The care and upbringing of children is still today a task associated with mothers. That is why it drew the attention of many that the Minister of Consumer Affairs, Alberto Garzón, became the first Spanish minister to officially exercise his paternity leave. He did it in March 2020, with the arrival of his second daughter and coinciding with the pandemic. He captured the attention of the media, although he only took five of the twelve weeks that correspond to him by law and teleworked on several occasions due to the situation that the country was going through.
Now, in the midst of the biggest regional security crisis in decades and as Finland waits to join NATO, Finnish Defense Minister Antti Kaikkonen is asking for two months of paternity leave. And the Finns do not blink.
This popular acceptance, where there is no question that parents play their role as parents, is the response of a Nordic society accustomed to family-oriented social policies and a reconciliation that allows them to balance work and personal life.
"Children remain small only for a moment, and I want to be able to remember it in other ways than just photos," said Kaikkonen, 48, a father of two, through his Twitter account. The minister assured that Finland's security "will be in good hands" and that "although ministerial duties are very important to me, you have to be able to put family first at some point."
The precedents on the world scene are few. The Japanese environment minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, was one of the first to revolutionize the country in January 2020 after taking paternity leave from him, an act that the Japanese government called "progressive."
The Nordic countries - Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden - have made gender equality a priority in their policies, including encouraging parents to spend more time with their children. In Sweden, both parents receive 480 days of leave per child and each of them can use half, which are also transferable. In the case of multiple births, an additional 180 days are granted for each additional child.
In September, Finland launched a system of paternity leave that they consider neutral, since it allows both parents to take 160 days of paid leave each and transfer a certain number of days between them.
The leading male politicians in the Nordic countries have made use of their paternal leave. Danish Finance Minister Nicolai Wammen took two months off at the end of 2020, arguing that his son "has mainly seen his father on television." So did the former immigration minister, Mattias Tesfaye, and that of Culture, Joy Mogensen. Former Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, now 81, pioneered combining politics and parenting by taking leave in 1998.
As happened to Garzón two years ago, Kaikkonen's paternity leave comes at a critical moment: the war in Ukraine, the general elections at the beginning of April and its accession to NATO make up a complex scenario for the Nordic country. And Turkey's resistance to its entry into the Atlantic Alliance, which claims that Finland and Sweden must first address concerns about alleged Kurdish militant activity in both countries, further complicates that picture.
Turkey and Hungary are the only ones of the 30 NATO states that have yet to ratify the requests of Finland and Sweden. But Finland's main newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, editorialized that accession is likely to come after the elections. "Observers outside of Finland may not only be surprised, but also sympathetic that the defense minister is taking paternity leave from him at this time," the note states.
Kaikkonen's paternity leave “says a lot about our (Nordic) values and welfare society,” said Emilia Kangas, a researcher on equality, work and family at the Seinajoki University of Applied Sciences. The example of the minister in trading NATO for nappies is one more step on the path towards equal parenting, not only in the Nordic countries, but throughout the world.
