Elaine Loughlin: Fathers have been treated like an optional extra at birth

They have attended scans, laboured for hours, and, in some cases, been told the worst news an expectant mother can hear — and all of this has happened alone.

The message went out loud and clear: Fathers are not essential.

Last week, Galway University Hospital announced that it is
essentially going back to pre-Covid arrangements and, from this week, birthing partners can attend all scans, visit the wards between 8am and 9pm, and be present during labour and for caesarean sections.

It begs the question: If one hospital can go beyond the HSE guidelines — which even now are at the discretion of the individual hospital managers to accept or reject — why can’t all maternity units do the same?

On the other side of the country, a tweet posted by father-to-be Craig Keegan over the weekend summed up the situation, which could be seen as comical, except it’s not.

“Today is due date for our baby, I won’t be allowed into the hospital until Jennie is giving birth. But 10 min away I could go to a concert with 3,500 people.”

As fans danced to Denise Chaila in Kilmainham, cheered on their county GAA teams in Croke Park, and watched the golf in Mount
Juliet, expectant fathers waited in car parks.

Galway hospital has rightly
acknowledged the vital, and what should be equal, role both parents have in their child’s life from conception, but the HSE continues to give hospitals an out.

It has issued guidelines to each of the country’s 19 maternity units, but hospitals still have the final say over the level of access fathers and birth partners are given.

“If these guidance protocols cannot be met, the hospital should maintain and update their risk register and review them regularly. Where there are site-specific restrictions, these should be communicated to patients,” HSE national women and infants health programme general manager Mary-Jo Biggs recently wrote in a letter to a number of TDs.

The HSE is due to survey maternity units next week to ask if they are complying with the visiting guidance issued last month.

While restrictions in our maternity hospitals have eased somewhat in recent weeks, the manner in which birth partners, but especially fathers, have been dismissed since March 2020 highlights and compounds an existing assumption that mothers should be the primary caregiver.

“I think it’s just reinforcing gender stereotypes and putting the burden of the family on women again,” said Linda Kelly of the Women Ascend campaign for better access to maternity units for partners.

The fact is that mothers are often left holding the baby long after they leave the maternity ward.

More than 90% of mothers take maternity leave in this country, but the number of fathers who avail of paternity benefit, which is paid at the same rate of €245 a week, is nowhere near that.

Roderic O’Gorman, the children’s minister, has already stressed the need to “change that mindset” about the division of
responsibility when it comes to caring for children and said it was very disappointing that fathers were not taking up the entitlements on offer to them.

“There’s a societal element to all of this as well and that deeper question of who cares for children, and an approach that all of us, and particularly men, need to take that we have an absolute responsibility in terms of caring for children. It has to be understood that it is a shared responsibility of parents,” he told the Irish Examiner last year.

However, it’s not just about
getting dads to cop on and take on an equal share. A wider societal change of mindset is urgently required.

Overall, 45% of fathers didn’t avail of the entitlement in 2018, but the level of uptake also varied dramatically depending on sector or industry. Pre-pandemic, almost 60% of fathers working in accommodation and food services did not take paternity leave. This contrasts sharply to those working in the education sector, where almost 70% availed of the entitlement.

We cannot accept that fathers who happen to work as teachers, for example, want to be home more in the first weeks of their child’s life than a parent working in a hotel or restaurant. The culture around taking this leave and whether it is encouraged or discouraged in certain professions needs to be examined.

As a child gets older, the divergence in the level of responsibility widens further.

It’s more than four decades since the marriage bar was lifted and yet the statistics tell us that women continue to adhere to a self-imposed baby bar, foregoing careers to care for children.

Of course, for some women, the choice to become a stay-at-home mother is an easy one, but for others the decision comes after weighing up the cost of childcare.

The likelihood of a woman returning to paid employment after being on maternity leave drops for each additional child.

The most recent CSO figures show that, for women in a couple with no children, the employment rate stands at 88.1%, but falls to 66.8% for women whose youngest child is four or five years of age.

The presence of children has a much smaller effect on the employment rate for men.

Inequality in parenting has always existed, the pandemic and maternity restrictions have simply shown us that this imbalance continues to be accepted.

Did you know

When a bill passes through the houses of the Oireachtas, it must be signed into law on the fifth, sixth or seventh day after it is presented to the president. However, there are some exceptions.

The president has an absolute discretion to refer a bill to the Supreme Court to get a judgement on its constitutionality, except in the case of a money bill or a bill to amend the constitution.

However, before making a referral, the president must consult the Council of State. Since 1940, fewer than 30 bills have been put forward to the Council of State.

What to look out for

Tuesday: The impact of Covid-19 on youth mental health services and the difficulties faced by psychologists will be discussed at the subcommittee on mental health.

Sinn Féin are to bring forward a private members bill to ban rent increases for three years. The party says measures to link rent increases to inflation announced last week do not go far enough and say a total ban on increases is required, at least in the short-term.

Wednesday: The Oireachtas health committee will get an update on the progress of the National Children’s Hospital from Department of Health officials, representatives from Children’s Health Ireland and the hospital board. Members of the committee will be seeking answers on cost and time overruns.

— With the Dáil term nearing a close, the Government is hoping to blitz through a number of bills in the afternoon including the Workplace Relations Bill, the Gender Pay Gap Information Bill, the Air Navigation and Transport Bill 2020, and the Planning and Development Bill. There will also be votes on Wednesday evening.

— Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe, is up before the finance committee as scrutiny of his Local Property Tax Bill gets under way. The changes will bring tens of thousands of new homes into the property tax net for the first time.

Thursday: Given the push from some quarters to rollout out antigen testing, the education committee discussion on the reopening of further and higher educational institutions in a safe and sustainable way is likely to be an interesting one.

— Justice Minister Heather Humphreys and Higher Education Minister Simon Harris will spend the morning taking questions in the Dáil.

Politics headlines through history

July 9, 1921: A truce is reached between the IRA and the British army. It was reported that the terms included “a complete suspension of hostilities on both sides, and the abandonment of the curfew regulations, which have now ceases or are suspended”.

July 7, 1922: Republican politician and the first Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil, Cathal Brugha died from injuries he received when shot in O’Connell Street in the Civil War. While Brugha had ordered his men to surrender on July 5, he remained on and was shot in the leg, the bullet severing an artery.

July 8, 1946: Under the headline ‘Happy on Salary as Journalist’, the Cork Examiner reported that the second richest woman in the world, tobacco heiress and reporter Doris Duke, had landed in Shannon airport on a stopover to the US.

“Being as I am reputed to be the second richest woman in the world does not mean a thing,” she said.

“There are always lots of things you want and cannot get. I am just as happy to live on my salary as a journalist.”

July 6, 2000: In an effort to curb inflation, the government ordered a freeze on the price of alcoholic drinks. Vintners Federation CEO Tadhg O’Sullivan said the organisation was considering legal action over the “discriminatory measure”. “It’s a kneejerk reaction which is probably unworkable and will do nothing to control inflation,” he said at the time.

July 13, 2001: The Cloyne Report was published. It found the Diocese of Cloyne failed to adequately report or investigate allegations of child sex abuse made against priests from 1996 to 2009.