![Australia's government paid parental leave scheme is about to become the most miserly in the developed world.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170619144044im_/http://www.essentialbaby.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/a/t/c/7/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvv2rg.png/1493514616307.jpg)
We all know about motherhood issues – motherhood being a proposition no one can oppose. But what about fatherhood? On this issue, it seems our society's views are more equivocal.
We can measure this lack of enthusiasm in the figures we report today. Remarkably few fathers – one in three of those eligible – are keen to take up the federal government's support for two weeks' leave for fathers and partners, paid at the minimum wage, when their child is born. This seems to imply that for most of those eligible (fathers earning less than $150,000 a year) the rearing of children is someone else's job.
It is possible of course that many fathers of newborn children simply don't know they can claim the paid leave, which was made available to help fathers and partners to bond with newborn children. That is the view of Jenny Macklin, MP, who as minister for families and community services in the last Labor government set up the scheme, known as Dad and Partner Pay, or DAPP.
Ms Macklin now believes DAPP should be publicised more effectively. But there are other possibilities. The money may not be enough to tempt male workers to break into their work schedule. Or they may think that two weeks is insufficient time for bonding with a new child.
Whatever its cause, the new fathers' lack of enthusiasm suggests many Australian males place a low priority on the task of bonding with their own baby.
If that is correct, it would not be surprising. It might explain Australia's poor performance in international comparisons of provisions for child care, particularly parental leave. Despite Ms Macklin's efforts as a minister, Australia ranks near the bottom of OECD countries in its provisions for leave – of all kinds – around the birth of a child.
Although Tony Abbott promised an extremely generous form of paid parental leave, his suggestion received scant support. And somewhat surprisingly given Mr Abbott's enthusiasm for all things family, his government also attempted to undermine Labor's scheme with a ban on so-called double dipping, whereby parents were receiving both a government benefit and any benefit their employer provided at the same time. That attempt, in the 2014 budget, has not passed the federal parliament.
Yet Australia's lacklustre performance on assistance for parents of newborn children reflects an underlying political reality: although we may say we want it, we don't really demand it. And as today's report shows, if it is offered to them, many men don't take it up.
A lot has been said lately about work-life balance – the proposition that the demands of the workplace, where men and women are now present in roughly equal numbers, should take account of the opposing but equally important demands of family life, leisure and the world outside work. A worthy aim. It is a pity – indeed it is completely unjust – that the majority of our real-world decisions seem still to reflect the values and the economic realities of another era, when men worked and women stayed home with the children.