A psychologist calls paternity leave medicine, and Germany's fathers plan 3.8 months to mothers' 14.9

Alvin Thomas, a clinical psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote in Time on October 10, 2026 that paternity leave "should be part of routine medical care during this stage of life." The essay leans on correlational research. The ledgers of countries that tried the policy show where the gap sits: in Germany, fathers on parental allowance plan 3.8 months on average, mothers 14.9.

A psychologist's case, and its own caveat

Thomas is an associate professor of human development and family studies, and his piece ran in Time Ideas, the magazine's opinion section. Time adds the standard line: "Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors." His central claim is that paternity leave and a father’s engagement during infancy "is associated with better cognitive, social, and emotional regulation outcomes for the child that can be measured."

The evidence he lists comes from the wider study of fathers. Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan of the Ohio State University, in a review of existing fatherhood research, highlighted better peer relationships, higher intelligence test scores, greater math and language readiness and more secure attachment among children who experience positive and sustained father involvement. Thomas concedes the limit himself: "Though these trends are correlational", he writes, the gains show up on report cards as early as preschool. He adds the Canadian researcher Daniel Paquette, who observed that fathers' play often includes excitement, surprise and awe, and that this kind of interaction supports skills such as risk-taking and self-advocacy.

The step from involvement to leave is Thomas's own. The essay names no comparison of fathers who took leave with fathers who did not, and it argues that leave "creates space" for the involvement the studies describe.

The framing prices the policy in one column, the child's brain, which he calls a "return on investment". The other column, the mother's career, gets a single sentence. Thomas grants that the gender equity argument is used to both advance and stymie the conversation about leave, and that it is "more than a values fight."

In the United States, he writes, the country is "one of the only wealthy nations on Earth with no federal guarantee of paid paternity leave." Most new fathers, he says, are back at their desk within a week of the birth. His remedies are federal paid leave and, for employers, a "use-it-or-lose-it" approach.

Iceland: three months that vanish if unused

That last phrase has a track record, and the longest one is Icelandic. According to the researchers Eydal and Arnalds, Iceland's 2000 law gave each parent an equal quota of three months and added three months to share. The father's three months could not be transferred to the mother except in exceptional cases such as a parent's death. Unused, they were lost.

The price was set to make the quota usable. Every working parent received 80% of their usual salary, the well paid and the badly paid alike, financed by an employer levy that already paid for unemployment benefits. Eurac Research, in a January 2026 piece, puts the result in one line: the percentage of fathers taking leave rose from 15% in 1998 to over 80% in 2002. Thomas's essay quotes the same two figures.

Uptake exceeded the planners' forecast, so a ceiling on payments was introduced in 2004. In its first year, 2.3% of fathers and 0.3% of mothers earned above the cap. The ceiling was then lowered several times, partly because of the 2008 financial crisis, and in 2013 it stood at its lowest. By then 43% of fathers and 18% of mothers had salaries above it.

The authors report what followed: the number of fathers taking leave dropped by 10%, and the average number of days they took fell from 101 to 86. Mothers' take-up held steadier. Their reading is that fathers' take-up "remains more vulnerable" than mothers', and that a ceiling set too low costs the policy its fathers.

Eydal, Arnalds and a colleague also surveyed parents of children born in 1997, 2003, 2009 and 2014 and found that care of young children was divided more equally after the law. They add a caution of their own: the narrowing gap in mothers' and fathers' working hours is "arguably" also due to wider social change, so the law cannot claim all of it.

One further finding comes from other researchers. Olafsson and Steingrimsdottir, in 2020, found that parents who had a child shortly after the law took effect were less likely to divorce than those who had one in the months before the reform.

Germany: a quarter of recipients, 3.8 months

Germany reformed on a similar theory in 2007. Time reports that the country replaced a flat-rate benefit with an income-based one worth 67% of net earnings and reserved two use-it-or-lose-it months for fathers. Time adds that uptake rose from 3.5% in 2006 to 24.8% in 2021.

The federal statistics office, Destatis, publishes the ledger. In a press release published in April 2026, it counted 1.19 million women and 417,000 men receiving parental allowance (Elterngeld) in 2025. Fathers made up 25.9% of recipients, against 25.8% in 2024 and 20.9% in 2015. The 2025 headcount of men fell 3.4%, which Destatis links in part to the decline in births.

The duration column is where the account stops balancing. Mothers planned to draw the allowance for 14.9 months on average in 2025. Fathers planned 3.8 months, the same figure as in 2024 and close to the 3.7 months of 2023.

A quota changes who is on the list. It has not, in these figures, changed how long they stay on it.

One detail of Time's sentence does not match the statistical table. Destatis's series gives a fathers' share of 24.8% for 2020, the year before. The two measures also differ: a share of recipients is not the proportion of fathers who take leave.

The flexible variant, Elterngeld Plus, pays less per month for longer. In 2025, 45.2% of eligible mothers planned to use it, against 26.1% of fathers. Parents who work part-time in parallel can claim a partnership bonus of up to four extra months, and only 8.3% of Elterngeld Plus recipients did. By region, Saxony had the highest fathers' share at 30.0% and Saarland the lowest at 21.0%.

The UK and the US: leave without pay, or none

Anna Tarrant, a professor of sociology at the University of Lincoln, wrote in The Conversation that the UK government had kept its parental leave promises, but not boldly. Since April 6, 2026, paternity leave and unpaid parental leave have been day-one rights under the Employment Rights Act 2025.

Pay is a separate matter. Statutory paternity pay rose from £187.18 to £194.32 a week, and it still requires 26 weeks' service. Many new starters will therefore take leave unpaid. Self-employed mothers can claim Maternity Allowance for up to 39 weeks, but no equivalent exists for self-employed fathers.

Shared Parental Leave, in force since April 2015, was meant to let couples split care. Tarrant writes that fewer than two in every 100 eligible fathers use it, and that it requires mothers to give up part of their own entitlement rather than giving fathers a right of their own.

She puts a figure on the mothers' side of the ledger. Office for National Statistics analysis shows mothers' monthly earnings dropping by an average of 42% in the five years after a first child, around £1,051 a month. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that this "caring penalty" can exceed £100,000 in lost gross pay over six years.

Tarrant has an interest in the outcome. Her own research, with colleagues at Lincoln, examined fathers in precarious work, and her column argues for reform. Her proposals are individual non-transferable entitlements, liveable pay and wider eligibility.

Her comparison is Spain. When it equalised parental leave at 16 weeks for each parent in 2021, Tarrant writes, paternal uptake rose from 46% to over 75%. Time cites a different Spanish measure, a 400% increase from 2000 to 2007, which cannot be set beside it.

Tarrant also cites UK analysis estimating that extending paternity leave to six weeks at 90% of earnings could generate a net economic benefit of around £2.7 billion a year, because mothers would work more.

That is a projection, not a measurement.

Who pays for the months

Across these four accounts the same line item decides the outcome. Iceland paid 80% and fathers came; when the ceiling cut the pay of the better-paid, fewer came. Germany pays 67% of net earnings, and fathers plan 3.8 months. The UK pays £194.32 a week, which Tarrant calls less than half the National Living Wage.

For the better-paid parent, usually the father, a month of leave is a month of income forgone. The mother's cost shows up later, in the 42% drop.

The Icelandic story has a dated footnote. After the 2021 extension to twelve months, with six months for each parent and a portion transferable, Eurac Research reports that Iceland decided to raise its ceiling gradually until 2026, to almost the level it had before 2008.

Sources

• Paternity Leave Is More Than a Perk. It Builds a Baby’s Brain, Time Ideas, Alvin Thomas, October 10, 2026
• Nordic Parental Leave Policy: The Case of Iceland, Nordics.info, Eydal and Arnalds, 2024
• Elterngeld 2025: Anteil der Eltern mit Elterngeld Plus auf Höchststand, Destatis, April 2026, and its fathers' share series