Fathers-to-be received an early Christmas gift late when a new bill that grants them leave after the birth of a baby was adopted in parliament. In fact, all parents who are not birth mothers (and even moms) will benefit from the new bill.
It grants quite a few changes:
- An employee who is a parent, but is not entitled to maternity leave, may now take 10 consecutive days of parental leave when their child is born or when an adoption order is granted. (Before this bill, parents who are not birth mothers could only take family responsibility leave, which is limited to three days per year, or had to apply for annual leave.)
- An adoptive parent of a child younger than two years may also take adoption leave of two months and two weeks. If there are two adoptive parents, one of them is entitled to adoption leave and the other to parental leave.
- A commissioning parent in a surrogate motherhood agreement is also entitled to commissioning parental leave of two months and two weeks. If there are two commissioning parents, one of them may take commissioning parental leave and the other parental leave.
- Along with the bill, the recently approved UIF Act amendments also provide for increased maternity leave benefits that allow mothers to claim up to 66% of their salaries – up from 58% maximum.
While 10 days may not be much paternity leave, it’s an important starting point in what will be an ongoing conversation about gender-equal parenting, says Wessel van den Berg, Child Rights and Positive Parenting unit manager at Sonke Gender Justice.
Other countries are still miles ahead, though. Sweden, for example, gives fathers 18 weeks off at 80% of their salary. Canadian dads can take five weeks at 70% pay, or three weeks at 75%. And Iran gives new dads two weeks at full pay.
But it’s heartening that the new bill is written in gender-neutral language, says Wessel. This opens up parental leave to people of all sexual orientations or gender identities - until now, South African law has provided for same-sex marriage but not same-sex parenting, he explains. “We are very happy about this achievement since it opens up leave for all parents in South Africa.”
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