Giving All Parents the Option to be the Primary Caregiver and Connect with Babies
Challenge
Giving all parents the option to be the primary care giver and connect with babies.
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REBA was in the position to develop our benefits packages from scratch, and we tried very hard to build flexibility and support for our team member’s lives into our plans, including flexible work schedules, unlimited PTO, and generous health care support for spouses, life-partners, and children. I also have always believed that “maternity” leave and “paternity leave” are biased concepts, assuming that women will be the parents who need most to attach and connect with newborns and newly adopted children. Thus, REBA developed a single “parental leave” policy that grants ALL parents, regardless of gender orientation or parental status the opportunity to spend three months with their new child (born, fostered, or adopted) with receiving full pay.
Outcomes
In REBA’s first 18-months of existence, two giving-birth mothers, two fathers, and one mother-not-giving-birth have been able to spend three months connecting with the new baby in their family, supporting their spouse, and not worrying about receiving a paycheck.
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Providing fathers and non-birthing-parents with little or no parental leave never made sense to me at my prior employers. Such policies make assumptions on the roles that males and females will play in a baby’s life, and make assumptions about the need for babies to bond to mothers more than fathers in their first weeks and months. When I had the chance to create policies for REBA from the ground up, I knew that REBA would have a ‘parental’ leave policy, same for both parents, regardless of gender. Yes, it is hard on the organization—it costs us a lot to backfill fathers and mothers to be out for three months—but it’s absolutely worth it knowing that REBA’s employees can spend the time to bond with the new child in their family.