four weeks of f m l A

leave under the new law. A supervisor denied his request, so then he asked for time off using Maryland state benefits. He said that he, not his wife, would be his daughter's main caregiver, and he asked for thirty days leave the amount of mother would be granted, but that request was denied too. He was told you're not entitled to be a primary care provider because you're a man, and unless your wife is dead or in a comb, or you can breastfeed, you're not and will not ever be

qualified for a primary care provider. After ten days, HR ordered Kevin back to work. Well, I was dumbfounded. I was a long time state trooper, I had lots of leave, and my way of thinking I was I was entitled to use that leave. My wife needed help. It made me basically choose between my family or feeding my family with my job. Kevin was up against centuries of social norms. Mother Is are automatically assumed to be the main caregivers in the months after the birth, and all the years

after that, fathers are assumed to be the providers. F m l A was supposed to be a new labor standard that applied equally to women and men, exactly what Ruth bader Ginsburg wanted. If it just applied to women, employers would have incentive not to hire them, or promote them, or pay them fairly. I immediately recognized this as a case that was firmly within the tradition of the a c l U as Ruth bader Ginsburg first envisioned it, and the fm l A had just recently passed, So, uh,

this was very exciting to me. That's Sarah Mandelbaum, one of the lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union who worked on Kevin's case. After the Charles Mooretts case, Ruth bader Ginsburg co founded the Women's Rights Project at the a c l U, which is where she worked to keep striking down laws that treated men and women differently. The f m l A should have been the perfect example of the law that met Ginsburg's standard. According to fm l A, Kevin should have been entitled to the

time off. He'd been on the police force for eighteen years. F m l A kicks in after one year. So Kevin sued and he got lots of recognition from it. He spoke to Congress, he was in Hillary Clinton's book, he met the President. Kevin became Trooper Dad. His lawyers expected the state to quickly settle the case. These rights were not abstractions. This is bedrock stuff, family values, equal treatment, that should you cut across gender lines. That was Robin Cocky,

another of Kevin's lawyers. They all thought Kevin was the perfect plaintiff. One of the cool aspects of the case was that Kevin was not a granola crunching hippie. Kevin was, you know, just a classic state trooper straight out of Central Casting. He was a lifelong Republican n R A member Aboard Again Christian, a rock solid Eastern Shore Conservative, and that made the sort of personal dynamics of the

case fascinating. Robin was surprised that the police and the state dug in, but most state troopers were mail What if others wanted to take print to leave that could be disruptive not just to the agency's work, but to how the agency saw itself. They had a force of twelve or fift troopers, probably ninety seven are men, and they probably didn't want all these men Willy Nilly taken

the leave following the birth of their child. Kevin was taking a stand against his employer, and not just any employer, but the Maryland State Police. He was threatening how the mostly male organization functioned. It would have to take account of its employees home lives. It would have to become more flexible. They were going to have to give male employees the same leave benefits as the women were entitled to.

That was pure and simple. From the time he folowed the lawsuit to the trial in Kevin showed up for work. He flew in the helicopter. He gave medical assistance, He dealt with criminals at home. He helped care for his daughter, Page and a second daughter, Hope. Some troopers were supportive, others stand offish. Some of the I guess more traditional state Police employees were pretty reserved or maybe puzzled by

the whole stay at home dad kind of thing. But uh, there were lots of severe employees in the state Police. There were a lot of young troopers that were absolutely supportive. But suing your employer is stressful. You're hyper vigilant, is I guess the word that the professionals might use you just you just want to be on your game and not give any room for disciplinary action to be to be taken. So it was pretty difficult. Kevin became depressed

and sought psychiatric treatment. The state would later use that against him, and then finally in January, after four years of waiting, Kevin's trial began. The law was pretty clear. Men are entitled to use fm l A too. It doesn't matter if their wives are healthy or sick. The trial lasted two weeks. The jury deliberated for only two hours. It awarded Kevin three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars for emotional damages in the first ever sex discrimination verdict

in conjunction with the Family and Medical Leave Act. There were several times the jury gasped at revelations in the in the process of the trial from the people that were testifying on behalf of the State Police, and so, you know, we felt that there was an emotional impact. The state appealed the verdict eventually that three seventy five thousand dollars. It was reduced to about forty There were also repercussions against Kevin because he broke this code of manhood.

When he returned to work after the trial, he was grounded. The police insisted he undergo a psychiatric evaluation before he could rejoin the flight paramedics. The Baltimore Sun said using his past mental health issues against him was an old ruse of dictators. Kevin calls it retaliation. They never came and got my police car, my gun, or my badge. They never suspended my arrest powers, but they did not let me fly. Six months after the verdict, in July,

Kevin retired from the Maryland Police Force. He didn't get a party or a parting gift. He was forty two. Kevin became a stay at home dad, and when his daughters were older, he returned to being a paramedic, but not for the state. Kevin's case set the legal precedent for more men to take time off when their kids are born, but the stigma remains, and many of the men we spoke to say they still find it hard to break the gender norms. I'm expected to handle one

of what happens with work and generating income. Right, I am the only person that generates an income at my house, and so I'm a percent responsible for that and sort of the pressure is on to make sure that I'm performing at a high level at work so that that income can be there to support our family. That I feel my guilt is that I'm actually going to work and not able to spend time with her. It's not the other way around. It's not like work is I feel bad for leaving. It's feel bad for not being

with her and going to work. But for now, Yeah, there's these sometimes these moments when you just watch opportunities have to float away. I've never been penalized for leaving work to go and be with the kids, but they'll say things like, oh, you're going home to babysit yor time is the most precious and valuable commodity that we have.

If there were more Kevin's and from day one, more men were involved at home, women wouldn't be the only ones taking time away from work and taking that pay hin But getting them to actually be involved parents is a whole other challenge. Keith Parmenter, who's a law professor at will lamb At University says that partly they're worried about the professional consequences. He studied paternity leave patterns over the past several decades and what happens to the men

who take it. Those fathers are more likely to be punished at work, to be viewed as less committed to work, to be viewed as frankly less masculine. And so the code and the pressure coming cultural and from employers specifically is loud and clear to men that if you dare sort of break that gender norm and and actually engaging caregiving, you're going to be punished. But another part of it is that we still don't expect much of men. We still live in a world where celebrity men are championed

for acknowledging they have a kid. How that is the bar that low are these guys that week and that cowardly that we're golf clapping him for being like, yeah, I have a child, Like really, really, it's sad. That's Alexis Ohanion a k A. Mr. Serena Williams. Alexis is married to one of the greatest and most successful athletes of all time, but he's also successful in his own right. He founded Reddit and now runs his own venture capital firm.

In the last year and a half since his daughter, Alexis Olympia o'hannian Jr. Was born, Alexis has cultivated a pub like image of himself as a woke, involved dad. All you have to do is look at his Instagram. Where's your belly? I have eaten it. Alexis is on a mission to get more guys to act like him. Recently, he did the media around talking all about how important

it is to take paternity leave. Of all the things we are asking men to do, spending some time with their newborn and their partners not I mean not the hardest thing we've been asked to do. When his daughter was born, he took all of the paid paternity leave

his venture capital firm offers, sixteen weeks in total. I think more and more men need to hear from other dads, are expecting dads that they took the time and how great it was, and also how awful it was, and how because it was so awful sometimes made it so great when it wasn't like it's not like it's it is not all roses, but as a time you will never get it back. And yeah, even the three a m where you're just like praying that she's going to go back to sleep. To be fair, Alexis and Serena

are wealthy and privileged. Most men in the US don't get any paid paternity leave at all, but most companies in Silicon Valley, where Alexis is based do offer paid parental leave that's for both moms and dads to take time off to care for a newborn, and California, where Alexis lives, also has a paid family leave law on the books, but men still generally don't take it. Three quarters of the people who take paid leave in California are women, and fathers who do take paid leave aren't

taking very much, just around two weeks. So even with generous laws and policies, women are still the one staying at home. Alexis says he wants to change that first by normalizing paternity leave. If other men see him taking the leave, they all think it's okay to take time off too. And I heard from a lot of founders in the valley. I heard from a lot of employees in the valley how important it was that they saw me taking my full sixteen weeks and being really outspoken

about it. Once the stigma washes away, it'll be pretty quick to adapt. And and if Sweden is any indication, I don't know if you've seen the latte papas. The latte papa trend is fascinating in Sweden. It's just all these rugged Swedish dudes going out with their baby bjorns. That's right, he said, the latte papa's. So in Sweden, new parents get more than a year of paid time off, and dads are required to take three months of that leave.

That's where the latte papa's come in. Their new dads who congregate in cafes with their babies strapped to their chest. They're even trend stories about them. So how much fun when you're taking six months? I'm taking six months to I'm having months this moment. By the way, the pay gap there is smaller, it's less than according to the European Commission, compared to a round in the US. But the reason men in Sweden take leave isn't just because

other men do it. It's because there are incentives. Sweden introduced what was called a daddy quota. Fathers there were given thirty days of paid leave, but if they didn't use it, they lost the paid time off. After that, the proportion of men taking leave almost doubled since Sweden has up that quota to ninety days, and now even more men take the leave. In the US, men don't have much of an incentive to take time off at all.

Most men only get leave through fm l A, which means months without a paycheck, something most people can't afford. They also face high workplace penalties if they do anything more than bare minimum parenting. Of course, paternity leave is just the beginning. Like Keith said, things get worse for men at work the more they tried to be involved at home. Experts call this the fatherhood cliff. Men who take on more childcare responsibilities lose status in the workplace,

their careers can take a dive. If we want to help women, we have to make it normal for men to be involved, not just when their kids are infants. So how can we change that? Alexis thinks we can start by adding some incentives. He recently started a million dollar fund with DOV to pay new dads five thousand dollars each to take time off. Two dads will essentially be paid to stay home, which isn't very many. It's a very small start, and even Alexis knows that it's

not the be all, end all solution. Here he is talking about his initiative on the Today Show. I'm still actively campaigning for a federal law to pass. We're the only industrialized nation that does not have any kind of paid family leave, and it's something that that I think we deserve for nation that really believes in family values

like I know we do. I want to give eric cover to the guy who doesn't have the economic peace of mind that I know that we have, because he he should have that chance to be with his partner, to be with his child. You don't get that time back. Making parentally normal for men won't solve the pay gap on its own. There's eighteen years of a kid's life

at home after that. But if motherhood makes the pay gap so much worse, maybe those first few months of fatherhood is one place to start looking for how to fix it. Next week on the paycheck. What happens to the global economy when women stop having kids. We are all going to eventually face slower population growth or shrinking populations, and that is going to have to change if people want to see the kind of growth that previous generations

have enjoyed. Thanks for listening to the Paycheck. If you like the show, please head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to rate, review, and subscribe. This show was hosted and reported by me Rebecca Greenfield and reported by Susan Burfield, Jillian Goodman, and Alexis ben Venisti. This episode was edited by Jillian Goodman and produced by Samantha Gatzick. We also had production help from Francesca Levie,

Janet Patkin, and Liz Smith. Our original music is by Leo Sidron and thanks to all the dads we spoke to for this episode. Francesca Levi is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts.