It’s no joke, being a dad. In the UK, if you become one, you get two weeks of statutory paternity leave, at a piddling rate of £184.03 a week. That’s the worst offer in Europe. If you’re lucky, you’ll work at one of the minority of companies that’ll grant you a few weeks longer, but most employers—49 per cent—defer to the government-mandated fortnight.
When Alex Lloyd Hunter, 35, became a dad in early 2021, these issues hit home. “My wife and I were very deliberate about doing everything as equally as we can,” he says, “but there are a lot of barriers to that.”
Such barriers shaped the relationship Lloyd Hunter and his brother had with their dad. His brother was born at 9pm on a Sunday; at 9am on Monday morning, his father was back at his desk. “We barely saw him five days a week,” says Lloyd Hunter. “Now he’s a very doting grandfather, but he talks about how much he missed out… I think that experience is still very common.”
Earlier this year, Lloyd Hunter—who has a background working in campaigns—co-founded the Dad Shift, a loose, volunteer-run organisation of dads, parents and other groups demanding that paternity leave be modernised and made “fit for the 21st century”. It was launched in September with a headline-grabbing stunt after the Dad Shift team strapped baby slings to well-known statues in London. Its demands are simple: a paternity policy that’s properly paid and supports equality between parents—“so people are free to choose their own roles and how they want to parent together, rather than having them dictated to you by gender”.
If other countries on the continent are anything to go by, this can be done; although parents in the UK should maybe avoid learning how it works in Sweden, lest they hurl a YoYo pram through a coffee shop window. Swedish parents get 480 days of paid leave per child, or 240 days each if there are two parents. For most of this time they receive 80 per cent of their income (up to £3,590 a month). The first 90 days are ringfenced for each parent—and if they don’t use it, they lose it. It means fathers are not only being supported but compelled to take time off for their family. It has had a striking effect on gender dynamics: in 1974 Swedish men took up 0.5 per cent of parental leave days, in 2022 that had jumped to 30 per cent. In the UK, financial worries still mean that many men return to work before they are ready—that’s if they feel able to take any time off at all.
Better paternity leave is urgently needed, but while the Labour government (hopefully) musters up a new policy, a growing number of groups, including Dope Black Dads and Music Football Fatherhood, are forging a new notion of being a father‚ one that is emotionally involved, sensitive and present in domestic life. Rather than pitching men’s rights in opposition to women’s, like the combative direct-action group Fathers 4 Justice, these groups champion an inclusive, feminist vision of the family and are fighting for all parents, whether “dad”, “mum” or “non-birthing partner”. “We are coalitional,” says Lloyd Hunter. The Dad Shift has already collaborated with groups such as Pregnant Then Screwed, which fights discrimination against mothers and calls for better childcare policies.
Lloyd Hunter is conscious that ideas around gender seem to be regressing. Schoolboys are looking up to notorious misogynist Andrew Tate, and in many countries young men are being drawn to the hard right, casting votes for candidates that champion machismo. The rise of “tradwives” and pro-natalists online fuels a culture in which archaic notions around gender and the family are being reinforced. It is up to the current generation to fight against this and redefine fatherhood as an active role, not that of a distant breadwinner.
“We see ourselves as part of an alternative, positive idea for men and their role in society,” says Lloyd Hunter. “The traditional male role has eroded—but actually rethinking fatherhood and celebrating it, calling men in to say that you’re needed and valued in the family, is an important part of saying: this is what a man can be today.”
