@ashbg.motherhood: I was asked a question during a podcast interview yesterday while talking about the motherhood penalty: “If there was a magic spell you could cast to make one change that would help get rid of the motherhood penalty, what would it be?” My answer was this… Force all men to take parental leave. Not optional. Not a nice-to-have. Not something that gets quietly discouraged by a workplace culture that sees it as a red flag. Mandatory. Use it or lose it. Every father. Every time. Because the research is unambiguous. When fathers take parental leave, everything changes. They learn what the work actually is. Not in theory. In practice. At 3am. With a baby who will not settle and a house that needs to function and a partner who has been doing this alone and is running on nothing. They cannot unsee it after that. The perception gap (his belief that things are roughly equal, her reality that they are not) closes before it has a chance to open. Divorce rates drop. Domestic labour becomes more equal. Women’s careers recover faster. Children have better outcomes. Men are happier. And women get to begin this chapter of their lives with a partner who actually understands what the chapter contains. One policy. Mandatory paternity leave. Enforced, well paid, and culturally normalised. That is my spell.

Ash BG

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Region: AU

Tuesday 28 July 2026 08:45:40 GMT