Paternity leave as communism
Dear Francis,
I am writing to you today with momentous news. My dear wife delivered our son, our first child, at the beginning of April, automatically transmogrifying me into what anthropologists call a "dad." Mom is in fine fettle, at least as much as can be expected considering what her body went through.
I will write more in the future about fatherhood and all the attendant challenges and triumphs, but for now, just know that I am exhausted, used up, and completely knackered—and also, somehow, happier than I've ever been. That's the paradox of parenting an infant, I suppose. I knew what I was getting into, at least in an abstract sense, but I confess I didn't expect to feel this tired or this fulfilled.
Because we had a boy and not a girl, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be a boy. What is masculinity in this day and age, when gender is widely regarded as more fluid than it has been in the past? What does a healthy masculinity look like? I'll be cogitating on that question for a long time, I suspect. But not right now.
What else is new with me, you ask?
I'm on paternity leave for the next few weeks, and it's truly galling to know that this option doesn't exist for many men in this country. That's not a problem fathers in your country have to deal with, but it's a glaringly ubiquitous one in the United States. Paternity leave is salutary for all sorts of reasons, the most important of which is being around the house and available to support my wife. But there are selfish reasons to love paternity leave.
I've been telling people that paternity leave is like communism. What do I mean by this? In The German Ideology, Karl Marx and Freiderich Engels limned life under communism:
...in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
Sounds rather idyllic, no? It turns out that paternity leave is a lot like communism. As counterintuitive as it may sound with a newborn on my hands (or in my hands, as the case may be), without having to work, I've had ample amounts of time to indulge in some of my favorite activities and pastimes. The workaday life left me, on any given day, with just enough time to work, make dinner, watch an episode of TV with my wife, and read a few pages of a book as I slip into sleep.
My parental leave days, on the other hand, have looked like this:
- Change my son's diaper.
- Read a book while he sleeps in my arms.
- Listen to a podcast episode while I push his stroller about the neighborhood.
- Write this post at the neighborhood coffee shop while he sleeps soundly in his stroller next to the table.
- Tidy up the house while he sleeps.
- Watch and coo at my son as he lollygags in his bouncer or struggles to raise his head during tummy time.
- Fire up the ol' Xbox and play Skyrim while my son snoozes on my lap.
- Make dinner.
- Hang out with my wife and watch an episode or two of TV.
- Change my son's diaper and get him ready for his last feeding before sleep.
- Read a book as my eyelids grow heavier.
What makes parental leave feel like you are living in a sort of Elysium is the amount of time you have to spend on activities, whether they are important, frivolous, and somewhere in between. When you cut out the eight or so hours one spends toiling away at work most days, you almost feel as though you were drinking in life from a bottomless well.
The other reason parental leave is such a godsend is that it makes the sleep deprivation manageable. When you are chronically sleep deprived, even relatively straightforward tasks become a struggle, and that includes the rather undemanding undertaking of changing a diaper. But diaper changes aren't rocket science, and in a few short days you find that you could do them in your sleep (which, admittedly, I have come close to doing). My synapses don't need to be firing on all cylinders for me to keep my son alive and reasonably content. When people go on at length about the difficulties of being a new parent, you can be pretty sure it's in large part because they aren't getting nearly enough sleep at night.
I am lucky enough to have a job that offers paid parental leave. Many employers in the USA don't, and I think that's a damn shame. The numbers are rising, though, and that is some source of comfort. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, something like 50% of first-time dads took paid parental leave. In general, Europe does a much better job at this, as you know, Francis.
I am an indefatigable critic of Marx and his pestiferous and quixotic ideas, and so I am hardly advocating for the creation of anything like communism in the earthly realm. Perish the thought (as the countless victims of actually existing communism perished)! But certainly Marx and Engels were onto something when they wrote about all the fun and even nourishing things one can do when one has time to do them. Although work is a significant source of meaning for many, it is nevertheless the case that most people wouldn't continue slogging through their day jobs if they were independently wealthy. Perhaps one day the world will be affluent enough to have achieved the post-scarcity world Marx, Engels, and his votaries envisage, but for now, there is simply not enough stuff—cars, housing, washing machines, healthcare, and so forth—to provide all seven billion humans on this planet anything approaching the quality of life enjoyed by the middle class in the developed world, along with a corresponding amount of leisure time.
Perhaps the best we can do right now is paternity leave. Workers of the world, have kids.
With love,
SEW