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Inflexible paternity leave

35,000 new Catalan fathers have two extra weeks of leave amid criticism that the time must be taken all at once following the birth of their child

Lara is the first Catalan to be born in 2017, in the Hospital de Salt (Girona), and Daniel Martos became the first Catalan father of the year. As a result, Daniel now has the right to four weeks of paternity leave, twice what it was until now. The extension will benefit 35,000 Catalan fathers and 240,000 in Spain as a whole. Yet, many of those who will benefit are unsatisfied with the change, as the four weeks have to be taken together and cannot be used in combination with maternity leave. Among the critics is the Plataforma por Permisos Iguales e Intransferibles de Nacimiento y Adopción (PpiiNA), which considers the extension be “insufficient”.

Until this year, fathers had the right to two weeks of paternity leave taken immediately following the birth of their child. The pressure group complains that the extension to four weeks does not allow new fathers to reserve the extra fortnight, so that it can be used at a later date in combination with, for example, the mother's return to work.

“If we make leave for both parents the same we will make sure that the child is taken care of by both for longer, we will put men and women on the same level in the job market without any prejudice in terms of leave, and we will contribute to changing the traditional masculinity rooted in southern Europe,” says Bernat Escudero, spokesman for the pressure group.

The president of the Unión de Asociaciones Familiares (UNAF), Ascensión Iglesias, also calls the reform “insufficient”. Iglesias calls for parental leave to be the same for both and nontransferable so that all the care for the infant does not fall to the mother. UNAF favours triple leave: maternity, paternity and parental, to ensure that care of the child is shared.

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