Men campaigning for enhanced paternity leave have attached lifesize model babies in slings to bronze statues of men across central London and called on the government to improve the UK’s parental leave options, which are ranked the least generous in Europe for fathers.
Activists from a new campaign group, the Dad Shift, tied model babies to statues of the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the actors Laurence Olivier and Gene Kelly and the footballers Thierry Henry and Tony Adams, in an attempt to focus attention on the importance of father-baby bonding.
The UK has the worst paternity leave offer in Europe, with only two statutory weeks of leave, paid at £184.03 a week. As a result, recent research found one in three UK fathers took no paternity leave after the birth of their child, and one in two families where the fathers took paternity leave reported struggling financially afterwards.
The campaigners plan to deliver an open letter to the prime minister later this month, calling on him to take swift action to improve paternity leave.
“Proper parental leave for fathers and co-parents is good for mothers, good for babies, good for fathers and good for society too. Countries with six or more weeks’ paternity leave have a gender pay gap that’s 4% smaller and a workforce participation gap that is 3.7% smaller too, meaning change can help grow the economy while helping British families,” the open letter says.
Campaigners are asking for “parental leave that is affordable for people to take, gives a substantial allowance of time, and supports equality among parents”.
New polling carried out for the campaign launch found that 90% of fathers said they wanted to be a bigger part of their children’s lives. The Labour party promised in its manifesto that its government would “review the parental leave system, so it best supports working families, within its first year in government”.
The Dad Shift’s co-founders, George Gabriel and Alex Lloyd Hunter, travelled around central London to attach model babies to the statues of men, assisted by Mel Pinet, who runs classes to help parents master the art of tying baby slings, and bond with their newborn babies. The sight of the statues of distinguished male figures with babies wrapped to their chest attracted considerable interest from morning commuters.
“A lot of people stopped to take photographs; people responded very warmly. We meant it to be a positively provocative sight,” Gabriel said. “There’s such an imbalance in our portrayal and understanding of figures in public life. Women are often asked questions about their lives as wives, mothers and daughters, while male figures in public life are often not invited to share that part of themselves. We wanted to call attention to their role as fathers and also the need to better support people when babies arrive into their lives.”
Sitting between platforms eight and nine at Paddington station, Brunel (who had three children) looked very at ease with a baby nestling in his right arm and his top hat in his left hand. Kelly, swinging from a lamp-post in Leicester Square and brandishing an umbrella, looked cheerful, a baby strapped tightly to his chest.
John Seward Johnson II’s statue of a harried city worker, briefcase and raincoat in hand, who has been trying to hail a taxi since the sculpture was made in 1983, was instantly transformed by the addition of a baby in a sling into a frazzled parent trying to drop his child at nursery before work. Elsewhere, campaigners strapped twins on to Stephen Melton’s statue of a yuppie trader talking on his mobile phone.
Marvyn Harrison, the founder of the digital community Dope Black Dads, which is backing the campaign, said he was optimistic that the government would want to prioritise the issue. “It feels urgent. The UK is unusual in how far we lag behind other countries in this area,” he said. “We need to create lasting conditions for men to be better parents, husbands, friends, people.”
