Outside, baby carriages are lined up in rows like cars in a pint-sized parking lot. Inside, it’s controlled pandemonium as toddlers careen between scattered dolls, squishy cushions, a furry dragon on wooden wheels and dads. Lots of dads.
These are not just weekend fathers. It’s a sunny Monday morning in the tidy Stockholm neighbourhood of Hammarby Sjöstad, and nearly everyone in the Solbackens preschool more than 18 months old is a father on extended parental leave.
When it comes to coping with the competing demands of work and family, Canadians already look to Sweden with envy. In recent years, the government has brought in a more flexible workday, made it easier for employees to take sabbaticals to pursue outside interests and launched a campaign to cut absenteeism in half by making the workplace far healthier.
But one measure rises above the others: a cutting-edge approach to paternity leave that is revolutionizing Sweden’s drive to balance the professional and personal lives of its working couples.
Both parents here are given generous time off to care for young children, but men receive a bonus for trading the office for diaper duty – cash, if they take an equal share of the leave, plus two additional “daddy months” that only they can use.
Magnus Zimmerman, a first-time father sprawled on the preschool floor with son Line, 1, and a little orange truck, wouldn’t have it any other way.
After Line was born, his mother stayed home for 12 months, two of which Mr. Zimmerman took off as well. She is now back on the job, but he doesn’t plan to return to Polystar, the small telecom supplier where he works, for another four months.
His bosses didn’t blink an eye. “The senior managers are all at home with their children. It would be unusual if I wasn’t.”
“Message to the workplace”
For couples trying to juggle careers and children, the father’s role is vital. Last month, the European Union extended mandatory paternity leave for all its members to two weeks, which is how long David Cameron was off the job in September when he became Britain’s first prime minister to stay home with a newborn.
Mr. Cameron’s decision raised eyebrows, but “if men don’t see themselves as equal or symmetrical or shared parties in that enterprise, it’s very exhausting for women,” says Andrea Doucet, who teaches sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa and has studied different models of parental leave.
As well as affecting the dynamics within a family, she explains, “the more that men can be involved … also sends a message to the workplace.”
Back in the late 1960s, Sweden did not allow immigration and introduced paid parental leave with guaranteed job protection to increase its work force. As a result, between 1970 and 1995, the number of women employed outside the home rose by one-third to 80 per cent.
But there was a problem. It had been assumed that, as women started to work, men would assume more responsibility at home. Yet fathers rarely took parental leave, leaving women to shoulder most of the child-care and household responsibilities as well as hold down a job.
So the powerful trade unions, women’s groups and successive governments looked for ways to tweak parental leave and change men’s behaviour and employers’ attitudes.
The thinking was that if men helped when babies were born, they’d keep it up afterward, says Ulrika Hagström, a social-benefits expert with the Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees. And if employers realized men were just as likely to take time off, “they would have to adapt.”
Again nothing happened. When couples were allowed to decide who stayed home, men almost always took a pass, often afraid that becoming Mr. Mom would endanger their careers. And that fear was real, Ms. Hagström says. “Some employers saw it as if they [men on leave] prioritized work less and the family more.”
