31/05/2013 Standing Committee
Strasbourg, 31.05.2013 – European governments should actively encourage men to take up parental leave, the Parliamentary Assembly has said. In a resolution voted today, based on a report by Andrea Rigoni (Italy, ALDE), PACE’s Standing Committee said parental leave schemes should enable parents, irrespective of their sex, to look after their children on an equal footing.
The parliamentarians called for part of the leave to be reserved for fathers, which could not be transferred to the other parent and would be lost if it is not used, unless there are exceptional circumstances. There should also be a system of bonuses in cases where both parents take parental leave, as an incentive to fathers to take it up.
Men were increasingly expressing the need for more time to take care of newborn or adopted children, the committee pointed out, as society moved towards “overcoming the traditional view of women as caregivers and men exclusively as breadwinners”.