 I'm Liza Mundy. I'm a journalist here in DC and director at New America of our Breadwinning and Caregiving program, which is in some ways a fancy name for work life, but we named it that way to emphasize that breadwinning and caregiving are responsibilities shared by men and women alike. As Anne Marie has pointed out, at some point in our lives we will probably all be breadwinners and all be caregivers. We will certainly all need breadwinning and caregiving and we want to discuss fashion and promote policies that will enable people to better achieve both of these signal human responsibilities and pleasures. We are really fortunate to have with us today Latifah Lyles, who is the director of the Women's Bureau at the U.S. Department of Labor. We are very honored and pleased to have her with us. The Women's Bureau was created back in 1920, if I'm correct, to promote the well-being of working women who were mostly at that point in manufacturing and in many cases being paid less than men were. Over the years as women have entered the workforce I know that the mission has expanded to include work-life balance and child care and working conditions and equal pay. So we can talk about how paternity leave plays into all that. We have with us Jake Brewer, who is the managing director of external affairs at change.org, which as you all probably know is a petition website dedicated to empowering people to create social and political change. It has, according to a piece in Fortune, 207 employees in 18 countries. And a policy of offering 18 weeks of fully paid parental leave to every employee there. So we'll discuss how that came about and how it's working out. And we're really fortunate to have Barbara Wankoff, who is the director of Workplace Solutions at KPMG. So we also have a very large employer, provider of professional services and accounting and auditing and all those great things. She has been active in this space for a long time. It's her responsibility to help develop and promote work-life and flexibility programs at KPMG. And if I'm correct, you all have been offering paternity leave for quite some time. So we can talk about how that came to be and how it's worked out. I guess just two sort of opening without being overly anecdotal, two opening reflections. My exposure to paternity leave came 19 years ago when I had my first child. I was working at the Washington Post. We had a good maternity leave policy. We also had a paternity leave policy. And looking back, it seems kind of surprising. I'm not quite sure why we did. I suspect it had something to do with our Guild and, you know, labor organization. But nobody took it. No man that I knew took it. But I remember when I had my first child, I was standing in the lunch line with a male colleague, who was also his wife was about to have a child, and he was going to take it. He was like, because he had been active in the Guild. He had been a labor reporter. He was very aware of his rights. And he said, you know, I am going to take this paternity leave, and I'm going to enjoy every minute of it. And I know the women in the lunch line practically fell over with love and admiration for this man. We were like, oh, my God, you're the most wonderful person. And he is actually. But it always made me wonder, we talk a lot now about stigma and how men don't take paternity leave because they feel stigmatized. And I'm sure there's truth to that. But I've always been a little skeptical because I felt like at least the women in the room felt just again, full of admiration. And my only other sort of anecdotal thought that we can use to frame our discussion, I guess my second introduction to paternity leave came about a year ago when my editor at The Atlantic, we were talking about story ideas. And she said, what about what about paternity leave? I mean, what is that? What is that for? And that was and I need to do some reporting to sort of find out where the thinking was on that. And of course, it was everything that we've talked about today. It was what the Scandinavian countries are doing, actually what Quebec has done in terms of creating these daddy days that can only be used by men and encouraging men to take it by essentially reversing stigma. If men, in fact, did feel stigmatized for taking leave, the research shows that when you have these days that you're going to lose, men begin to feel stigmatized if they don't take it. So there's some really interesting sort of behavioral modification work going on among governments. And of course, in our country, now there are three states that have guaranteed parental leave for all citizens. People pay into, they make a small payroll tax contribution so that any worker, they don't have to belong to a forward thinking web business or a forward thinking professional services provider. They could be a roofer or a bartender or construction worker. And they're entitled to six weeks of leave. And I interviewed a lot of workers in California who had taken it. Men who were very glad to have these six weeks did take it, were helping out, not even helping out, were fully participating in the domestic life of their homes who had working wives and were very, very happy to have this opportunity, even as some of them felt a little guilty, because older men they worked with had not had this opportunity. They were availing themselves of it, they were supported by their male co workers, but they did feel a little guilt that they had some something that that older men had not had. So anyway, it was, it was the same research we've been talking about the people I interviewed were much like the people in this room, everybody was on board with it. And then after the piece came out, I was I went on a radio station and was talking about, you know, what all this great research shows about the importance of maternity paternity leave. And this woman, a woman called in it was a Philadelphia radio show. And she said, So this is crazy. I run a small auto repair business in Philadelphia, and we can't lose somebody for six weeks. You know, this would just never work for us. It would. And so it was a useful wake up call that the business case for paternity leave might be evident to all of us. But it's really not evident to I think a lot of business owners. And it's just worth I think keeping in mind that the case does still need to be made in a larger way. And I think probably people in this room are more sympathetic to the argument than maybe the American public is. So but then again, you know, it's been mentioned in the State of the Union address. And so perhaps there is a new momentum behind the idea of parental leave and particular paternity leave. So Barbara, could you talk about maybe the origins of paternity leave at KPMG are lost shrouded in the midst of time, because it's been quite some time. But how did it? How did it get started at the firm? What was it? Was there a business case that was made? Was it difficult to get men to take it and to sign onto it? So thank you. And thank you for for having me. It's pleasure to be here. KPMG has had paternity leave for a long time. Early in the 2000s actually didn't get a chance to look up whether it was 2002 or 2003, somewhere in that neighborhood. And really, it was part of our whole focus on supporting all of our employees and their work life. There was a new recognition that we valued somebody's entire self and that we wanted to provide that support for all our people. We had a generous paid time off policy where people could take time off and a generous leave policy for new mothers. But we felt that it was also important to provide that time for new dads to bond with their children. And that it really was two weeks at that point in time to and it was it was for bonding. Now we had a lot of flexibility there in terms of somebody could use it within the first year of their after the birth of child or placement of a child in their home through foster care or adoption. But and people took it actually, we had a very high uptake very early on. So our men, all of our people work very hard. And this is a milestone event in their life. And I think they recognize that Wow, the firm is giving me permission to step out a little bit and to spend that time with that new child. So we really did have an uptake. We've had some evolution over time, which I can talk about, but we can get to that. Okay, okay. Well, I think that's so interesting that you said that people started taking it right away, because I recently happened to be chatting with the one who's a highly placed executive at Twitter, which is you know, one of the Silicon Valley companies that very publicly offers, you know, great parental leave. And she was talking about how much trouble they have getting men to take it. And and that this was a frustration for her. So I Jake, I'll ask you in your organization, is it hard to get men to take it? So I, beyond working at change order, I'm also the father of an 18 month old. And this has been interesting in my own life. So it's kind of living this along the way. So far, we introduced this policy in October, I believe, and now it also grown a lot in that amount of time. Interestingly, the the only people to take it so far have been men. Because we, frankly, just women and our staff has not gotten pregnant yet, or had their children yet. And so we actually have a couple of expecting mothers, but haven't had it, you know, women who have taken advantage of it. And what's fantastic is two things. One is two relatively recent hires, you know, had been hired, I think within two months, their their spouses, their partners had a child. And so they almost immediately after starting, then basically took their leave. And it's been great. And in fact, the the culture has been such that it's almost hard to come back, not because you don't want to. And in fact, I have this problem, which is an interesting thing just discussed as a, as an entrepreneur, you know, you're kind of excited about work, if you're really passionate about your job. My colleagues basically tried to prevent me from returning to work early, which I thought was kind of wonderful and amazing, and also like really hard. And they, I wouldn't say to prevent me, it was more like they were just encouraging me like, hey, stay away. Like, we got this. It's all good. Go take, go be with your family, go take care of your daughter. And that was like a, it was a challenge. Almost even when you think you're quite progressive in your own views of your own ego kind of stands in your way there. That's been really exciting to watch. And I think what's also interesting, you know, are we have 18 offices around the world, three of them in the United States, and those are in New York, Washington DC, and in San Francisco, you could not pick three more expensive cities to do much of anything, much less raise a child. And so childcare in these cities is ridiculously expensive. I can attest to anybody who is not trying to do that with young children. So finding a nanny, finding a daycare, whatever you got to do. And with the policy, by the way, is not just parental, it's all partners. So partners of a birth parent. So what's interesting is that often the birth parent will have, let's say 12 weeks of their own in their own company, in our case, they would have 18, but pretty well guaranteed most of the time they're going to have 12. Our head of global HR has just recently had a child, he's taken four weeks off and just came back. And what he's going to do is actually take another about probably eight weeks off after his wife's leave expires. And what that does beyond just obviously extending the time that a parent is full time at home, it actually gives them a lot longer time to find adequate daycare. That is, I'll just say it is hard. It's hard to get into a daycare, to find the right nanny that you trust or a family situation or whatever your situation is. It is a very difficult thing and also just a very emotional thing. So extending that time beyond even the four months, which is a lot, or 18 weeks, which is beyond four months, to even close to six months, we're seeing is a really powerful just for our families and supporting our staff, but also just a strong business thing. Since our investment, which we just got in December, which is very values aligned and this policy, which is in October, the number of applicants to our company has doubled and stayed actually quadrupled and then it's come back down and settled at 2x. What I was before that and that is including an extraordinary number of women engineers in particular, which is fantastic. Right now we've got 260 staff, we've grown a little bit. 51% are women globally, but just under 50% of our leadership team are women and the number of women engineers now is also climbing dramatically where it's not anywhere we'd like it to be, but it is one of the leading in Silicon Valley. So starting to see all of this have an impact, not just in the quality of life for staff, but also in the just great business of both getting great investors and getting great staff. So you speak, it seems to me, to the power of stigma. I mean, in working environments where people work very hard and love their jobs and want to come back, fortunately your coworkers stigmatized you so that, you know, in the sense that no, don't come back. This is your role right now and you need to stay there and or peer pressure or something. So Latifah Lyles, your bailiwick at the Department of Labor is women and their working conditions and equal pay and work life balance. And so it's women, women, women on your policy wish list. You know, where does paternity leave fit in? Is that an argument that you would make for the well-being of, you know, of the women who sort of work lives you think about all the time? Absolutely. And, you know, one of the very exciting things right now is, as you mentioned, the White House announcing some efforts on at least increasing pay leave for federal workers. And another personal anecdote is that my husband and I have a three year old split our leave as well. And so I took off two months, three months, he took off three months and it extended the time that we had to figure out childcare, which was a very, very major concern. And one of the things I thought was an interesting transition in that story that you told is there's a lot of conversation both in the childcare and paid leave discussion about the outcomes for children and how the outcomes for children we talked about bonding and early, early connection and the number of words even that a child hears from a parent makes a difference. But there are also some health outcomes very specific to women. And this is in my own personal experience just having that level of trust that my child was at home, not in a childcare center was one major thing. But there are very, very distinct reports that show where there are where women are able to stay at home, take leave or at least have their child with another parent, whether it's a partner or us or our husband, their likelihood of depression, post pattern depression and other emotional issues is dramatically reduced based on both the childcare situation, but mostly the leave in the beginning. And so from our perspective, there are so many benefits to women if more people are taking leave, more men are taking leave. But there are some really practical realities about what that means. You know, one of the things I think is so interesting in this conversation is this cultural piece is not just, you know, how do we change the culture for men to take leave? We know that when men take leave, that the culture of the organization tends to have a more positive outlook as it relates to pay leave, which of course affects everyone and women. Also, we know that the people who are most likely to have leave in their companies are high level executives, the majority of whom are men. And if we really are going to, you know, try to leverage the business community, even when there are policies that are not being taken, we know it's going to have to become, you know, it's not, you know, 90% of women in the C-suite, it's going to be men utilizing the policies that some very progressive companies have to sort of have maybe even a trickle down effect because we know that in our surveys, the likelihood of you taking leave has a lot to do with your salary and your income. And we know that, you know, men make more money, they're more likely to actually have policies that relate to family leave, where they can take paternity leave in that case. So that it's not even, it's even, you know, if you just look at a sort of an access issue, we know that in some circles men have more access. And then the other piece I think is interesting that we see in our time use survey that we do through the Bureau of Labor Statistics is that when you look at the reasons why men and women take leave or don't take leave. So when it comes to financial reasons and other things, women and men, there's a disconnect but it's not so dramatic. Where it's most dramatic is men deciding that they can't take leave because of time. So that while if it's because they're worried about losing their job or because they can't afford it, the differential is like two or three points for men and women. But if you ask them, is this reason you're not taking leave because you don't have enough time or you're overworked, it's a dramatic difference. It's 23 for, I think it's 23 for women and 33 for men. And so they're more likely to say that I can't take it not because I don't have it or I'm worried about losing my job, but I'm just too worked. I'm too overworked men to stress out. So I think that again, there's a, from our perspective, it's a win-win-win for everyone, not just the children, but also the women themselves, both in that from a health perspective, but then also in terms of their ability to maintain their their jobs. And then the other piece that we talk about a little bit is the work, the labor force participation conversation. And of course there's a major intersection between child care and paid leave and women's ability to retain their job at the same place that they worked before their child was born. But those intersections are extremely strong and critical and there is, you know, a constant leaking of women of childbearing age out of the labor force. And this has been studied to have a very, very significant impact on the economy overall. There are even estimates that show that if we were able to change the number of women leaving the labor force in those years, we could actually see a bottom-line positive effect. And so I think that, you know, from our perspective, you know, how women, it's not just if they can take time off and go leave or not leave, it's really a much broader impact on their careers as well and their wages. I should have said, this is a conversation. So if at any point anybody says anything that makes you want to chime in, please just chime in. What you said reminded me of an anecdote that emerged when I was doing my reporting. I interviewed in California a firefighter who was going to take his, his, his paternity leave and was very happy about it. And when I said, you know, that big, the question that Dan Coy's mentioned like, what are you going to do? What are you going to do during your leave? And it is so hard for any of us to remember what we did during our leave. But, but because it hadn't happened yet, he could say, here's what I'm going to do. My wife is going to take her leave first. She's a teacher. I'm going to take a little bit at the beginning to help take care of her and get everything straight. That she's going to take her leave. Then I'm going to take my leave and I'm going to use this to get our household on a complete, on a, on the right schedule. So I'll have dinner made. So when she gets, again, I just, I love this guy. She said, he said, you know, I'm going to have dinner made so that she's not exhausted when she comes home at the end because it's going to be hard for her to go back. But I'm going to ease that turn to some by having dinner made and then figure out the schedule that will enable all of us as a family and a household to make it work going forward. I mean, what a great guy, right? But it did seem an example of what you're saying, the way that it was going to, I don't, I wouldn't say enable his wife to stay in the workforce because, you know, maybe she would have anyway or maybe she would have had to anyway, but at least kind of make it easier for her to stay in the workforce. The last thing I wanted to add to your comment about the states is one of the things that we're doing specifically at the Women's Bureau is funding. We have a grants that were released last year. We're doing another round of a million dollars this year to states to look at feasibility, both in terms of funding structures and other metrics that a lot of states are in the in municipalities cities as well, not just states. Yes, there are three states, but what do we know about those states? And I think some of the information that we've learned from California and New Jersey in particular show that from a business perspective, it's a kind of a there's no story there. I mean, nothing dramatically bad happened. Right. Everyone kept working. Everyone called. Yes, but on the paternity leave conversation, I know for California in particular, the numbers of men who took advantage of the paternity of the leave in that instance was really high. And I think we don't tell the stories enough about what's working both in the private sector, but then also in these states. And so part of our goal is to have these conversations around the country so that both of course the private sector can learn from each other, which we've been doing with the White House. But also what can states do to move the ball forward in some cases? It's education in some cases. It's research in some cases. It's, you know, feasibility testing or very, very, very, very specific economic questions. But I think what we're able to say in the three examples that we have is that this is really in that, you know, having the UK model and we have some conversations with Scandinavian countries as well is that for so many people who have these programs, it's such a non-issue. And I think that this idea that, you know, both for the company and the workers, this is just something that we do because it makes the right, it's the right thing to do. And I think we often focus on the business case or the health case. Or really, there are so many different reasons and generally speaking in this country, most men and women believe it's a good idea. I mean the surveys are off the charts that no one is really opposed to these concepts. So from our perspective, it moves the ball forward. We do and I appreciate your comment too about while I do appreciate that the paradigm at home has to change somewhat, you know, there's this conversation about shared responsibilities. And we're very realistic about child care and who's, you know, men have definitely are doing more dishes and taking care of kids more. But it is still central for women and working women because the vast majority of child care and parental care is coming from women. I would agree. I think that the paternity leave is going to have big payoffs to help women stay in the workforce. And that's very important to us. I mean we are really believe that the diversity and the mix of genders as well as ethnicities is really critical to our business success going forward. So we are always looking at how to keep our women in the workplace. And we do have that leaky pipeline, especially as people get ready to start families. Do they see the role models of people who are successfully managing dual career households with children? You know, many of our partners have, female partners have husbands who may have opted out of the workplace or opted out of a demanding career. And so we're always looking at that issue and we looked at the studies that talk about the importance of fathers bonding with their children and being that primary caregiver and that the women and the mothers need to believe in the competence of their men. And you know, I chuckle at this a little bit because our women who are well educated, very competent, have married competent men. And they're competent in every scope of their lives, you know, except at home or except in caring for that child. So they have to recognize that in themselves and empower their husbands who are very, very able to take on that role. And that is going to be critical in the shared responsibilities and then both having fulfilling careers and staying with it. Personal anecdote actually just, I think this is an interesting part of the leave question. My wife is a very extraordinary writer, media person and businesswoman and travels for work. I'm the same with I travel for work. And so leaving a young child with your partner is a challenge I think for any birth parent. But that competence question is just such an interesting first time happening thing to kind of go through as a couple. And so we dealt with it and you know after about six months or so my wife would go on a business trip and it was fine for her to leave it. And it was amazing. I mean not at all to my own horde. I just found it baffling how few other women that she would speak with found it impossible to leave their child with their husband. And I just found that one tragic and kind of just baffling that that's the culture that we perpetuate in that way. Really quickly I want to go back to something that you were saying about just kind of the right thing to do. When we talk about this we often get asked the economic question first. What's the business case for doing this. And really looking back I was talking to Maria earlier it was in June she gave a speech at the personal democracy forum and we were all kind of there together and we you know been willing about what does it just look like to lead and live the values that you espouse as a company. What does it look like we're a public benefit corporation. That means we like revenue just like every other corporation to grow it also means that it's not the reason that we have a company. The reason we have a company is to help empower people around the world. That also means empowering our own staff and recruiting and retaining the best possible people to do that. And we just kind of said what would the right thing to do here be. And it was a fully equitable policy that could lead not just for our own company but kind of to show that it's possible. So when people compare this policy that we have as a 250 person company of valuation. Not huge we you know we we're good size but we're not huge it Facebook Google and Yahoo or the three companies that most often get compared to and those are over a hundred well maybe not Yahoo but that's a Silicon Valley joke. Google and Facebook certainly have valuations over a hundred billion dollars I'll just say this we are less than a billion dollar valuation company. And to have to have this kind of policy with a company of that size just to be able to demonstrate that this can be done you don't have to be huge and be a very wealthy company. You don't have to have shareholders you know pouring money in and you don't have to have investors putting hundreds of millions of dollars in to just make this decision and just decide to do it. We also work and I just frankly to challenge this city in this room we also work with tons of advocacy groups who are pushing Washington to pass policies to pass cities and states to pass policies or push them to do this when they haven't actually done it themselves as organizations. You can just do it like you can just make the decision and just do it for your staff. And so to be pushing on that as a policy initiative for others to decide around when you haven't made the decision yourself I think is just frankly wrong and hypocritical. So you know when you kind of go back to the reasons behind it sometimes just the right thing to do should just be good enough. Barbara do you have any sense of companies I mean I'm still sort of intrigued by the fact that you all take up rate was so high so quickly and given that some other companies even those that have very high profile paternity leave policies do have trouble getting meant to take it. Do you have any insight into why that would be why it still it still can be hard when it's when it's offered when it's offered on a silver platter why there's still can be low take up rates. Yeah I think that it speaks to our culture as we are constantly communicating that support for work life and for parity amongst genders. So we're encouraging all our people to take their time off to recharge and re-energize by spending time with their family. So in paternity leave and we really call it parental leave because it applies for both you know is not the only thing and it doesn't sit in a vacuum by itself. So we close down between Christmas and New Year's and we basically need you know almost the chairman's permission to work over that time. Obviously there's a few critical services that might might need to happen during that period. But we want people to take time off and we need to frankly give them permission. This general generous pay time off policy some people use all of it. Some people don't and end up losing it but we're watching those people and we're reminding them that you've got time and we talk to their performance managers to say hey what's going on this person's in jeopardy of losing time whether it's their their pay time off policy their vacation time or their parental leave and say are you know why are you scheduling them on these jobs that are not enabling them to take the time that we say is really important to refresh and to keep them fresh and keep them engaged. I mean this is a career at KPMG you know is a marathon it's not a sprint but to be in a marathon you need those rest periods and you need respite. I would think that the Silicon Valley companies would be sending that message also but I mean is it your impression that I think my my experience of companies so far is a lot of them will just kind of say like yeah this is really smart we're competing for the top talent you know in the highest you know often high paid jobs and that is just kind of an assumption that you have to go do this now and I think that the comparison that's frustrating frankly is that like you have to be a tech company to do this like that this is a silly silly idea you know the if you kind of go way way back I think it was like basically the mid 40s mid 50s you started to look at companies like you know the the GMs and you go forward a little bit you start to the IBMs and Xerox it started to think about a lot of these types of things and those companies are not in this conversation at all the big large you know GEs of the world and how that applies and how we're thinking about them so yeah I guess for lack of a better term if you have a certain size in Silicon Valley we like to think we're a global company not a tech company or a Silicon Valley company and there's a problem here that we've kind of said well those those outliers out there in San Francisco or Palo Alto or wherever are kind of doing this and that's maybe a model but but this can be applicable anywhere it could be agencies can be anything of any size we're competing for talent yeah so we one need to look at our competitors and we need to look at anywhere that our talent is going when they when they leave us so but but also in attracting that talent and that this is a great place to work because people are looking for that now one of the things I would say too about you know we had a White House someone working families last year and you know part of the my boss Secretary Perez has been you know not only talking to different countries on this issue but also two businesses of all sizes and one of the thing that one of the things that has been remarkable to me especially looking at the three states the history of those states and even campaigns that haven't been successful is the number of small businesses that are the staunchest advocates and getting any of these policies changed and the other piece of it for me is either the same folks who are having conversations about minimum wage because they pay way beyond the minimum wage these are companies that have wage transparency I mean there's more of a conversation with you know what does it mean to be a responsible there's a sustainable piece to it so a lot of the companies who have a you know are very concerned with their carbon footprint are also at the table in these conversations so this what we find often when we're talking to small businesses and the ones who are very competitive is this broader culture and broader business philosophy that goes beyond this issue but talks about a myriad as you said of of policies whether it's pay and benefits their community presence and I think that is really I think sort of like the beacon and sort of like what does it mean to be a model business or employer today and I think a lot of these things come together and certainly the impact it has on workers is much more scalable when you think of these policies together but I think it's how we talk about the value of work and our workers in general that we have found where there is the most ardent support for these programs is where companies are talking about thinking of their workers as people and not objects thinking of their workers as part of their culture and their decision making even in some cases so I'm sorry are you saying that California, New Jersey and Rhode Island the three states that have perpaid parental leave laws for everybody and that includes you know bartenders gig economy workers I mean self-employed people they can all avail themselves that those states part of the reasons that they were able to pass that it's because they have businesses in those states that are sort of more well in general I mean Rhode Island is more recent for sure but I think a lot of the case making and the surveys of businesses of all sizes you've seen a lot of small businesses coming forward not just to say I have it to actually be talking about it from an advocacy perspective and so that we're seeing more advocacy among small businesses not just saying we have the policy but here's why we're doing it and here's how it fits into our broader corporate corporate culture at a time where it's difficult in this economy for small businesses that we hear that all the time and I think that we tend to have these conversations to large audiences so it's business people and advocates and lawmakers together and oftentimes we have just as many if not more small businesses at the table as we do these larger companies and so I think often that is lost in the conversation and we've got some great examples that we've seen in New Jersey and Rhode Island that say here's what I was doing before the law changed here's what I'm doing now and you know you know this is working for me and nothing horrible has happened and in fact it's better for my company and my workers I can attract people I can keep them here and you know I just think that the size of the company to your point I you know there's so many sort of you know myths and ideas about you know this can only work for certain groups of people which is in part why the conversations that need to be industry to industry is so important as well that we've tried to spark is to say you know states is how I'm doing and I'm a state I'm a large company I'm a small company but here's how I can do it and I think that talking to businesses from where they are tends to be very effective It just seemed to me that also that one important thing about these laws is that it's not just parental leave right it's leave to take care of your elderly parents sort of take care in some cases of your siblings and when I again when I think about the woman who owned the auto body shop who just thought you know I can't afford this it's so important for people to understand that that it's a benefit to them too personally because so many of our conversations like around for example like a contraceptive coverage in insurance people will say well I'm not a parent I don't need this and so I think a lot of people again with these paid leave parental leave laws think well I'm not a parent right now I don't need this I don't really care and part of it is getting out the message yeah you might not be a parent but you might have aging parents you might be an aging parent so these laws are not just for parents right therefore caregiving of an extended group of family members one thing that keep I guess that question I almost have or just kind of a thought is that it does seem like a small and medium size business is just simply closer to the lives of their employees and so the full family actually comes to bear more often in the course of just everyday work so whether it's the fact that you are taking care of an elderly parent or a young child it's just going to be more likely a conversation that's going to unfold and it does seem to me that the large drivers of employment are mostly large companies and the further away but those policy kind of teams are in those companies from their staff the more that we've started to treat family or parental experience as more like we treat a hobby like versus an actual part of civic fabric right it's it's as though we put policies in place like oh that's something you do in your own spare time versus this is a fundamental component of a of a staff person of a team member who we want to support in all the fastest of their life which is much more likely it seems like becoming from people who are much more connected to their employees in smaller medium sized things I don't know if that's true or not I'd love to see studies on it but I keep seeing that it feels like that's something interesting to interrogate more I should say are there are there questions or comments from the audience we have one in the back thanks thank you I was wondering what you folk think of the reverse paradigm of the traditional one where we see increasingly although it's still a minority of stay at home dads full time and full time working mothers do you think that this is as problematic as the traditional reverse paradigm I don't think either are problematic if that's what you want you know I think the sorry I don't think either are problematic if that's what you want I think the problem where it starts to become problematic is when there starts to be an expectation culturally or from a policy perspective that that's what you're supposed to do and you're kind of driven in that particular way so if for instance men were starting to be driven or feel the pressure to go out of the workforce because policies became so negative that would be a problem but until that point I think it's mostly just like if that's the choice of your family then great you know there's the council and economic advisor that the white house during this event last summer on fatherhood that was referenced earlier in the program there was a chart that showed the report that men and women had reporting out work-life conflict and I couldn't tell you exactly how that's defined but the one of the stark findings of that report is that men showed work-life conflict at a much higher rate than women and I think you know looking into what that means it's not because men are taking vastly larger numbers amounts of leave or or child care but I think it's sort of a scratching at the surface about on how this you know I think in the problem the problem area I would say is you know a backlash you know that that workers may see in the workplace or men may see in the workplace when they're trying to take advantage of these programs or this expectation that you know really if I want to do this I can't do this which of course is you know part of what I think people are saying and so while we see a lot of you know reports about more caregiving and time at home it's really hard to say how many men are you know are having a very very difficult time balancing or working out the conflict you know even if they're not taking leave and I think that there's more to the cultural piece of the societal the social science piece of this that I think will be really critical in showing any dramatic change and the way the the caregiving is done at home I love your question because it's something that I've actually thought about fair amount and I think that it's a very personal decision for every individual and every every family to make and frankly there's no one right answer but I do worry that we shouldn't create policies that force men out of the workforce and then some several generations later we are faced with the exact reciprocal problem of how do we get men back into the workforce I think today's model requires dual income families and we have to figure out a way to have people be successful both at home and at work in dual career families it's a necessity it's an economic necessity and frankly it's a workforce necessity we need those qualified workers both genders both both both parties in a family so it's a it's a personal choice but I think we have to from a from a macro standpoint be careful in terms of how we position policies and I agree too that you know that the end of the day the two-thirds of households have two parents working it's not and that number is only increasing and so I think that the the reality of both parents needing or wanting to work is going to become more and more the norm and I think it's you know how we reconcile that reality which is of course what we're struggling with today because a lot of the policies don't account for that change over the past several decades last question yes I just wanted to if they can look back on that home dads system I think it's a kind of I think it's a kind of media fest I think that the data they can when they talk about this huge rise in the number of home dads which they do they're often mixing in the data on separated fathers who are single you know so I think it isn't a huge increase secondly to say that we know from the research there is quite a lot of research on these home dads and certainly the relationship breakdown rates are higher when the father is a home dad however when you think about the pathways into being a home dad they're very complex so where the mother and father have this agreement it's all worked out they don't have higher breakdown rates where there's a high level of disability among the men who become home dads you know there's one down my street he's blind he became the home dad right so this stuff around health that will also contribute to difficulties in these families and also economics because you know sometimes they're poorer families because there isn't a good male wage in there so that's all complex and I think that but I think I totally agree with you that what one is saying in the end there aren't going to be many home dads out of the workforce for years and years and years there aren't going to be many home mums out of the workforce for years and years and years you know this is a temporary situation that families will work out for themselves and we do want both parents competent at home with care and both parents competent with earning that reduces the vulnerabilities that their children will face and we want to have the supports in place so that people are making truly making choices about whether someone actually wants to stay at home but if you're saying home because you can't find affordable child care then it's not a real choice so I think on that note those are our panels we are actually not behind time although it may look like we are because unfortunately the case study from the one from undo representative she couldn't get here so I think Gary is going to make concluding remarks and we actually are on schedule thank you so much thank you guys thank you guys so much Mark thank you very much