Father’s Day Blog
Welcoming a new child into the household is one of the most monumental events in any parent’s life, and it can also be one of the most stressful. For mothers and birth parents giving birth, the process of getting time off for all of the associated appointments and recovery involves a plethora of forms traded between their doctors and their employers.
For fathers and other non-birthing partners, the process can be just as complicated, but for different reasons. The federal Family Medical Leave Act allows non-birth parents to take up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave to bond with a new child in their household. Many employers are accustomed to requiring medical documentation to support a request for job-protected leave under the Family Medical Leave Act and try to require it for bonding parents too; however, that documentation isn’t necessary. A parent who is eligible for job-protected bonding leave need only provide reasonable proof of the qualifying family relationship, which could be as simple as a statement declaring that such a relationship exists. Moreover, employers may not request this documentation to interfere with or prevent an employee’s exercise of his FMLA rights.
The ability for all parents to take time off for welcoming and bonding with a new child in the home is good for the whole family: children, birth parents, and non-birth parent(s). Studies have shown that parental leave by a non-birthing parent, in addition to allowing a child to bond with both parents, can increase child test scores and create stronger parent-child relationships, among other benefits, in the long term. On top of that, sharing the task of caregiving in early family life can lead to a more equitable division of other household tasks and chores among family members.
As a growing awareness is directed towards the uneven loads some caretakers take on in a household setting, laws like this allow for a significant culture shift in how those workload divisions are created. Additionally, as more non-birthing parents exercise their rights under the FMLA, employers will become more accustomed to the practices, lessening the obstacles future parents face as they expand their families.
