Features
Getting the balance right
25 January 2002
Have you noticed more dads at the school gate or at toddler group recently? It seems that there is beginning to be a change in attitudes, as more men in Britain are coming to realise that their career isn't everything; that families are important too. The current buzzwords are "downshifting" or adjusting the "work/life balance". And there have been three separate announcements by high profile fathers this month have grabbed the attention of the public and sparked a debate throughout the British press about the role fathers can play in raising their young children.
Danny O'Neil, 41, the chief executive of one of Britain's biggest insurance companies, Britannic Group, resigned from his £340,000 (€550,000) per annum post only seven weeks into the job, to spend more time with his wife and nine-year-old triplets. He will now work part time from home on a consultancy basis. Mr O'Neil made his decision on seeing his 18-year-old daughter leave home for university. It had made him realise how quickly life was passing him by, and he wanted to spend more time at home with his younger children.
Someone else who has struggled with the balance between his public role and his private life is Prince Charles. Following revelations in the newspapers that his younger son, Prince Harry, had experimented with alcohol and cannabis during his father's long absences from home, it has been reported that Prince Charles is to cut down on his official engagements, particularly over the summer holidays, so that he can devote more time and attention to his teenage children.
Meanwhile, senior civil servant Suma Chakrabarti is about to take over as head of the Department of International Development in Whitehall. His appointment has made the news not because he will be the first Asian to be appointed to such a senior position, nor for the fact that at 42 his will be the youngest ever Permanent Secretary. Rather, he has hit the headlines because he has negotiated a deal with Government Minister Claire Short which will allow him to spend more time at home with his six-year-old daughter. Eschewing the prevailing culture in government administration of working very long hours, Mr Chakrabarti has made it clear that he will not be at his desk before 9:30 in the morning so that he can have breakfast at home. He will also leave work at 5:30 pm every evening so that he can bath her and read her a bedtime story. He also intends to work from home every other Friday so he can attend his daughter's school assembly.
It is still rare for men in such high profile positions to place such an emphasis on quality of life, which is of course why they have made the news. And none of them has become a full-time home dad. So it is interesting for me now to see that Danny O'Neil is being hailed as a new role model and an inspiration to fathers across Britain for choosing to put his family life ahead of his own career advancement.
Until now, most businesses have been very unwilling to offer fathers that flexibility. Now the Government is endorsing Mr Chakrabarti's belief in the value of achieving a better work/life balance and is to promote flexible working hours, job sharing, home working and career breaks, not just for public sector workers but throughout industry. But there is still a long way to go. Britain was the last country in the European Union to give fathers the right to take parental leave. But the measures that have been introduced are weaker here than elsewhere: parents with children under five-years-old can now take 13 weeks' leave, although only one month can be taken in any year, and the leave will be unpaid.
The Government has recently given fathers the right to take two weeks paternity leave, although this will not be introduced until April 2003. It will also only be paid at £100 (€160) per week, rather than full salary. Until then, new fathers have no right to take extra holiday when their children are born. Recent proposals to allow parents to work part-time while their children are under five have been criticised by business groups, even though at present fewer than one father in five has reduced his working hours. British men actually work the longest hours in Europe, averaging 47 hours a week, and one father in seven works more than 50 hours. Such long hours have an effect on family life. One in three fathers work longer hours than they would wish, while a recent report suggested that nine out of ten children think their fathers are away from home too much. Perhaps the most startling statistic of all is that half of all fathers spend less than five minutes a day in one to one contacts with their children.
But in my experience, things are slowly changing. The number of stay at home dads I come into contact with is steadily increasing, and whereas I used to be the only one at the toddler group, I now meet more and more dads there. Couples are settling down and having children later, so there are going to be more mothers in well paid careers and more fathers prepared to organised their working lives around them. In ten years time it will be quite common for dads to stay at home, and in that sense those of us today are breaking down a lot of barriers. Not having been in senior positions we may not attract the attention of the national press, but we're having an important influence on those who really matter - our children.