Mark Zuckerberg’s Paternity Leave: What It Means For Nigerian Fathers

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Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO announced on his timeline that he is going to take a 2 month paternity leave and we can’t help thinking about what this means for fathers in Nigeria. We have always believed that it is important for new fathers to take paternity leave, not just to help the new moms out (and that is really important) but to give the family a chance to bond together.

According to Mr. Zuckerberg,  “Studies show that when working parents take time to be with their newborns, outcomes are better for the children and families.”

Paternity leave is gradually being accepted in some countries in Europe and some companies in the US have also begun to put it in practice, however paternity leave is not mandatory in the US. While some men really love the opportunity to take some paid time off work in order to be there for their families, others would cheerfully have opted out of the entire paternity leave thing.

Mark Zuckerber’s paternity leave raises questions. We do not know of any company that offers paid (or unpaid) paternity leave in Nigeria. If you know of any, please do let us know and we’ll be glad to update this. We do know that Lagos State approved a 10 day paternity leave for fathers and we are excited that our country is that forward minded. However, we are hoping that we do get to a stage where paternity leave is way more than 10 days.

We did a quick survey of men around our offices and they all said without reservation that they would go on paternity leave if they were given the chance. So contrary to popular opinion by Nigerian women, our men are not as patriarchal as we believe. Or it could be that the men around NH Hq are modern men. 😀

But before we get ahead of ourselves, we are aware that some women might not want their men around and underfoot so much. So we would like to know: Would you like for your husband to take paternity leave?

🙂