I’m about to start my 12 week paternity leave next week thanks to a state program and almost everyone that I’ve told has had their jaws on the floor that I would even want to do that.
Today I witnessed a group of coworkers almost bragging how little time they took after their kids were born. I’ve heard stuff like “Most men are hard working and want to support their families so they don’t take leave”.
To me it was a no brainer, I’m getting ~85% of my normal pay and I get to take care of my wife, our son and our newborn for 3 whole months. and for someone who hasn’t taken a day breathe in the past 3 years I think I deserve it.
I’m in the US so I know it’s a “strange” concept, but people have seemed genuinely upset, people it doesn’t affect at all. Again, it’s a state program available to almost anyone who’s worked in the past 2 years, I’ve talked to soon to be dads who scoffed at the idea and were happy to use a week of pto and that’s it.
I feel like I’m missing something.
I did call them out a bit. The thing that broke me was when I said something like “I provide a lot more than financial support. I cook, clean, change diapers etc…” And I saw the group split between the guys who do that stuff and those who don’t.
It made me sad, a lot of these guys are only a few years older than me and can’t really blame it on “how things used to be”. I felt like I was in the 50s or something and I needed to check if the bathrooms were segregated. I’ve never seen such ignorant toxic masculinity in real life, and I used to work in construction 10 years ago.