Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, has announced he will take two months of paternity leave from his role after the imminent birth of his daughter. Fittingly, the 31-year-old made the statement on his Facebook timeline, presumably in between a post about his lunch and another that simply said “feeling a bit down”, which was met with 3.2 million replies of “you OK hun?”.
The declaration said “Studies show that when working parents take time to be with their newborns, outcomes are better for the children and families.”
Facebook is one of the companies bucking the parental leave trend in America, where mums take disability leave after the birth of a child and parents are allowed just 12 weeks of unpaid leave, but only if they work for a company with more than 50 staff. Employees at the social networking firm can take up to four months of paid time off, used whenever they like during the first year of the child’s life.
Hopefully, more public declarations of the sort by successful business figures will help create a sea-change away from the current situation which currently sees the ‘land of the free’ sadly lagging behind much of the world in allowing parents the financial security to actually see their children.
Leave a Reply