By JENNY MACKLIN
More than 30 years ago, when I had my first son, his father took a year off work to care for him.
It was extremely unusual back then for a dad to take some time off to look after a newborn while his mother went back to work. My partner Ross has some pretty funny stories to tell about the reaction he’d get when he was out and about with our son, particularly the stares when he took our son for his regular maternal and child health checks and was the only man in the waiting room.
All these years later, I’m not so sure whether people’s reactions today to a dad staying home would be all that different.
It’s still not something you see every day. It’s still difficult for families to balance work with caring for their newborn.
And there are good reasons why it’s often mothers who take some time off work to look after their newborn baby, for example to establish breastfeeding routines.
Because we understood how important that time with your newborn is, two years ago our Government introduced Australia’s first national paid parental leave scheme.
Since then, more than 200,000 families, many of them people who never before got any paid leave after they had a baby, have received government-funded leave.
I’m proud that we’ve been able to make it easier for these families to take time off to spend with their babies.
But we know we can do more.