Prospective fathers who want to spend more family time with their soon-to-be-born son(s) or daughter(s) might consider switching workplaces to one of the 10 companies that offer the best paid paternity leave benefits.
(By the way, most of the companies with generous paternity leave packages are also among the 10 companies with the best maternity leave policies.)
Let’s face it, the typical American company isn’t generous when it comes to paternity benefits. As of the moment, the U.S has no law that requires a minimum number of days off for specific events, whether the nature be parental, medical, or vacation. That situation is unfortunate, especially for new parents, the majority of whom need time off to take care of their newborns. To add insult to injury, many other countries in the world have already adopted laws that require paid maternity leave for new parents, putting American families at a disadvantage globally when it comes to child care.
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Meanwhile, at most of the companies that do offer maternity leave, they tend to be limited to just a few days or weeks, and are only available for birth mothers. In a way, that is sensible, considering that women do all of the birthing and feeding of newborns (assuming the baby is being breastfed). However, the concept of family formation is far more complex, so that a policy that focuses only on new birth mothers puts foster parents, homosexual couples, and single dads at a disadvantage.
This problem exists in companies as small as mom-and-pop stores, which reason out that mandatory maternity leave policies would handicap them, and in companies as big as multinational fast-food chains, where it has been a struggle to get higher wages, let alone attain generous paternity leave provisions. Needless to say, most American companies offer paltry paternity leave packages. Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA) offers four weeks of paid paternity leave, with the option of an additional eight weeks without pay, while new fathers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc (NYSE:WMT) only get two weeks off with pay.
The increased scrutiny and advocacy over paternity leave policies and Americans’ desire to get the same benefits as other nations has led to intensified coverage over how companies fare in terms of their paternity leave policies. This has led to a race by some of the top companies in the U.S to offer more generous benefits for new parents.
Websites like Fairygodboss and Glassdoor keep track of the paternity leave policies and related concerns at as many companies as possible, while highlighting the companies with the most generous benefits. Each website has employee-generated reviews on just about every company, with details on how much parental leave the companies provide. This list of the 10 companies that offer the best paid paternity leave benefits is based on the reviews and comments from those two companies’ websites, cross-checked with recent news about the companies’ policies. Check it out beginning on the next page.
