Paternity test had me fooled

First of February and I mistook it for April Fools Day. Paternity tests went on sale at Boots, making them the first UK high street retailer to do so.


I had this warm, fuzzy image of a young man shuffling towards a pharmacy counter. And then shuffling back. All the while he’s surreptitiously squinting up at the shelves looking for it. £30 and a red face later, he’s back at home. And a few minutes later emerges from the loo, “Honey, it’s blue. You’re pregnant.”

For a fleeting second, I thought the world as we knew it had changed. Not sci-fi type change, just a world where women still had the babies but the men could find out first - just like women do with a maternity test kit. Imagine being the first one to know. Imagine being the one to tell your partner. Imagine having to think about all the things you’d have to think about before telling anyone. Imagine having that responsibility first. Imagine if paternity meant the same thing for men that maternity means for women.

Except of course, my image was fleeting and wishful. Paternity tests don’t tell you you’re going to become a father. They help to confirm that you’re already a biological father to a particular child. How silly of me to even dream that a paternity test would be about care and not just about rights.

Matthew Taylor mused recently on his blog about whether extending paternity leave was a form of social engineering by the government. But paternity has already been socially engineered. Whereas maternity begins with conception, we’re already socially programmed to think that paternity begins only after the birth. Indeed, this presumption is also based on law.

The problem with this – for fathers, for children, for gender equality – is that all too often a mother’s early biological connection with a child is given as a reason for her to be the main and/or the best carer.

I’m not advocating that men should be given greater rights during pregnancy than women nor even that men should be able to have babies. That’s another discussion. What I am saying is that we need to think much more openly about the effect that our understandings of maternity and paternity have on the way we parent and care.

Paternity leave rights confusion for fathers

Working Families, a leading UK work-life balance organisation, identified fathers as one of five problem areas for policy in a report published this month. It identifies the long notice period and service requirements as excluding a number of potential fathers from receiving paternity leave entitlements. The report is based on data from the Working Families helpline calls received during 2009.

These findings are consistent with findings from my research in which a number of fathers expressed confusion over when they were expected to notify their human resources department about their intention to take paternity leave. Babies do not tend to clock-watch their arrival and many fathers were adamant that they did not know when the baby would be born. One father went on paternity leave before his overdue-baby was born.

Another father was horrified when he was told that he did not qualify for paternity leave because he had only been with the company for two months. The way he saw it was that paternity leave was "for the birth and to help out with the family. It’s not that you’re trying to skive or bunk off work.”

I join with Working Families, and argue that all fathers should be entitled to levels of statutory paternity support regardless of their employment status.

Click here for the Working Families report.
Details of workplace rights for fathers can be found here.