From potentially raising their child without gender stereotypes to celebrating the "embryonic kicking of feminism" to designing a chic-sounding grey-and-white nursery, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle seem to be taking a progressive approach to parenting. Now, reports suggest that Prince Harry will take paternity leave from his royal duties after his and Meghan’s child is born.
The Daily Express reports that Harry has told aides that he will take two weeks’ paternity leave to support Meghan and the baby. "He doesn't need to take paternity leave because he doesn't work in the way most people do, but he thinks it's a very modern dad thing to do," said one source.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Harry wouldn’t be the first royal to take paternity leave — Cosmopolitan points out that Prince William also took two weeks’ paternity leave from his royal duties after the birth of his two eldest children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, though he was back at work (and looking very sleepy) two days after Prince Louis was born.
In the UK, fathers are eligible to take one or two weeks’ of partially paid leave within the first 56 days following the child’s birth or adoption.
And it's completely understandable why Prince Harry and other millennial men would want to take paternity leave. A 2016 Cornell University study found that paternity leave, particularly over several weeks or months, promotes parent-child bonding and can increase gender equality at home and at work. As the study authors put it, "Longer leaves mean dads have more time to bond with a new child, and will be more involved in caring for their children right from the start. This hands-on engagement can set a pattern that lasts long after the leave ends."
Data shows that millennial men are taking a more hands-on approach to parenting than previous generations. A 2015 Pew Research Center study found that fathers and mothers are almost equally likely to say parenting is an extremely important part of their identity, and a 2016 Pew Research Center study found that fathers spend an average of eight hours a week on childcare, three times as much as fathers did in 1965. However, there’s still a long way to go towards gender equality: in the same study, mothers spent an average of 14 hours a week on childcare.