New parental leave to transform families

Parental leave will undoubtedly take a strange bite out of a life

- NKOSIKHULULE NYEMBEZI

WHEN I approached my second ‘parental leave’ in 2008, two years after the first, I never felt dread or hesitation but excitement and freedom.

I no longer had that low, leaden kind of panic, which initially grew inside me alongside my son’s new fingernails and feet. It was not an official parental leave then, but an accumulation of several recognised leave days in the human resources book.

I am thinking about it again, another long stretch of time, as the Constitutional Court delivered its October 3 landmark judgment setting the definitive standard for parental leave, ensuring equal treatment for all parents — regardless of gender, family structure, or parental status.

What strikes me most is how aptly the court decision also shifts society's mindset around the idea that parental leave has never been accurately titled by those who delayed its legal introduction in our family-centred society.

Instead of the holiday the patriarchal society has long billed it as, it is hard work. It is a period of leave from what a working parent all knows: taking leave of the mind, body, job and relationships that shape social and professional life. And it is a period that does not end when or if a working parent returns to work. It is just the start of a new chapter in family life.

Curiously, the parental leave subject has started an emotionally charged debate in my social circles and beyond about the number of men likely to take it. Only about three in five secondor third-time fathers will likely take it, despite clear benefits for families and society.

Estimating the same with first-time fathers is complicated because of the high unemployment rate excluding the youth from the normative life development pathways.