Memo to Prime Minister Tony Blair: Pardon my butting in from across the great waters, sir, but I understand you’ve run into a bit of what you folks call a sticky wicket. Perhaps I can help.
First of all, congratulations on the expected arrival of your fourth child in May. As some of us like to say on this side of the Big Pond, I’m just plumb tickled for you.
But now the British tabloids are all abuzz with a new controversy: When the blessed event arrives, your wife, Cherie, wants you to take a week or two of paternity leave.
Whoa! I do not want to poke around in your business, sir, but I can just imagine what bombshell must have erupted at No. 10 Downing St., when the little Missus laid that one on you.
Her: “You mean you hadn’t planned to take time off?”
You: “I’m thinking, dearest. I’m thinking.”
Her: “Well, why not? Tell me why bloody not? You’ve done it before!”
You: “Well, yes. Of course. But, luv, I wasn’t the bloody prime minister, was I then?”
Her: “Oh, you men! As if the empire just absolutely, positively couldn’t bloody well get along without you for a mere week or so? Is that it? They just would fall over into the sea without you? We’re getting a bit of a lofty view of ourselves now aren’t we, Ducky?”
You: “Don’t be cheeky, luv. You know my family means everything to me, of course. But think of it: What if we’re in the middle of a national security crisis? The pound could crash. The bloody Rolling Stones could break up. I do have to be at the ready, you know.”
Her: “Details, details. Oh, that’s all right, luv. You just go on now. Go on and have yourself a grand bloody time gallivanting about at G-7 conferences and … and … and prime minister’s question time. We’ll just muddle through here at home somehow.”
You: “Oh, I say, re-ee-ally, darling, is that a butcher’s knife in your hand?”
Hey, on behalf of overworked dads everywhere, Mr. P.M., sir, you have our sympathy.
Sure, you work hard every day. You take the early commute to work and you bust your buns trying to make ends meet, not just for yourself but for the place where you work, which in your case happens to be the entire United Kingdom.
And when you get home? Yep, there they are. The family. They want more, more, more! It never stops. And all you might want to do is shamble off down the road to the nearest pub to tip a few with your blokes.
Believe me, I understand. I’ve got your back on this.
But take it from me, another working dad: You’d be a bloody fool indeed if you chose the urgent affairs of queen and country over diaper duty, after-midnight feedings and other Baby Blair care.
If you made that stupid choice you really couldn’t blame your beloved if she wanted to cook up some prime-minister rib roast. As comedian Chris Rock says, I might not approve but I understand.
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For one thing, the social and political tide has turned for men who choose family time over more time at work. No longer are we viewed as such wimps the way we used to be.
In fact, a recent study by demographers Suzanne Bianchi and John Robinson of the University of Maryland show it is downright cool and hip for dads today to spend a lot more time with their families than their fathers’ generation did. The study of more than 1,200 people across the country found that despite widespread concerns about parents spending too little time with their children the amount of time fathers spent with their children almost doubled from 1965 to 1998.
And despite the fact that the percentage of women working outside the home has almost doubled in the past three decades, mothers actually spent an average of 5.8 waking hours a day with their children in 1998, compared to 5.6 in 1965.
How did they work more and spend more time with their families, too? Well, mothers, in particular, reported cutting back several hours a day on housework, free time and sleep.
So give your beloved a hand. Throughout the industrialized world it is becoming not only popular but also politically correct. Right there in England, your government recently established the legal right of new fathers to take up to 13 weeks of unpaid leave up to the child’s 5th birthday. Hey, that was good timing for you, wasn’t it, Mister B?
And as the Washington Post’s T.R. Reid recently reported, guess what well-known London lawyer has been a leading campaigner for parental leave? An attorney who practices under the name Cherie Booth but who is better known as your wife.
So with all due respect, sir, this is what we in the States call a no-brainer: You get to score big points not only with your electorate but also with your wife and kids, which as a familiar American credit card commercial says, is priceless.
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