Fatherhood - part 2

(if you’ve only just landed here, you might be interested in my initial post on this topic).

The Toddler Years: Independence and Dependence

My daughter is now just under 2 years old.

There has been no such thing as free-time since she was born.

Ever since she first started eating solids, she has always wanted to be independent, and to feed herself rather than being spoon-fed. This same trait seems to pop up across a range of things, at one point even when she first started walking. When she attempted something on her own and failed after a few tries, frustration would quickly set in. As with everything, practice makes perfect, and eventually she managed to become quite competent at these tasks - still, not having fully mastered every bit of, she’d get very frustrated when she spilt water over herself, or when she tipped and fell when walking or running around.

She’s at this stage where she combines a desire to do things independently, while at the same time being completely dependant on her parents. She will play for a few minutes alone, but she needs to be in the same room as you - if I step away, to the kitchen for example, to prepare a meal, it won’t be long until she calls at our names and comes looking for us. She will not sleep alone - even if she is just taking a nap, if she wakes up for a moment, scans the room, and doesn’t see us, she will cry and not go back to sleep, ever. However, if she is sleeping next to either of us, she will open her eyes, see us, and then go back to sleep for a bit longer.

Shared Activities and Learning to Do It Alone

Whatever we do, she wants to participate. Doesn’t matter if it’s cooking, mowing the lawn, or watering plants around the house. She won’t be happy just watching, she has to do things herself. Everything takes so much longer, and there’s usually a lot more cleanup to do afterwards. Sometimes it can become incredibly frustrating, like when you are just trying to get something done. It is also extremely rewarding. You can see your child is literally learning how to do something, from you, in front of your eyes. And you can see, bit by bit, how they become more and more capable of doing things, and how they can put 2 and 2 together - if she is watering a plant, and she spills some water on the floor, she will go “Uh Oh”, and, by herself, she will go and pick up the mop from the utility room and she will try to clean up by herself.

Navigating Childcare Challenges and Parental Leave

Despite signing up for multiple nearby creches before she was even born, to date we still haven’t been able to get a place for her.

The First Year

My partner wanted to stay with our daughter for her first year, which she managed to, thanks to maternity leave, additional (unpaid) maternity leave, parent’s leave, and accrued annual leave from her job.

Maternity Leave, Paternity Leave, Parent's Leave and Paternal Leave

This can get a bit confusing, especially considering all the identical names, but in Ireland there’s quite a few distinct types of leave that fall under the general umbrella of “parental” leave:

• Mothers are entitled to take 26 weeks of maternity leave from work (paid at a welfare rate¹ by the state’s social insurance), plus up to 16 additional maternity leave (unpaid). Employers may or may not top up the welfare rate by covering the difference between it and the salary.
• Fathers are entitled to take 2 weeks paternity leave from work (paid at a welfare rate¹). Employers may or may not top up the welfare rate by covering the difference between it and the salary.
• Both parents are then entitled to take up to 9 weeks of parent’s leave from work (paid at a welfare rate¹) before the child reaches the age of 2. Employers may or may not top up the welfare rate by covering the difference between it and the salary.
• Finally, both parents are entitled to take up to 26 weeks of parental leave from work, up until the child reaches the age of 12. These are unpaid.

I took as much leave as I could, while working from home as much as possible (with my manager’s blessing, but not so much corporate approval). In Ireland, I did this by taking 2 weeks of paternity leave, plus 9 weeks of parent’s leave, which I have used in full.

This meant that by the time my daughter was just over 1 year old we had run out of paid parental leave.

Year Two, or how to juggle work and childcare

Neither my partner nor I are Irish. We both live away from our country of birth, and therefore our families. This means that we cannot rely on them to help us with the day-to-day logistics of childcare.

My partner started looking into the possibility of reducing her work hours (ie, going part-time), and together we started looking for whatever other solutions we could.
Finding a full time nanny or childminder would have been very costly - unlike creches, there are no state subsidies, and regulation is quite poor (although this is changing).
We did the math and realised that there wasn’t a huge difference (financially) between paying for a full time childminder or taking unpaid time from work, once you added up tax and all the extra costs (which could have included the need for an extra car in our household).

After spending so much time with our daughter during her first year, neither of us was particularly eager to go back to full time work either.

We started looking into parental leave, and it turns out that if you are working part-time, your entitlements are pro-rated, ie if you are already working part time to 80% of normal hours, you would only be entitled to 80% of the 26 weeks.

Being that my partner works long shifts instead of regular days, we realised that with perfect scheduling, we could cover the full week by taking up to 2 days of parental leave per week.

So we went ahead, and did it. We put the requests through at work, and got the approvals.

Not everyone is as privileged as we are. I am perfectly aware that most people cannot afford to take unpaid time away from work. In other cases, when childcare is unaffordable, the burden usually falls on mothers, who often end up leaving the workforce to mind their children full time. This is not something my partner wanted, nor is it something I think she should do, much less feel forced to do.

A Small Respite

Just as we got the approvals, we found out that a neighbour of ours was looking to get a bit of work, a couple of days a week, as a childminder, already having 2 children of her own (one younger, another older than my daughter).
This was an ideal scenario for us, as it made it so that we didn’t rely on perfect scheduling to avoid my partner and I working on the same day. It also gives us a bit of time to do things as simple as catching up on household chores. It also gives our daughter the chance to actually play and be with other kids her age, every week, which I think is ideal to help with her development.

Where we’re at

So this is where we are at the moment. We are still in wait-lists for the creches, who usually give preference to siblings of children who are already in the creche - so we are not necessarily moving up on the list.

Our plan is to use up all of the parental leave entitlements (the full 26 weeks, that is, 130 days).
After this, we will likely scale back our hours at work and go part-time, and split the burden between the two of us. Thankfully, I am lucky to have a manager at work who is a decent person, and who has said they will support this (provided HR approve, which, subject to details, they will, as they are too big a company to risk doing otherwise).

Going part-time is costly, but so is childcare. But at least we have the chance to spend more time with our daughter, and actually see and help her grow into a little human.

I have never heard anyone say they wish they had spent less time with their children!

Footnotes

1. 274 EUR per week as of 2024. ↩ ↩² ↩³