I love the . In general, I get breakfast and lunch prepared by my children, often accompanied by flowers. There is a division of tasks in mine, and I imagine it is the same in many others.
Some prefer to venture out and face the huge queues at . One way or another, we always hope for a pleasant day with lots of laughter. At my house, lunch was peaceful and very tasty. The day ended lightly, even more so with the .
We know that it is not limited to a single day and that daily life can be quite difficult, especially for mothers, who, in general, continue to be the main responsible for care.
Academic literature shows that the effects of motherhood on women encompass not only emotional aspects, but also . That’s why, .
Parents strengthen the bond with their children and reduce maternal stress. However, to move in this direction, it is necessary to overcome cultural barriers, which .
The extension of can be one of these ways. To get an idea of how deep-rooted the view that the mother is the main caregiver still is, the Annual Social Information List (Rais) database, which gathers information on the formal job market, does not include paternity leave among the reasons for a worker’s absence.
This leave is still so unusual that my spell checker in the text editor I use underlined the word and suggested replacing it with “maternity leave.” I’ve added the term to the dictionary, but if I could, I would also provide a full explanation of why parental leave is important.
Paternity leave has been expanded in several countries. In Brazil, Law 15,371/2026, , will gradually increase leave from five to 20 days by 2029. The change is still timid, but it represents an important advance in recognizing that caring for children is also the responsibility of parents.
In , for example, parental leave can last up to 48 weeks, part of which is exclusive to mothers, part to fathers and part shared. In 2022, the country expanded the leave reserved for fathers from two to eleven weeks. The novelty was that this expansion occurred at the expense of the shareable portion: if parents do not use the leave, the family loses this period.
According to the article “Expanding paternity leave: effects on beliefs, norms, and gender gaps”, the effects of the 2022 reform in Denmark led fathers to increase their leave, on average, by 3.7 weeks, while mothers reduced it by more than five weeks.
Although many consider that the reform reduced families’ power of choice, it also changed perceptions about gender roles, making interviewees less refractory to change.
In the first year after birth, the reform reduced the gender gap in earnings by around 34 percentage points and in hours worked by 33 percentage points — a largely mechanical effect, resulting from the reallocation of leave between mother and father. In the second year, after the end of the leave, the reduction was 2.8 percentage points in earnings and 1.4 percentage points in hours worked.
The results suggest that policies of this type can change not only the division of leave, but also the perception of gender roles. Brazil still has a long way to go, but we have taken the first step. To all moms, a happy Mother’s Day!
LINK PRESENT: Did you like this text? Subscribers can access seven free accesses from any link per day. Just click the blue F below.
