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Quarterly Essay #75
Men at Work: Australia’s Parenthood Trap
When New Zealand's prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, announced her pregnancy, the headlines raced around the world. But when Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg became the first prime minister and treasurer duo since the 1970s to take on their roles while bringing up young children, this detail passed largely without notice. Why do we still accept that fathers will be absent? Why do so few men take parental leave in this country? Why is flexible and part-time work still largely a female preserve? And what have we learned from the parental experiment of the COVID-19 lockdowns? In the past half-century, women have revolutionised the way they work and live. But men's lives on average have changed remarkably little. Is it because men don't want to change? Or is it because, every day in various ways, they are told they shouldn't? Annabel Crabb deploys political observation, workplace research and her characteristic humour and intelligence to argue that gender equity cannot be achieved until men are as free to leave the workplace (when their family lives change) as women are to enter it.
108 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2019
48 people are currently reading
568 people want to read
About the author
Annabel Crabb
15 books320 followersAnnabel Crabb has been a journalist since 1997, beginning her career at Adelaide’s Advertiser and moving on to cover politics first for the Age and then for the Sydney Morning Herald, where she was a columnist and sketch-writer. She is the author of Losing It: The Inside Story of the Labor Party in Opposition (2005) and the Quarterly Essay Stop at Nothing: The Life and Adventures of Malcolm Turnbull, which won a 2009 Walkley Award. She is presently the ABC’s chief online political writer.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews
December 5, 2022
This is an elaborate dance around a problem Annabel refuses to name.
Crabb’s takes on the topic of women at work always seem to miss the mark. Not because she is going over old ground (on the contrary, for anyone wondering why we are ‘still talking about this, it is 2019!!!’, it is because even though we seemingly keep talking about it, it remains unaddressed.), but because she would refer to play advocate for disenfranchised man, rather than mention the word patriarchy.
In talking about paid parental leave, she has said her motivation to write this essay was to address the fact that while there have been advances in female empowerment in the workplace, the situation for men has not changed. Women are the usual recipients of parental leave, and if a man manages to wrangle the system and gain paid parental leave, he is seen as at least an oddball for even wanting it, or at most a Jesus-like figure fighting male stereotypes (yay men). Basically in this fight to include women in male-dominated structures, men have not been expected to change as a result.
Her refusal to admit that patriarchal structures are the real cause means that her essays are focused on pondering ‘whyyyy for the love of God wHYyyy is this happening????!?!!’, rather than admitting that gender equality involves more than simply giving women a space to enter the workplace, but requires men and society as a whole to also change, and address the overarching oppressive structure that is the patriarchy. If we go on unwilling to even mention the word, we will not get very far.
Annabel’s descriptions of the Dirty Word are unsurpassed, but I found myself getting frustrated that these stellar descriptions never reached the point of naming the problem:
“There isn't an awful lot of research in Australia as to why this is so or where the wellspring is for these forces so extraordinarily powerful that they can shape the behavior of millions of people without ever being codified, and indeed do so even where formal rules explicitly direct the opposite.”
“Somehow, we've constructed a system of expectations in which a man who is doing his job is bound to it by something much deeper, and more fibrous than his contract of employment or even his need to provide … it involves finding and loosening restrains far more ancient than those outlined in any human resources manual.”
“Knots which have swelled with age and seawater, ropes that have bitten into the skin. But they need to come off. Why should they bind only men?”
All brilliantly written descriptions of patriarchal structures. The fact is they bind everyone, not just men. Men are not being suddenly singled out and **excluded** from childcare, the problem is that childcare has been and is still seen as a woman’s job. This is not about men being excluded, is it still about restrictions on women. Sorry men, still not about you.
I suspect the reluctance to name and shame the problem was because if she referred in any way to male hegemony she would be accused of misandry and shunted into the Leftist camp even more. The only other option is to advocate for the male perspective, lest men feel personally attacked by a woman articulating a systemic structure of society designed for and by men. Alas, still the only two options for a female journalist in 2019. Ironically just another example of how the patriarchy is still asserting its dominance.
Edit 6/12/22: I should point out since this is gaining likes, I’m a huge fan of Annabel Crabb 😬🫠
Crabb’s takes on the topic of women at work always seem to miss the mark. Not because she is going over old ground (on the contrary, for anyone wondering why we are ‘still talking about this, it is 2019!!!’, it is because even though we seemingly keep talking about it, it remains unaddressed.), but because she would refer to play advocate for disenfranchised man, rather than mention the word patriarchy.
In talking about paid parental leave, she has said her motivation to write this essay was to address the fact that while there have been advances in female empowerment in the workplace, the situation for men has not changed. Women are the usual recipients of parental leave, and if a man manages to wrangle the system and gain paid parental leave, he is seen as at least an oddball for even wanting it, or at most a Jesus-like figure fighting male stereotypes (yay men). Basically in this fight to include women in male-dominated structures, men have not been expected to change as a result.
Her refusal to admit that patriarchal structures are the real cause means that her essays are focused on pondering ‘whyyyy for the love of God wHYyyy is this happening????!?!!’, rather than admitting that gender equality involves more than simply giving women a space to enter the workplace, but requires men and society as a whole to also change, and address the overarching oppressive structure that is the patriarchy. If we go on unwilling to even mention the word, we will not get very far.
Annabel’s descriptions of the Dirty Word are unsurpassed, but I found myself getting frustrated that these stellar descriptions never reached the point of naming the problem:
“There isn't an awful lot of research in Australia as to why this is so or where the wellspring is for these forces so extraordinarily powerful that they can shape the behavior of millions of people without ever being codified, and indeed do so even where formal rules explicitly direct the opposite.”
“Somehow, we've constructed a system of expectations in which a man who is doing his job is bound to it by something much deeper, and more fibrous than his contract of employment or even his need to provide … it involves finding and loosening restrains far more ancient than those outlined in any human resources manual.”
“Knots which have swelled with age and seawater, ropes that have bitten into the skin. But they need to come off. Why should they bind only men?”
All brilliantly written descriptions of patriarchal structures. The fact is they bind everyone, not just men. Men are not being suddenly singled out and **excluded** from childcare, the problem is that childcare has been and is still seen as a woman’s job. This is not about men being excluded, is it still about restrictions on women. Sorry men, still not about you.
I suspect the reluctance to name and shame the problem was because if she referred in any way to male hegemony she would be accused of misandry and shunted into the Leftist camp even more. The only other option is to advocate for the male perspective, lest men feel personally attacked by a woman articulating a systemic structure of society designed for and by men. Alas, still the only two options for a female journalist in 2019. Ironically just another example of how the patriarchy is still asserting its dominance.
Edit 6/12/22: I should point out since this is gaining likes, I’m a huge fan of Annabel Crabb 😬🫠
October 19, 2019
A few reviews question why the continued focus on men in these discussions, which is perhaps a good question. But for me this essay was a good example of the mutual empowerment concomitant in the feminist movement. Dismantling of patriarchal structures frees men from the yoke of toxic masculinity by proxy as it empowers women.
Also I just love Annabel Crabb.
Also I just love Annabel Crabb.
September 21, 2019
Rated 3 stars but only because I was grumpy and frustrated...why are we still having this conversation? And why do I torture myself with reading this fodder when it’s preaching to the converted and most of those that need to read it aren’t. I also wonder at the approach - Crabb continually remains very diplomatic and concerned with the what men are missing out on. I get this is probably part strategy, part covering all aspects of the issue (I don’t deny that there are many advantages men stand to gain, I just think the disadvantages women still face are far more) but I think this issue deserves to stand alone as something that will improve the choices for women. Where are all the prominent male journalists writing to support women, or even, to raise the valid issues that men face, too? I can’t see any evidence that the diplomatic, male-centric strategy is any more effective in pushing for change.
February 3, 2021
Interesting Auspol & corporate Australia context, I learned a lot. A really useful read for anybody working in public service or the corporate sector, especially men. Pretty disappointing to dance around the concept of patriarchy, given many paragraphs are literally definitions of the term, though I understand why she didn't call it what it is.
September 26, 2019
I am unashamedly a massive Annabel Crabb fan. I think she is an incredible journalist who has an amazing ability with words that I can only dream of.
The Quarterly Essay series is a cross between a book and a magazine. Each issue is a single, stand alone essay of around 20,000 words. In this Quarterly Essay, Crabb examines why men in Australia seem to find it so hard to take parenting leave and how this is not only detrimental to women, but to men as well.
The issues she addresses in this book were first raised by her in her book "The Wife Drought." In that book, Crabb looked briefly at why men don't seem to view parenting as an equally shared task and why the lions share of it still falls to women. In Men at Work she explores the issue of men and their ability to take extended leave, work flexibly or work part time once their children are born. She examines society's views of what is acceptable and looks at company's that are daring to be different.
All of this sounds like it could be incredibly dry and boring to read, but not so. Annabel Crabb brings her signature humour and light touch to the subject. She apologises for raising Sweden (I think it was Sweden), who are way ahead of so many nations on how to provide a good work/ life balance for all members of the house.
It would be very easy for a topic such as this to come across as preachy, however Crabb doesn't look to lay blame. What she looks for is a way to improve the situation for all - to allow women to continue to develop a career and not be the gatekeeper of all child related information, for men to be able to form deep and meaningful relationships with their children, for parents to be able to share the load of child rearing and all that entails fairly and for children to see both parents are carers and providers.
Crabb's essay raises some excellent questions about how we can make the system better. She looks at companies that have made changes and are seeing real results and she challenges us all to examine how we view parenting and think about how we can do better.
The Quarterly Essay series is a cross between a book and a magazine. Each issue is a single, stand alone essay of around 20,000 words. In this Quarterly Essay, Crabb examines why men in Australia seem to find it so hard to take parenting leave and how this is not only detrimental to women, but to men as well.
The issues she addresses in this book were first raised by her in her book "The Wife Drought." In that book, Crabb looked briefly at why men don't seem to view parenting as an equally shared task and why the lions share of it still falls to women. In Men at Work she explores the issue of men and their ability to take extended leave, work flexibly or work part time once their children are born. She examines society's views of what is acceptable and looks at company's that are daring to be different.
All of this sounds like it could be incredibly dry and boring to read, but not so. Annabel Crabb brings her signature humour and light touch to the subject. She apologises for raising Sweden (I think it was Sweden), who are way ahead of so many nations on how to provide a good work/ life balance for all members of the house.
It would be very easy for a topic such as this to come across as preachy, however Crabb doesn't look to lay blame. What she looks for is a way to improve the situation for all - to allow women to continue to develop a career and not be the gatekeeper of all child related information, for men to be able to form deep and meaningful relationships with their children, for parents to be able to share the load of child rearing and all that entails fairly and for children to see both parents are carers and providers.
Crabb's essay raises some excellent questions about how we can make the system better. She looks at companies that have made changes and are seeing real results and she challenges us all to examine how we view parenting and think about how we can do better.
October 1, 2019
If there’s one thing I got from this essay it’s that we all should miss Gough Whitlam more; Medicare, human rights, abolished the death penalty, free tertiary education, land rights for aborigines and Torres strait islanders, maternity leave, no fault divorce, and many more including bought the artwork Blue Poles!. Dear god, what else might his government have achieved given the time to do so? Sighs…
This essay is all about parental leave and how men just don’t do their bit to help the family because it costs them promotions at work and devalues their earning capacity. Ah ha ha ha … Welcome to the parent-dome!
Sadly women not only have to bear the children, and raise them, but they also have to do more of the housework AND work. I’ve known lawyers who went into labour at their desk and were back at it two weeks later. It all seems unfair somehow. Especially when you add in the double whammy that women earn less but live longer, and thus have less in their superannuation accounts to retire on. There is a reason the largest growth area in homeless people is in older women of retirement age.
Personally, my husband said he worked so hard during the week that he should be able to do whatever he wanted on the weekend which somehow managed to never include children … and yes, there is a reason why I am divorced, thank you for asking.
Annabel explains it all in the most reasonable of terms – it’s society, we have to change the system so that men can feel better about actually giving a shit about raising their OWN children … but god. I am just so tired.
4 stars
This essay is all about parental leave and how men just don’t do their bit to help the family because it costs them promotions at work and devalues their earning capacity. Ah ha ha ha … Welcome to the parent-dome!
Sadly women not only have to bear the children, and raise them, but they also have to do more of the housework AND work. I’ve known lawyers who went into labour at their desk and were back at it two weeks later. It all seems unfair somehow. Especially when you add in the double whammy that women earn less but live longer, and thus have less in their superannuation accounts to retire on. There is a reason the largest growth area in homeless people is in older women of retirement age.
Personally, my husband said he worked so hard during the week that he should be able to do whatever he wanted on the weekend which somehow managed to never include children … and yes, there is a reason why I am divorced, thank you for asking.
Annabel explains it all in the most reasonable of terms – it’s society, we have to change the system so that men can feel better about actually giving a shit about raising their OWN children … but god. I am just so tired.
4 stars
May 23, 2020
Lord knows I like Annabel but I wish she would just mention sexism or patriarchy once. Would explain nearly every ‘why’ she questions tbh. Men saying one thing and acting another way?? Hmmm how can that be????
December 18, 2022
All ppl wanting to make children should read this. A few times. It’s not perfect but best (and shortest) thing I’ve come across that dissects the issue well.
Individual choice and policy “nudges” mean nothing when we’ve created an entire society and culture that insists women rear the children and men go to work. Time for a revolution
Individual choice and policy “nudges” mean nothing when we’ve created an entire society and culture that insists women rear the children and men go to work. Time for a revolution
June 13, 2022
An interesting look into the culture of paternity leave in Australia. I enjoyed Crabb’s analysis and I learnt more than I expected to. Particularly, I enjoyed her discussions around how policy simply isn’t enough to empower men in their parental role - the culture runs so deep that the patriarchy must first be deconstructed.
October 20, 2019
Excellent use of data but I kept wondering why Crabb seemed to skirt around the word 'patriarchy' whenever she asked 'But WHY is it like this?'
May 29, 2020
I usually keep my reviews to one or two sentences, summing up my views in short, succinct words encapsulating my overall reading experience.
I won't be doing that today.
My journey into motherhood was fraught with anguish. A difficult labour, led to an emergency c-section, the first time I held my son, I kept thinking about how I'd never been to hospital before this, never had an operation, and here I was, in pain, bleeding, emotionally traumatised and it was all because of him. My husband, woefully inept in dealing with his wife who had been through the life altering trauma of being cut open to give birth, went back to work within days of his son being born. And all I could think was how much my life had changed, and his had not. Not one iota.
Annabel's essay is amazing because there's no assignation of blame. She lays out the facts, the assumptive way our cultural identity has formed our collective conscientiousness when it comes to the role caregivers play in the workplace. The glaring disparity that is offered to men when it comes to part-time or flexible roles in the work force. At one point between baby 1 and baby 2, I was yearning frustratedly to my husband about my need to forge some sort of fulfilling career outside the domestic abode, he dejectedly pointed out that part-time work just wasn't an option for him. Mechanics don't do part-time. There was no flexibility and there was no point in asking. We could not afford the childcare fees if I worked full time also and besides, we wanted to have another baby. I felt trapped and stuck, destined to be undervalued and underutilised in my part-time role at least until our kids were school age.
It was an even more enlightening read as the changes in our society versa vie flexible work is even more timely due to the current COVID-19 pandemic and it's effects on traditional work places. Whilst the initial move to the home office was daunting, now I can only revel in it's benefits, and I live in a regional town whereby my commute to work is 20 mins at most. The exhausting part of my day as a working parent is negotiating 2 children and a grown male out of the door, with all their things, and looking presentable, by a certain time. Add the dropping off, picking up, parking, preparing food, ducking to the shops... my kids don't even do any extra curricular activities because I honestly don't know where I'd find the time. And see how I said I there, because my husband has left all child related administration to me.
The thing is, I don't keep quiet about it. I challenge. Constantly. I call it as I see it. My husband has a daughter but he is also the son of a single mother. He was raised by a strong woman, he married one and he will help raise one, and hopefully the constant challenge to entrenched cultural beliefs regarding traditional caregiving will be erased.
A banging read for a Friday night and one that I will think on for many months to come!
I won't be doing that today.
My journey into motherhood was fraught with anguish. A difficult labour, led to an emergency c-section, the first time I held my son, I kept thinking about how I'd never been to hospital before this, never had an operation, and here I was, in pain, bleeding, emotionally traumatised and it was all because of him. My husband, woefully inept in dealing with his wife who had been through the life altering trauma of being cut open to give birth, went back to work within days of his son being born. And all I could think was how much my life had changed, and his had not. Not one iota.
Annabel's essay is amazing because there's no assignation of blame. She lays out the facts, the assumptive way our cultural identity has formed our collective conscientiousness when it comes to the role caregivers play in the workplace. The glaring disparity that is offered to men when it comes to part-time or flexible roles in the work force. At one point between baby 1 and baby 2, I was yearning frustratedly to my husband about my need to forge some sort of fulfilling career outside the domestic abode, he dejectedly pointed out that part-time work just wasn't an option for him. Mechanics don't do part-time. There was no flexibility and there was no point in asking. We could not afford the childcare fees if I worked full time also and besides, we wanted to have another baby. I felt trapped and stuck, destined to be undervalued and underutilised in my part-time role at least until our kids were school age.
It was an even more enlightening read as the changes in our society versa vie flexible work is even more timely due to the current COVID-19 pandemic and it's effects on traditional work places. Whilst the initial move to the home office was daunting, now I can only revel in it's benefits, and I live in a regional town whereby my commute to work is 20 mins at most. The exhausting part of my day as a working parent is negotiating 2 children and a grown male out of the door, with all their things, and looking presentable, by a certain time. Add the dropping off, picking up, parking, preparing food, ducking to the shops... my kids don't even do any extra curricular activities because I honestly don't know where I'd find the time. And see how I said I there, because my husband has left all child related administration to me.
The thing is, I don't keep quiet about it. I challenge. Constantly. I call it as I see it. My husband has a daughter but he is also the son of a single mother. He was raised by a strong woman, he married one and he will help raise one, and hopefully the constant challenge to entrenched cultural beliefs regarding traditional caregiving will be erased.
A banging read for a Friday night and one that I will think on for many months to come!
June 17, 2024
In Men at Work, Crabb notes a problem: far fewer men than women take parental leave. In one fantastic, pithy phrase, she summarises why this is bad: because if men can't leave the workplace, women can't leave the home. If men don't or can't take parental leave, women are forced to take on virtually all caretaking responsibilities.
This phenomenon of men staying at work while the wife toils at home has been shown, rather paradoxically, to increase male work stress, to worsen relationship satisfaction between husband and wife, to lead to lower fatherly investment in their children over their lifetime, and to permanently reduce the amount of housework husbands do over the course of their child's life. This disparity in caregiving is also one major reason why women earn less, why they retire with less superannuation, and is probably also partially why there are more homeless elderly women than men.
Basically, not giving men time off work after the birth of their children leads to worse lives for father, mother, and child. The data on this is very convincing.
Lack of access to parental leave also makes businesses less competitive. Businesses that don't offer paid parental leave see more staff turnover, lower staff loyalty, more absenteeism, lower staff productivity, and so on. The data on this is less convincing, and its presentation was the weakest part of this essay, but I think that it would be interesting to tease out whether society would be better on the whole if business were forced to suffer the costs of more equitable and generous paid parental leave. I suspect that it would be better.
Crabb then diagnoses the cause of the problem: anti-dad social norms, anti-dad government policies, and anti-dad workplace expectations. It is apparently still the case that Australian men feel social pressure to be the family breadwinner. And it is definitely still the case that our governments think so too. This expectation remains deeply gendered. This is a tragedy, because women and girls graduate from high school more than men and boys do; graduate from university more than boys do; get more advanced degrees than men do; and, if it weren't for the years they take off work to child-raise, they would earn more than men do, too. The world has changed, and male breadwinners are quickly becoming artefacts. More tragic still is that one of the leading causes of suicide in men is unemployment; being a breadwinner, or at least meaningfully contributing to the financial success of their family, is immensely important to male mental health, and yet is has never been more difficult than it is now. These things and more combine to create a world where almost 100% of all paid parental leave is taken by women, even when families are given the choice of which parent will take time off. For a whole bunch of reasons, men are afraid to take time off work to take care of their kids.
But it's not all doom and gloom. Crabb then details some rather simple, elegant, obvious-in-hindsight policies that have enacted in other countries that've resulted in massive increases in the number of dads taking paid parental leave. I forget which country she mentioned first, but I remember, surprise surprise, that it was somewhere in Scandinavia. These countries had a great idea: introduce a finite amount of paid parental leave that could only be taken by the dad. All of a sudden, the social expectation that only wives should stay at home to care for the kids was abolished. All of a sudden, men couldn't use the excuse that they were giving their wives something. All of a sudden, men would be squandering something. All of a sudden, it became wasteful for men to not take time off work.
And what did this policy do?
Rather predictably, many, many more men taking paid parental leave. Now, I'm not sure of the flow-on effects Crabb cites are reputable--the social sciences are still neck-deep in a replication crisis--but, if reputable, then one consequence of dads care for their newborn kids was permanently increase parental investment over their kids' lifespans, and permanently increased participation in housework. The former is obviously an extremely good thing, but the latter is excellent too: mums have more time to relax, to avoid burnout, to exercise, to recover mentally, emotionally, and spiritually from the demands of full-time caregiving, to study, and, if they want, to partially return to work. Dads fall more in love with the experience of being a dad, and mums regain some independence from the overwhelming demands of motherhood.
But wait, there's more!
Even more men took paid parental leave when they were told that taking dad-only paid parental leave would unlock additional paid parental leave, for either parent. For example, the mum might be given time off to recover from the pregnancy; then the dad could take the time off that was reserved only for him; and then, if he took that, then an additional period of paid parental leave would become available, which could be divvied up between husband and wife however they chose. This increased male paid parental leave uptake even further! It increased social pressure: not only would men be stupid for not taking their own time off, but they might be robbing their wives (or themselves!) of additional weeks or months of paid leave. The incentives were just too good to ignore.
In yet another scenario, mums were given one month of paid parental leave immediately after the pregnancy, and then the remainder of paid parental leave could be given to either parent in whatever way they preferred. This flexibility had the benefit of allowing both parents to remain in part-time work, if that's what they wanted. They could still work, still earn superannuation, still grind towards that promotion, still develop their careers, all while investing equally in their child, learning how to equitably divide homemaking responsibilities, and avoiding stay-at-home parent blues and sole-provider burnout.
Over the course of the 20th century, the study of economics led to the discovery of a few ideas that we now take for granted: that societies prosper when they invest in early childhood, in education, in public health, in public infrastructure, and so on. The long-term benefits of these investments far outweigh their initial costs; humankind is massively better off because we've tax each other to fund these things. I feel like this essay has alerted me to the existence of another good that society really obviously ought to invest in: equitable paid parental leave. Kids will benefit, mums will benefit, dads will benefit, employers will benefit (Zoomers change jobs more rapidly than any generation before them, and it's a massive problem for employers; increasing retention, loyalty, employee satisfaction, etc., through generous, equitable, and flexible paid parental leave schemes might go a long way to solving this problem).
Although there's more research to do, for the time being, it seems indisputable: make it easier for men to take paid parental leave. Only good can come of it.
This phenomenon of men staying at work while the wife toils at home has been shown, rather paradoxically, to increase male work stress, to worsen relationship satisfaction between husband and wife, to lead to lower fatherly investment in their children over their lifetime, and to permanently reduce the amount of housework husbands do over the course of their child's life. This disparity in caregiving is also one major reason why women earn less, why they retire with less superannuation, and is probably also partially why there are more homeless elderly women than men.
Basically, not giving men time off work after the birth of their children leads to worse lives for father, mother, and child. The data on this is very convincing.
Lack of access to parental leave also makes businesses less competitive. Businesses that don't offer paid parental leave see more staff turnover, lower staff loyalty, more absenteeism, lower staff productivity, and so on. The data on this is less convincing, and its presentation was the weakest part of this essay, but I think that it would be interesting to tease out whether society would be better on the whole if business were forced to suffer the costs of more equitable and generous paid parental leave. I suspect that it would be better.
Crabb then diagnoses the cause of the problem: anti-dad social norms, anti-dad government policies, and anti-dad workplace expectations. It is apparently still the case that Australian men feel social pressure to be the family breadwinner. And it is definitely still the case that our governments think so too. This expectation remains deeply gendered. This is a tragedy, because women and girls graduate from high school more than men and boys do; graduate from university more than boys do; get more advanced degrees than men do; and, if it weren't for the years they take off work to child-raise, they would earn more than men do, too. The world has changed, and male breadwinners are quickly becoming artefacts. More tragic still is that one of the leading causes of suicide in men is unemployment; being a breadwinner, or at least meaningfully contributing to the financial success of their family, is immensely important to male mental health, and yet is has never been more difficult than it is now. These things and more combine to create a world where almost 100% of all paid parental leave is taken by women, even when families are given the choice of which parent will take time off. For a whole bunch of reasons, men are afraid to take time off work to take care of their kids.
But it's not all doom and gloom. Crabb then details some rather simple, elegant, obvious-in-hindsight policies that have enacted in other countries that've resulted in massive increases in the number of dads taking paid parental leave. I forget which country she mentioned first, but I remember, surprise surprise, that it was somewhere in Scandinavia. These countries had a great idea: introduce a finite amount of paid parental leave that could only be taken by the dad. All of a sudden, the social expectation that only wives should stay at home to care for the kids was abolished. All of a sudden, men couldn't use the excuse that they were giving their wives something. All of a sudden, men would be squandering something. All of a sudden, it became wasteful for men to not take time off work.
And what did this policy do?
Rather predictably, many, many more men taking paid parental leave. Now, I'm not sure of the flow-on effects Crabb cites are reputable--the social sciences are still neck-deep in a replication crisis--but, if reputable, then one consequence of dads care for their newborn kids was permanently increase parental investment over their kids' lifespans, and permanently increased participation in housework. The former is obviously an extremely good thing, but the latter is excellent too: mums have more time to relax, to avoid burnout, to exercise, to recover mentally, emotionally, and spiritually from the demands of full-time caregiving, to study, and, if they want, to partially return to work. Dads fall more in love with the experience of being a dad, and mums regain some independence from the overwhelming demands of motherhood.
But wait, there's more!
Even more men took paid parental leave when they were told that taking dad-only paid parental leave would unlock additional paid parental leave, for either parent. For example, the mum might be given time off to recover from the pregnancy; then the dad could take the time off that was reserved only for him; and then, if he took that, then an additional period of paid parental leave would become available, which could be divvied up between husband and wife however they chose. This increased male paid parental leave uptake even further! It increased social pressure: not only would men be stupid for not taking their own time off, but they might be robbing their wives (or themselves!) of additional weeks or months of paid leave. The incentives were just too good to ignore.
In yet another scenario, mums were given one month of paid parental leave immediately after the pregnancy, and then the remainder of paid parental leave could be given to either parent in whatever way they preferred. This flexibility had the benefit of allowing both parents to remain in part-time work, if that's what they wanted. They could still work, still earn superannuation, still grind towards that promotion, still develop their careers, all while investing equally in their child, learning how to equitably divide homemaking responsibilities, and avoiding stay-at-home parent blues and sole-provider burnout.
Over the course of the 20th century, the study of economics led to the discovery of a few ideas that we now take for granted: that societies prosper when they invest in early childhood, in education, in public health, in public infrastructure, and so on. The long-term benefits of these investments far outweigh their initial costs; humankind is massively better off because we've tax each other to fund these things. I feel like this essay has alerted me to the existence of another good that society really obviously ought to invest in: equitable paid parental leave. Kids will benefit, mums will benefit, dads will benefit, employers will benefit (Zoomers change jobs more rapidly than any generation before them, and it's a massive problem for employers; increasing retention, loyalty, employee satisfaction, etc., through generous, equitable, and flexible paid parental leave schemes might go a long way to solving this problem).
Although there's more research to do, for the time being, it seems indisputable: make it easier for men to take paid parental leave. Only good can come of it.
March 11, 2023
Crabb argues that the country's workplace culture and policies fail to support working parents, particularly mothers, negatively affecting individuals and society. Through personal anecdotes, interviews, and research, Crabb makes a compelling case for why it's essential to address the "parenthood trap."
What makes "Men at Work" so compelling is Crabb's ability to connect personal experiences to broader social and political issues. In addition, she writes with humour and compassion, making her arguments accessible and engaging for a general audience.
Overall, "Men at Work" is a timely essay highlighting a call to action for individuals, employers, and policymakers to work towards a more supportive and equitable workplace culture that values the contributions of working parents, regardless of gender.
Favourite takeaways:
-Realising that workplace structures and attitudes are the problems, not just individual mothers or their partners, can be transformative.
-Women have come a long way, but the institutions they have encountered have yet to keep pace.
-The culture of work is different from the culture of care.
Favourite quotes:
"As long as you're pushing men to stay at work, you're pushing women to stay at home."
"60% of dads report that they don't use any kind of flexibility in their work to deal with the demands of children and family. 60%, That's 6 in 10 working Australian fathers that respond to parenthood by doing nothing different at all, and that's weird."
"The history of regulated work-family balance in this country is not especially a long one. It was only 54 years ago, for instance, that the marriage bar, the legislative requirement that women working in the Commonwealth public service quit their jobs upon marriage, was finally lifted after a decade or so of nervous indecision in the Menzies government."
"The election of the Whitlam Government in 1972 changed things for many women. The 1972 equal pay case raised women's salaries by around 30%, and in June 1973, the Whitlam government passed the Maternity Leave Australian Employees Act. Around 64000 women worked in public service at the time, and the legislation entitled them to 52 weeks of maternity leave, 12 of which were to be on full pay."
"For a government that had failed to legislate a significant chunk of the cuts it had sensationally announced a year earlier in the controversial 2014 budget, this tweak to the paid parental leave scheme was a profitable idea. Cutting benefits to around 88,000 parents would deliver one billion dollars in savings. "
"The policy itself died a quick and unlamented death in late 2015. Malcolm Turnbull challenged successfully for the leadership in September, and the changes to the paid parental leave scheme were among the Abbott-era policies with which the new prime minister did not persist. It's worth recalling these events, however, if for no other reason than to register the tone of the debate. Parental leave payments are for pretty little lady lawyers and rorters. The suggestion is unmistakable: receiving public money to care for a baby is at some level a bit of a scam."
"The argument for mother's not returning to work or returning to work part-time is usually framed as a financial one. He earns more, so it would make no sense for him to go part-time or stay and home, and my wage would barely cover childcare and so on. This argument often misses the long-term ramifications for women of staying out of work for protracted periods, increased vulnerability in the event of a breakout or bereavement, for instance, loss of promotions and pay rises and a permanently depressed superannuation account."
"We know and have accepted that a woman's capacity in a job is the same as a man's; this concept is no longer radical. So how can it be that working a compressed work week, working part-time or taking parental leave for a chunk of time is deeply unremarkable and indeed expected for women and yet for men, it's a matter of privilege, luck or indeed, in some cases, flatly unthinkable? It's the same job, the same equation, the same rearrangement of matter."
"So after a midnight epiphany, I went through a short weird, but totally practical phase of making jelly breastmilk. I put this in the book and then took it out cause it was gross, and I put it back in cause it's true, and then I agonised, I thought, bugger, it let it stay. And so a guy on Twitter with the bottle problem got in touch with me to ask for instructions on how to make jelly breastmilk. "
"But what worries me is that lots of men don't ask, don't persevere, or don't succumb to the, I have to say, world-founded fear that they will be penalised at work for asking."
"I wanted to know if there were many cases in Australia of men taking legal action against their workplaces for refusing them parental leave or flexible work. And it turns out the answer is no. There aren't many cases. Because in Australia, the Sex Discrimination Act explicitly allows employers to discriminate against men when making decisions about parental leave." (Section 31 pregnancy childbirth or breastfeeding)
"The commission is well aware that men face discrimination around their roles as fathers. In 2014 its landmark report on pregnancy and parental leave established that 27% of fathers who took some kind of leave around the birth of a child reported harassment or discrimination on their return, raging from negative comments to threats of dismissal." (Based on men who take two weeks of leave max, which I would argue isn't even enough)
"She outlined the parental leave and childcare systems in Normay 46 weeks at full pay, ten weeks reserved specifically for the co-parent, and childcare cost capped at 300 euros a month. I heard the strangest noise emitting from the women in the crowd. It was a sort of moan of frustrated longing, almost sexual, to be honest. Most unnerving for the speaker but fair enough, really, given that parents in Melbourne probably burnt through 300 euros just feeding the parking meter outside the childcare centre for pickup and drop off."
"If women have benefited from the sentiment that girls can do anything, then don't we similarly owe it to the fathers, mothers and children of the future to ensure boys can do anything means everything from home to work?"
What makes "Men at Work" so compelling is Crabb's ability to connect personal experiences to broader social and political issues. In addition, she writes with humour and compassion, making her arguments accessible and engaging for a general audience.
Overall, "Men at Work" is a timely essay highlighting a call to action for individuals, employers, and policymakers to work towards a more supportive and equitable workplace culture that values the contributions of working parents, regardless of gender.
Favourite takeaways:
-Realising that workplace structures and attitudes are the problems, not just individual mothers or their partners, can be transformative.
-Women have come a long way, but the institutions they have encountered have yet to keep pace.
-The culture of work is different from the culture of care.
Favourite quotes:
"As long as you're pushing men to stay at work, you're pushing women to stay at home."
"60% of dads report that they don't use any kind of flexibility in their work to deal with the demands of children and family. 60%, That's 6 in 10 working Australian fathers that respond to parenthood by doing nothing different at all, and that's weird."
"The history of regulated work-family balance in this country is not especially a long one. It was only 54 years ago, for instance, that the marriage bar, the legislative requirement that women working in the Commonwealth public service quit their jobs upon marriage, was finally lifted after a decade or so of nervous indecision in the Menzies government."
"The election of the Whitlam Government in 1972 changed things for many women. The 1972 equal pay case raised women's salaries by around 30%, and in June 1973, the Whitlam government passed the Maternity Leave Australian Employees Act. Around 64000 women worked in public service at the time, and the legislation entitled them to 52 weeks of maternity leave, 12 of which were to be on full pay."
"For a government that had failed to legislate a significant chunk of the cuts it had sensationally announced a year earlier in the controversial 2014 budget, this tweak to the paid parental leave scheme was a profitable idea. Cutting benefits to around 88,000 parents would deliver one billion dollars in savings. "
"The policy itself died a quick and unlamented death in late 2015. Malcolm Turnbull challenged successfully for the leadership in September, and the changes to the paid parental leave scheme were among the Abbott-era policies with which the new prime minister did not persist. It's worth recalling these events, however, if for no other reason than to register the tone of the debate. Parental leave payments are for pretty little lady lawyers and rorters. The suggestion is unmistakable: receiving public money to care for a baby is at some level a bit of a scam."
"The argument for mother's not returning to work or returning to work part-time is usually framed as a financial one. He earns more, so it would make no sense for him to go part-time or stay and home, and my wage would barely cover childcare and so on. This argument often misses the long-term ramifications for women of staying out of work for protracted periods, increased vulnerability in the event of a breakout or bereavement, for instance, loss of promotions and pay rises and a permanently depressed superannuation account."
"We know and have accepted that a woman's capacity in a job is the same as a man's; this concept is no longer radical. So how can it be that working a compressed work week, working part-time or taking parental leave for a chunk of time is deeply unremarkable and indeed expected for women and yet for men, it's a matter of privilege, luck or indeed, in some cases, flatly unthinkable? It's the same job, the same equation, the same rearrangement of matter."
"So after a midnight epiphany, I went through a short weird, but totally practical phase of making jelly breastmilk. I put this in the book and then took it out cause it was gross, and I put it back in cause it's true, and then I agonised, I thought, bugger, it let it stay. And so a guy on Twitter with the bottle problem got in touch with me to ask for instructions on how to make jelly breastmilk. "
"But what worries me is that lots of men don't ask, don't persevere, or don't succumb to the, I have to say, world-founded fear that they will be penalised at work for asking."
"I wanted to know if there were many cases in Australia of men taking legal action against their workplaces for refusing them parental leave or flexible work. And it turns out the answer is no. There aren't many cases. Because in Australia, the Sex Discrimination Act explicitly allows employers to discriminate against men when making decisions about parental leave." (Section 31 pregnancy childbirth or breastfeeding)
"The commission is well aware that men face discrimination around their roles as fathers. In 2014 its landmark report on pregnancy and parental leave established that 27% of fathers who took some kind of leave around the birth of a child reported harassment or discrimination on their return, raging from negative comments to threats of dismissal." (Based on men who take two weeks of leave max, which I would argue isn't even enough)
"She outlined the parental leave and childcare systems in Normay 46 weeks at full pay, ten weeks reserved specifically for the co-parent, and childcare cost capped at 300 euros a month. I heard the strangest noise emitting from the women in the crowd. It was a sort of moan of frustrated longing, almost sexual, to be honest. Most unnerving for the speaker but fair enough, really, given that parents in Melbourne probably burnt through 300 euros just feeding the parking meter outside the childcare centre for pickup and drop off."
"If women have benefited from the sentiment that girls can do anything, then don't we similarly owe it to the fathers, mothers and children of the future to ensure boys can do anything means everything from home to work?"
September 20, 2020
An interesting discussion about the ongoing problems of the patriarchy. It came out before the pandemic, and that may have jolted the way people used to work, so that the future may well involve much more working from home, working flexible hours, and so on. Not before time.
December 8, 2019
Enjoyable and offered an interesting and relevant perspective to an important debate.
December 30, 2019
Making a case for gender equality policies in Aus looking at how it will benefit men.
June 17, 2020
A must.
September 20, 2021
Crabb proposes that if fathers are able to take paid parental leave in the first few weeks or months of their child's life, this can massively increase their involvement in the child's care throughout their life. She suggests changing public and corporate workplace policies to make parental leave more accessible to fathers would increase balance in household tasks and caregiving between couples. Seems like a good idea to me!
October 24, 2025
bloody insightful. can men start pulling their weight at home ffs
September 27, 2021
This is a really interesting essay that I really enjoyed about the divide in men and women’s attitude to work and how the two genders have been socialised to view their parental role. Raises important points about how men have been negatively affected over the years and it hasn’t always been their choice to work long hours and how capitalism intersects with masculinity that often comes to a detriment to men.
September 30, 2019
I was bitterly disappointed to find this was not, in fact, about an Australian 80s pop band. Instead I was treated to an insightful, funny and engaging read on struggles facing Australia in the area of paid parental leave. Highly recommended.
January 23, 2021
It’s not complex for me in a lot of areas but I did enjoy adding it to my little brain library of texts on this topic. Didn’t hate it, just wish she knew more interesting and varied people to talk case studies with which is an eternal problem for like... every white journalist man or woman over about age... 30? Some age? So I don’t have the heart to blame her specifically for it because I am used to being disappointed 😎✌️
May 23, 2020
This topic is a fascinating discussion, and Annabel Crabb presents it in an astute, very readable and objective manner. The stats are both frightening and hopeful. There are no black and white answers, no one-size-fits-all solutions. The discussion about Fathers taking a step back from their career to step up within the family home is going to continue for many years to come. There have been some Big changes that have occurred over the last 40-50yrs (Thank you feminists) but societal change in thought and practice is slow, and men and women both need to be open to thinking differently. Who knows what the world will look like when my children are grown?
October 14, 2019
A discursive text on the development of what was maternity leave that has now grown into parental leave. My children were born in the early eighties when this type of leave only existed for female employees of certain government departments. Although Australia has come along way over the last few decades it is still behind the OECD pack as far as parent leave benefits go. Typically the USA has not even started.
This area of social justice is probably the only one where men are disadvantaged. May be we have reached the heights that we have reached because it is not just a “women’s” issue.
Crabb writes fluently and it is an easy to read essay. A reasonable amount of data and anecdotal evidence to give weight to her arguments. It is definitely not a feminist leaning polemic on the matter.
I would be interested in research that shows the effect of greater father participation on child rearing on the child him/herself. Are they better social adjusted, do they perform better academically. Are there measurable differences with little if any father input into the child’s early years compared to the child with the child whose father was the main parent in caring in the early years?
This area of social justice is probably the only one where men are disadvantaged. May be we have reached the heights that we have reached because it is not just a “women’s” issue.
Crabb writes fluently and it is an easy to read essay. A reasonable amount of data and anecdotal evidence to give weight to her arguments. It is definitely not a feminist leaning polemic on the matter.
I would be interested in research that shows the effect of greater father participation on child rearing on the child him/herself. Are they better social adjusted, do they perform better academically. Are there measurable differences with little if any father input into the child’s early years compared to the child with the child whose father was the main parent in caring in the early years?
June 26, 2021
Long form Australian journalism about how men and women are both screwed over by it not being socially accepted for men to take parental leave.
This should be required reading for everyone, especially those in politics and management.
This should be required reading for everyone, especially those in politics and management.
August 4, 2021
As the father of young children, I find the scenarios Annabel Crabb presents all too familiar. In public settings, some people seem to regard fathers attending to their children as remarkable rather than routine. When my children were infants, it was disconcerting to be patronised with congratulations (“Aren’t you good?”) for the mere act of looking after them. In the workplace and online, discussions focus on the challenges for women of balancing work and family. They rarely seem to involve men; the implicit – and infuriating – assumption being that men don’t face the same challenge. Given many men are engaged in a day-to-day struggle to stay upright as they attempt to balance work with parenting and being a responsible partner, I suspect men need to do a better job of creating spaces to talk about this.
It’s easy to understand why Crabb is taken with the idea of a “daddy quota” as part of an enhanced parental leave system. Recently, I interviewed a number of people in Iceland about their experiences of gender equality and was amazed to learn that Icelandic men take an average of eighty-seven days of paternity leave after the birth of each child. Picture almost every fisherman, lawyer or construction worker spending months away from work caring for their child, and you get a sense of how transformative this is. While their partner returns to work, these men are pushing prams, at the playground or at home, cleaning and changing nappies. Imagine what that means for how their families function.
The discussion in Iceland is now focused on a further extension of paid parental leave to twelve months. The government has agreed that this will be implemented between 2020 and 2021, although the detail is still being resolved. One option being considered is that each parent may be given five months of leave, with the remaining two months to share.
There’s a big evidence base demonstrating that parenting behaviour established at childbirth tends to persist as children age. Parental leave arrangements are undoubtedly critical in laying the foundations for parenting equality. But parental leave in the first year of a child’s life is not enough. Parenting is a long game, and we need to consider how we support parents throughout the entire life course.
Crabb does us all a great service by shining a light on the gendered assumptions that underpin the notion of the “primary parent,” which is built into much of our policy. Yet the primary parent would not be possible without its inverse: the primary worker. Many policy settings still harbour an implicit assumption that one parent – usually a man – is working full-time to provide for their family. There’s a long history of this in Australia, dating back to the Harvester judgment of 1907, in which the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration proclaimed that a minimum wage should be paid to a male worker that is sufficient to provide for a wife and three children. While we’ve since moved in the direction of gender-neutral pay structures, the assumption of the primary worker lives on in the practical way that work is structured. A standard working week might be thirty-eight hours, but in practice full-time work in Australia mostly involves working for more than forty hours per week. According to the OECD, about 60 per cent of Australian men work longer than forty hours each week. By contrast, about half of Australian women work part-time (thirty-four hours or less) and fewer than 30 per cent work more than forty hours. This is one reason women are paid almost $500 – or about 31 per cent – less each week than men, as recent ABS data reports.
Crabb envisions a world in which domestic work is shared equally between both parents. She rightfully points out that this is what a new generation of parents are often striving to achieve. Yet if we are to move away from the assumption of the “primary parent,” I posit that we also need to dismantle the assumption of the primary worker. If the fatigued and stressed parents at my daughters’ primary school are any indication, full-time work as a parent seems possible only if there’s another person to pick up the load at home at least some of the time. Equality is unlikely to be achieved with both parents working forty hours or more each week. This has the potential to drive families to breaking point. Rather, to achieve greater domestic equality, increase female workforce participation and move closer to equal pay, fathers will need to spend less time at work and more time at home. According to the OECD, in countries where unpaid labour is more equally shared, there tend to be smaller gender-specific differences in hours spent in the workplace.
Spending less time at work may mean men working part-time or more flexibly, as Crabb suggests, but it should also include a consideration of how we can reduce the hours associated with full-time work in Australia. Annual working hours in Australia are by no means the longest in the developed world (that honour goes to Mexico), but the average Australian worker spends 249 hours more at work each year than workers in Norway – the poster child in Crabb’s essay. This is the equivalent of an additional six weeks each year. In Norway, hardly anyone works for more than forty hours per week, strict working hours of 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. are common, and overtime is limited by law. Five weeks of annual leave is standard. Under these conditions, and with childcare heavily subsidised, it’s possible to see how a shared work and home life might be achievable. Aside from greater potential to balance the demands of work and home, reduced working hours have other benefits too. Countries with fewer annual hours worked tend to have higher labour productivity. It seems that stress, fatigue and sleep deprivation may make overworked employees substantially less productive. Who would have thought?
It is somewhat surprising that Crabb doesn’t really consider the gender pay gap in her analysis. The answer to the question of who works and who stays at home involves a complex calculus, worked through within each family. No doubt cultural and identity factors are relevant, but families also consider the financial implications of various decisions, including the cost of childcare and the wages earned by each parent. Even when working full-time, Australian women earn 11.7 per cent less than men, on average. With most Australian fathers earning more than mothers, and at a life stage when every dollar is tight, it’s no real surprise that a majority of Australian families choose to send the father off to work.
For this equation to change, real progress in tackling the gender pay gap is required. Australia’s performance in this area has been fairly dismal. In twenty years, the gap in full-time earnings has decreased only marginally, from 13.2 per cent in 1998 to 11.7 per cent in 2018. Over the same time period, other countries have done much better. Belgium has reduced the gap in full-time earnings from 15.2 per cent to 3.7 per cent, and this hasn’t happened accidentally. With strong trade union membership, 96 per cent of workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements, making it nearly impossible to pay women less to do the same job. The Belgian government has mandated that the gender pay gap be taken into account when wage agreements are negotiated. And all companies with more than fifty employees have to report publicly on their gender pay gap.
Crabb was right to focus on the need for fathers to play a greater role in parenting. As she suggests, we need to do more to ensure that parents are able to share the load at work and at home. Other countries show us that it can be done. With sufficient determination and a concerted effort, it’s possible in Australia too.
[Review published in Quarterly Essay #76]
It’s easy to understand why Crabb is taken with the idea of a “daddy quota” as part of an enhanced parental leave system. Recently, I interviewed a number of people in Iceland about their experiences of gender equality and was amazed to learn that Icelandic men take an average of eighty-seven days of paternity leave after the birth of each child. Picture almost every fisherman, lawyer or construction worker spending months away from work caring for their child, and you get a sense of how transformative this is. While their partner returns to work, these men are pushing prams, at the playground or at home, cleaning and changing nappies. Imagine what that means for how their families function.
The discussion in Iceland is now focused on a further extension of paid parental leave to twelve months. The government has agreed that this will be implemented between 2020 and 2021, although the detail is still being resolved. One option being considered is that each parent may be given five months of leave, with the remaining two months to share.
There’s a big evidence base demonstrating that parenting behaviour established at childbirth tends to persist as children age. Parental leave arrangements are undoubtedly critical in laying the foundations for parenting equality. But parental leave in the first year of a child’s life is not enough. Parenting is a long game, and we need to consider how we support parents throughout the entire life course.
Crabb does us all a great service by shining a light on the gendered assumptions that underpin the notion of the “primary parent,” which is built into much of our policy. Yet the primary parent would not be possible without its inverse: the primary worker. Many policy settings still harbour an implicit assumption that one parent – usually a man – is working full-time to provide for their family. There’s a long history of this in Australia, dating back to the Harvester judgment of 1907, in which the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration proclaimed that a minimum wage should be paid to a male worker that is sufficient to provide for a wife and three children. While we’ve since moved in the direction of gender-neutral pay structures, the assumption of the primary worker lives on in the practical way that work is structured. A standard working week might be thirty-eight hours, but in practice full-time work in Australia mostly involves working for more than forty hours per week. According to the OECD, about 60 per cent of Australian men work longer than forty hours each week. By contrast, about half of Australian women work part-time (thirty-four hours or less) and fewer than 30 per cent work more than forty hours. This is one reason women are paid almost $500 – or about 31 per cent – less each week than men, as recent ABS data reports.
Crabb envisions a world in which domestic work is shared equally between both parents. She rightfully points out that this is what a new generation of parents are often striving to achieve. Yet if we are to move away from the assumption of the “primary parent,” I posit that we also need to dismantle the assumption of the primary worker. If the fatigued and stressed parents at my daughters’ primary school are any indication, full-time work as a parent seems possible only if there’s another person to pick up the load at home at least some of the time. Equality is unlikely to be achieved with both parents working forty hours or more each week. This has the potential to drive families to breaking point. Rather, to achieve greater domestic equality, increase female workforce participation and move closer to equal pay, fathers will need to spend less time at work and more time at home. According to the OECD, in countries where unpaid labour is more equally shared, there tend to be smaller gender-specific differences in hours spent in the workplace.
Spending less time at work may mean men working part-time or more flexibly, as Crabb suggests, but it should also include a consideration of how we can reduce the hours associated with full-time work in Australia. Annual working hours in Australia are by no means the longest in the developed world (that honour goes to Mexico), but the average Australian worker spends 249 hours more at work each year than workers in Norway – the poster child in Crabb’s essay. This is the equivalent of an additional six weeks each year. In Norway, hardly anyone works for more than forty hours per week, strict working hours of 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. are common, and overtime is limited by law. Five weeks of annual leave is standard. Under these conditions, and with childcare heavily subsidised, it’s possible to see how a shared work and home life might be achievable. Aside from greater potential to balance the demands of work and home, reduced working hours have other benefits too. Countries with fewer annual hours worked tend to have higher labour productivity. It seems that stress, fatigue and sleep deprivation may make overworked employees substantially less productive. Who would have thought?
It is somewhat surprising that Crabb doesn’t really consider the gender pay gap in her analysis. The answer to the question of who works and who stays at home involves a complex calculus, worked through within each family. No doubt cultural and identity factors are relevant, but families also consider the financial implications of various decisions, including the cost of childcare and the wages earned by each parent. Even when working full-time, Australian women earn 11.7 per cent less than men, on average. With most Australian fathers earning more than mothers, and at a life stage when every dollar is tight, it’s no real surprise that a majority of Australian families choose to send the father off to work.
For this equation to change, real progress in tackling the gender pay gap is required. Australia’s performance in this area has been fairly dismal. In twenty years, the gap in full-time earnings has decreased only marginally, from 13.2 per cent in 1998 to 11.7 per cent in 2018. Over the same time period, other countries have done much better. Belgium has reduced the gap in full-time earnings from 15.2 per cent to 3.7 per cent, and this hasn’t happened accidentally. With strong trade union membership, 96 per cent of workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements, making it nearly impossible to pay women less to do the same job. The Belgian government has mandated that the gender pay gap be taken into account when wage agreements are negotiated. And all companies with more than fifty employees have to report publicly on their gender pay gap.
Crabb was right to focus on the need for fathers to play a greater role in parenting. As she suggests, we need to do more to ensure that parents are able to share the load at work and at home. Other countries show us that it can be done. With sufficient determination and a concerted effort, it’s possible in Australia too.
[Review published in Quarterly Essay #76]
August 7, 2020
WOW. I highly recommend this to EVERYONE who is even slightly considering having kids. Annabel is an amazing, engaging and thorough writer who passionately advocates for men’s ability to take parental leave when they become fathers. It’s currently a taboo situation in Australia (to take more than 2 weeks off, or to work flexibly to allow for ongoing child-rearing tasks).
There’s an overview of the history of paid leave in Australia, a brief review of community and company attitudes, and case studies from men who have either fought to get some time off for their kids or felt shamed into not doing anything about it.
The millennial males need permission to change - after all, the life of a women has changed DRAMATICALLY in the last 50yrs, but men’s roles (bread winner, full time hard worker) haven’t adjusted. “The doors to the workforce have opened to give women better career opportunities, but the reverse has not happened - the door hasn’t opened for men to give them more family, home and lifestyle opportunities.” On top of that, the #metoo movement has fueled a deconstruction of so many male (previously) role models and the notion of toxic masculinity is feeding an underlying resentment of millennial men to the feminist movement as they look around and see that “women can do everything” while men feel a strong cultural cage to “provide” and no permission to change their lifestyle without being seen as weak, failing or taking career suicide.
It’s a really important topic to open our minds to and put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. When men are not able to take leave and share the household/family duties without experiencing setbacks and discrimination, the women suffer under a larger burden and the kids miss out on seeing gender equality displayed in the home between their parents, thus hindering another generation’s expectations for the future.
I bought this audiobook from Apple Books and it took 2hrs to listen to. If you are even remotely interested in gender equality, please listen to this!
There’s an overview of the history of paid leave in Australia, a brief review of community and company attitudes, and case studies from men who have either fought to get some time off for their kids or felt shamed into not doing anything about it.
The millennial males need permission to change - after all, the life of a women has changed DRAMATICALLY in the last 50yrs, but men’s roles (bread winner, full time hard worker) haven’t adjusted. “The doors to the workforce have opened to give women better career opportunities, but the reverse has not happened - the door hasn’t opened for men to give them more family, home and lifestyle opportunities.” On top of that, the #metoo movement has fueled a deconstruction of so many male (previously) role models and the notion of toxic masculinity is feeding an underlying resentment of millennial men to the feminist movement as they look around and see that “women can do everything” while men feel a strong cultural cage to “provide” and no permission to change their lifestyle without being seen as weak, failing or taking career suicide.
It’s a really important topic to open our minds to and put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. When men are not able to take leave and share the household/family duties without experiencing setbacks and discrimination, the women suffer under a larger burden and the kids miss out on seeing gender equality displayed in the home between their parents, thus hindering another generation’s expectations for the future.
I bought this audiobook from Apple Books and it took 2hrs to listen to. If you are even remotely interested in gender equality, please listen to this!
November 30, 2021
This was an enjoyable, interesting and important read.
Annabel Crabb flipped the coin to look at discrimination against men in the workplace - through reduced access to parental leave and flexible working arrangements compared to women - and examined its high stakes and widely reverberating impacts.
She shares a statistic that men who do not take parental leave early in their kid's life, are likely to have less engagement with that child later in its life. This strikes me as such a sad and cruel consequence for men who truly want to engage as Dads, but are prevented from doing so due to discrimination.
She also explored how this reinforces the status quo by preventing women from returning to work sooner, and all the flow on effects of this. As part of this she argued that men who do not take parental leave have less opportunity to learn how to take care of a baby, run a household etc., which contributes to the issue of women doing the bulk of unpaid domestic labour and the so-called 'second shift' - although I agree that this would contribute, I think men's wilful acceptance of a culture which relieves men of this duty also has a huge part to play!
I found her examination of parental leave policies in other countries and flexible work policies in various workplaces fascinating. The power of policy to rapidly change culture is hopeful and inspiring and I wish (frustratingly, probably in vain) that we would harness this more in Australia!
Finally, Annabel Crabb is hilarious. The skill she has to write an essay that is somehow enjoyable and funny (breastmilk panna cotta, who knew?!), but also does justice to an important issue, is something to be admired.
Annabel Crabb flipped the coin to look at discrimination against men in the workplace - through reduced access to parental leave and flexible working arrangements compared to women - and examined its high stakes and widely reverberating impacts.
She shares a statistic that men who do not take parental leave early in their kid's life, are likely to have less engagement with that child later in its life. This strikes me as such a sad and cruel consequence for men who truly want to engage as Dads, but are prevented from doing so due to discrimination.
She also explored how this reinforces the status quo by preventing women from returning to work sooner, and all the flow on effects of this. As part of this she argued that men who do not take parental leave have less opportunity to learn how to take care of a baby, run a household etc., which contributes to the issue of women doing the bulk of unpaid domestic labour and the so-called 'second shift' - although I agree that this would contribute, I think men's wilful acceptance of a culture which relieves men of this duty also has a huge part to play!
I found her examination of parental leave policies in other countries and flexible work policies in various workplaces fascinating. The power of policy to rapidly change culture is hopeful and inspiring and I wish (frustratingly, probably in vain) that we would harness this more in Australia!
Finally, Annabel Crabb is hilarious. The skill she has to write an essay that is somehow enjoyable and funny (breastmilk panna cotta, who knew?!), but also does justice to an important issue, is something to be admired.
November 17, 2020
An excellent compliment to her previous book "the wife drought".
This book however has more of a focus on how many of the things which are continuing to impact women and their ability to be equal in society (ie wage gap etc etc) has a very large deal to do with an underlying culture of gender roles after children come into the picture (this is discussed in higher detail in The Wife Drought).
What this book discusses however is the idea that legislation and societal culture which forces fathers into their gender role has the net effect of ultimately pushing mothers within their own.
Example: In a society where men are wanting more and more to be more than just providers for their children, things like for example the ostracisation of fathers within the work force for asking for flexible hours or primary carer's/paternity leave has lead to men being forced to remain at work which ultimately has the net impact of pushing their partners out of work to look after their children.
And hence inorder to continue addressing women's issues in the workplace, we need to address men's.
Definitely not a Jordan Peterson sorta book but does address a bunch of the issues I've seen him raise and I would definitely recommend to anyone to read both this book and "The Wife Drought"
This book however has more of a focus on how many of the things which are continuing to impact women and their ability to be equal in society (ie wage gap etc etc) has a very large deal to do with an underlying culture of gender roles after children come into the picture (this is discussed in higher detail in The Wife Drought).
What this book discusses however is the idea that legislation and societal culture which forces fathers into their gender role has the net effect of ultimately pushing mothers within their own.
Example: In a society where men are wanting more and more to be more than just providers for their children, things like for example the ostracisation of fathers within the work force for asking for flexible hours or primary carer's/paternity leave has lead to men being forced to remain at work which ultimately has the net impact of pushing their partners out of work to look after their children.
And hence inorder to continue addressing women's issues in the workplace, we need to address men's.
Definitely not a Jordan Peterson sorta book but does address a bunch of the issues I've seen him raise and I would definitely recommend to anyone to read both this book and "The Wife Drought"
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 2, 2021
A compelling take from a novel (to me, at least) angle. Essentially this is The Wife Drought Version 1.5.
Summary: As we'd all know women are dominantly the primary carer of children, with men defaulting to breadwinner, and this has terrible effects on the careers and finances of women. This flips the argument on its head by reflecting on what benefits men miss out on by virtue of this arrangement, talks over the implicit assumptions in workplaces that reinforce this (e.g. women are more likely to ask for flexible work, sure, but they are also more likely to be approved for it), and talks over the systemic features that keep the default assumption from changing: everything from the structure of government payments for parental leave, through to the societal expectations of who will be changing nappies and shuttling to soccer practice.
Somewhat focussed on the Australian experience, but I would think that this would also resonate for Americans due to their poor parental leave policies over there. Thourough, insightful, and with Annabel Crabb's trademark wit, it's a lucid and easy read. If you go Audible, as I did, Annabel Crabb adds another layer with her excellent narration. Recommended.
Summary: As we'd all know women are dominantly the primary carer of children, with men defaulting to breadwinner, and this has terrible effects on the careers and finances of women. This flips the argument on its head by reflecting on what benefits men miss out on by virtue of this arrangement, talks over the implicit assumptions in workplaces that reinforce this (e.g. women are more likely to ask for flexible work, sure, but they are also more likely to be approved for it), and talks over the systemic features that keep the default assumption from changing: everything from the structure of government payments for parental leave, through to the societal expectations of who will be changing nappies and shuttling to soccer practice.
Somewhat focussed on the Australian experience, but I would think that this would also resonate for Americans due to their poor parental leave policies over there. Thourough, insightful, and with Annabel Crabb's trademark wit, it's a lucid and easy read. If you go Audible, as I did, Annabel Crabb adds another layer with her excellent narration. Recommended.
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