With Father’s Day nearing, Dove Men+Care wants to cultivate advocates for paid paternity leave through a newly created forum on social media.
The grooming products company, a longtime outreach partner with City Dads Group, has launched Advocates for Paternity Leave, a closed Facebook group. In this digital space, DM+C hopes expectant dads, families and other individual and business allies will find inspiration to help change federal laws regarding paid family leave, engage with other like-minded activists, and learn how to advocate for the cause, according to company spokespeople.
As part of this most recent component of the paternity leave campaign, members of City Dads Group chapters around the county will be asking people — via social media — to join the Facebook group and sign the Paternity Leave Pledge. (You can find these by searching for #PaternityLeavePledge on Twitter and Facebook.)
+ + Join ‘Advocates for Paternity Leave’ + +
Dove Men+Care hopes this forum, moderated by experts in family leave issues, will create a community of changemakers and activists armed with the tools to change the federal law. DM+C plans to bring in leading business executives to address the economic benefits and barriers related to the implementation of paid paternity leave benefits.
This move follows the Pledge for Paternity Leave drive Dove Men+Care began in February. The company asked for individuals and businesses to take a Paternity Leave Pledge to encourage the creation and use of paid time off policies for new fathers. More than 30,000 pledges have been collected in three months, according to company spokespeople.
+ + Sign the pledge + +
New research from Promundo, a leading global organization in promoting gender justice, shows that while men want to be involved caregivers they don’t always get to even when they have federal protection to do so:
- On average, 85 percent of fathers around the world say they would do anything to be more involved following the birth/adoption of their child.
- Even in the half of global countries offer paid leave, only a third of dads actually took their full entitlement.
The United States is the only industrialized nation without a federally mandated family leave policy. Seven states — California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Washington — and the District of Columbia have passed paid family leave laws.
Only 15 percent of U.S. men have access to paid paternity leave benefits, and according to the U.S. Department of Labor, most new dads don’t take their full time off — paid or unpaid. Recent studies by DM+C and others show that almost two-thirds of fathers surveyed said they have quit or would consider changing jobs to be more involved in caring for a newborn or adopted child during those critical early days, weeks and months.
Photo by Humphrey Muleba on Unsplash
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