The development of family leave in 1990–2005: Fathers in the leading role in reforms, in a supporting role as users

Introduction

The committee of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, which had examined the development of mothers’ maternity leave into parental leave, proposed as early as the mid-1970s that parents could share the last three months of the existing seven-month maternity leave and that fathers should be given the opportunity to take paternity leave at the same time as the mother (KM 1975:92). The justifications for developing parental leave were linked to women’s labour market position and to the interests of both the child and the father. Even at that time, concern was expressed about the impact on women’s labour market position of family benefits directed only at women.

Women continue, however, to bear the primary responsibility for caring for children in the family, despite the fact that men’s rights to care for their children have been developed through legislation. Finland, simultaneously with Norway, was the first in the world to introduce paternity leave in 1977, albeit conditional on the mother’s consent. Although Finland is a pioneer in the development of paternity leave and thereby of fathers’ rights, Finnish fathers still do not have an unambiguous right to their own parental leave (Haataja 2006, 22).

Parental leave and traditional paternity leave play different roles in childcare. One of the aims of parental leave is to support both parents’ independent responsibility for caring for their children while the other is in paid employment. In preparing parental leave legislation in Finland, concern was expressed on the one hand that leave and family benefits directed only at women might in the long term weaken women’s position in working life (KM 1975:92). On the other hand, the aim was to secure children’s rights to their father and fathers’ rights to care for their children. The purpose of paternity leave, in turn, was to enable the father to be at home at the same time as the mother following the birth of the child and to help the mother with the new baby.

Of the parental allowance days shared jointly with the mother (158 weekdays per parental allowance period), Finnish fathers use only 1.8 percent. Swedish fathers use a total of 19 percent of the earmarked and freely distributable parental allowance days (Haataja 2006, 86). When all the days to which Finnish fathers are legally entitled are taken into account (that is, paternity, bonus paternity, and parental allowance days), fathers use 8.8 percent of these. The corresponding figure for Swedish fathers is 20 (Haataja 2006, 86).

In Finland, fathers’ rights to their children and children’s rights to their fathers have been legally secured primarily through paternity leave of between 1 and 18 weekdays, taken at the same time as the mother. In Sweden, the introduction of the “father’s quota” (the portion of parental leave available only to the father) has halved the number of children whose fathers take no parental leave at all during the child’s first four years of life (Haataja 2006, 35).

According to data from the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, there are approximately 4,000 parents each year who received parental allowance at the minimum rate because they were in employment — that is, just under 20 percent of all those receiving parental allowance at the minimum rate. In some cases, therefore, the mother returns to work early during the maternity or parental allowance period, without the father in turn staying at home.

The purpose of this report is to examine the development of family leave legislation and the use of and compensation for family leave from the early 1990s to 2005. The report examines how changes in family leave legislation over the preceding 15 years have affected the use of family leave: what proportion of parents take family leave and for how long. At the same time, consideration is given to what the legislative changes were actually intended to achieve, and an assessment is made of how well this was accomplished.

The structure of the report is as follows. Chapter two addresses the main features of the development of family leave legislation and the principles underlying this development from the beginning of the recession to the present day. The following chapter examines the use of family leave over the preceding 15 years and in particular the impact of reforms made during that period on the use of family leave. Finally, chapter four examines family leave compensation. The summary chapter recaps the main features of the development of family leave and reflects on the impact of this development on women’s labour market position. (AI translation)

• ISSN: 1795-2832
• ISBN: 978-952-209-041-6
• Press Release in Finnish
• Publication in PDF-format