He Told His Boomer Parents He Gets 12 Weeks of Paid Paternity Leave. Instead of Being Happy for Him, They Tried to Guilt Him Into Not Taking It

A pregnancy announcement should have been a joyful family moment. One expectant father and his wife invited their parents to dinner and revealed that she was eight weeks pregnant. But the mood changed when the conversation turned to parental leave.

The man recently shared on Reddit that his employer, a massive global company with tens of thousands of workers, gives him 12 weeks of paid paternity leave. Instead of celebrating the fact that he could support his wife and bond with their newborn, all four parents began worrying about the company's finances.

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Won't Someone Think of the Company?

"They all immediately started worrying about how my massive global company could afford to pay me not to work for three months," he wrote. They also tried to guilt him into declining it because they thought 12 weeks was "too much."

"I quite literally could barely believe this," he said. "How could they be upset that my company with tens of thousands of employees gives me this nice perk instead of being excited for it?"

"It’s actually insane," he added at the end of his post.

Many commenters were equally baffled. The most popular response suggested that his parents didn't understand why an employer might provide strong benefits.

"They have no concept of the fact that some companies actually want to keep good employees," a person responded.

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Another commenter offered a more sympathetic explanation. Older workers were sometimes taught that taking all their available leave could damage their careers or even cost them their jobs. The parents may have feared that three months away would cause their son's employer to hold it against him, despite the official policy.

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Fathers Are Parents, Not Babysitters

Much of the discussion focused on the parents' apparent difficulty understanding why a father would want that much time at home. One person wondered whether they simply "cannot comprehend that a parent would actually want to have time to be around their child."

Several people recalled fathers who proudly said they had never changed a diaper. That attitude came from an era when childcare was widely treated as the mother's responsibility, while the father's role was mainly to earn money.

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Today's fathers in the discussion described a very different experience. One man said he had changed nearly every diaper while his family was in the hospital and later became a stay-at-home father of three. "It is the best thing I have ever done and I absolutely love it," he wrote.

Another commenter was currently enjoying paternity leave while his 1-year-old slept. "I can't wait for him to wake up so that we can go shopping and go to the park," he said.

Others argued that resentment may be driving some of the criticism. As one person summarized the attitude, "They didn't get to have it; therefore you should not get to have it."

But not everyone from an older generation agreed. One person said parental leave was unavailable when he had children, but he was glad families receive it now. A Gen X mother who had returned to work after six weeks said she was happy that her current employer offers paid leave to both parents.

The overwhelming advice to the expectant father was to take every day offered. He is unlikely to look back and wish he had spent more of those first weeks at work. As one person put it, "No one says on their deathbed, 'I really wish I gave more value to shareholders.'"

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