Rucha Satoor
In February 2024, a Facebook post by journalist Pravin Sindhu Bhima Shinde, raised quite a few eyebrows. I first met Pravin at a Unicef Conference on ‘First Thousand Days’. Pravin,a young man, not yet married, was participating in the conference as a media person on behalf of TV9.
The central focus of the conference was a study by the World Health Organisation called the First Thousand Days, a concept which points out how well or how poorly mothers and children are nourished and cared for during the time of the child’s conception to its second birthday has a profound impact on how a child’s brain begins to grow and develop and when the foundations for their lifelong health are built. The study published in the globally respected Lancet medical journal states how quality nutrition, nurturing relationships, and secure environments in the first thousand days of a child’s life shape its cognitive levels. If a child receives all of these, every child, irrespective of gender, caste, class, and race will be able to attain its full potential. While economic, health and social interventions around mother’s responsibilities are significantly higher in number, here’s the million dollar question: where are the fathers?
Today, five years since that day, Pravin’s post highlights the need for a father’s involvement in inclusive and responsible early childhood development. Pravin writes…
I have resigned from my job in Loksatta. Monday (29 January) was my last day at work.
A little about the reasons for my resignation…
I am going to take a break for the next one and a half years for the upbringing of my baby. I tried to explore the option of a sabbatical, but I couldn’t get that leave. Hence, I had to resign. My decision is shaped by a few important reasons.
1. Nature makes a mother responsible for carrying a child within her for 9 months, and for exclusive breastfeeding for the next 6 months. During this time, the larger responsibility of the child’s well-being inadvertently falls on the mother’s shoulders. However, beyond the first six months, the child is capable of eating solid foods, and its dependency on the mother is relatively lowered. In my opinion, it is crucial for the male partner (father) to step up and shoulder the responsibility of childcare in this second phase. Only when we do this, can we envisage a path to gender equality.
2. As a father, I should also fulfil all my responsibilities. For the first two years, it is important to have a parent around all the time. Because, according to studies by Unicef, a child’s brain achieves up to 70% of its growth within this timeframe. Hence, it is crucial to communicate with the the baby, play with him, nurture the wings with which he is going to experience the world, form an emotional bond with him, learn new skills for child rearing, along with working hard – both for household chores and taking care of your child, right from cooking to anything else that falls your way – learning how to do all this makes you a better human being.
3. The decision to have a child is shared by a couple. It would be a grave injustice if all the responsibilities of raising the child falls solely on the mother. It is bound to have an ill-effect on her career. This is not done.
4. Taking a break from your career poses a risk of ‘falling out’ of the mainstream. This risk is higher for mothers than fathers. Raising a child within your body, facing all the changes that your body experiences, the risk of a fall in your confidence if you lose the connect with your work, the wear and tear that a mother’s body goes through while having a child and the reduction of physical capacity to go back to full-time work post-partum – all these challenges pose a higher risk to the mother’s career than the father’s. Hence, I believe that my partner has shouldered the responsibility of bringing up the child in her body for the first nine months, along with tending to all his needs in the following six months. It is now my turn as a father to take on my responsibilities of raising my child.
5. Often when men focus on their careers, women inadvertently end up shouldering responsibilities at home. This can end a woman’s career. Building a life of togetherness, and all the responsibilities that come along with it, are a shared responsibility of both partners. It would be quite wrong if only one partner had to pay the price for it. As a solution, if both partners take up equal responsibilities, they become lighter and are collectively able to enjoy their life together. Hence, as a person I find it crucial to take this decision for a life of joy and contentment.
Now, our son Ojas has turned six months old. He is still quite dependent on his parents for his everyday needs. Hence, opting for a Palnaghar (Babysitting Center) is not an option. I am going to give him my full-time attention till he turns two. And Priyanka (Sonawane) is going to turn a page in her career with a new enthusiasm. Once Ojas turns two, I will avail the help of a Palnaghar to return back to my work.
It was heartening to see that Pravin’s post received much appreciation. But the credit for taking this gender equal decision required an entire army of support. Pravin comes from a family of farmers, and has been a sole breadwinner for his family for the longest time. The pinch in their collective earning capacity was going to affect the entire family. However, everyone in the family was supportive of his and his partner’s decision to prioritize their child’s well-being and get through the next one and a half years together.
Pravin and Priyanka have also consciously chosen to ensure that rearing their child is primarily their responsibility, and not that of Ojas’ grandparents. In an interview on Navi Umed’s Golmej Gappa, Pravin shared, “Grandparents, not unlike women in relationships, often find it hard to say no to their own children when it comes to looking after grandchildren. Taking grandparents for granted is unfair, considering it is the parents’ decision to raise a child. We have told our parents they can be as involved as they would like to be, but we have ensured we take on the onus of our own decision to have a baby.”
Pravin’s letter also hints at a larger structural need to have paternity leaves for fathers, a demand that has been collectively growing in the last decade. “In the post about my decision to resign, I had mentioned the lack of leaves after much deliberation and thought. I wanted to highlight the facts that in the current situation, there aren’t enough provisions of parental leave for fathers to be able to participate in their child’s upbringing and that these leaves need to be mandated. For this, the government needs to enact legal provisions. Only if it does materialize, would it be easier for men to take on the role of fatherhood, reducing the burden of maternity solely on women. If such provisions are not made, the number of men participating in childcare will remain low, and this will have adverse effects on both the woman and the child. Moreover, those men will not be able to spend as much time with their children as mothers do. They will neither be able to create a loving space in the child’s life as a father, nor will they be able to experience the critical milestones of their child’s life.”
In India, paternity benefits for new fathers are not legally mandated as yet and this has disastrous effects on women’s participation in the workforce too. According to the International Labour Organisation’s 2012 numbers, 80.2% of India’s workforce was made up of male employees. This means only one in four workers in the formal workforce in India was likely to be a woman. The same report states that the second most common reason for women dropping out of the workforce is pregnancy and childcare. Interestingly, in comparison, studies show that new fathers work more after their child is born to cope up with the loss of income, in case of a double income family. The proportion of time they invest in paid work also increases due to the increased cost of child care.
Former Member of Parliament, late Rajeev Satav of the Congress had introduced the Paternity Benefit Bill in 2017 as a Private Member’s Bill. While the Bill proposed 15 days of mandatory and paid leaves for fathers whose wife gives biological birth to their child, in both informal and formal sectors, it also made special provisions for adoptive fathers too. But the Bill had received criticism for not being inclusive of fathers in live-in relationships, fathers who are not in heterosexual relationships and fathers who are not cisgender, especially fathers who may be trans-men. In India, paternity benefits right now remain arbitrary to a private employer’s internal policy. The Central Government introduced a fifteen-day paternal leave policy for its male employees. However, unequal parental leaves beg the question of whether we as a society envision fathers as equal caregivers at all.
Pravin and Priyanka’s decision to invest earnestly in their child’s well-being and growth, is certainly well-thought out and welcome. Hopefully, it invites more fathers to consciously choose time with their children. But Pravin’s letter hints at larger structural inequities that need to be fixed if we want to allow more fathers to transition into the role of responsible and equal caregivers.