Today's culture encourages us to believe that women can do everything that a man can, while men can do everything that a woman can.
Stanislav Popov
Dads in Spain are now enjoying 'breastfeeding leave.'
Of course, there are exceptions and one of those is breast-feeding.
Yet, Europe's top court has ruled that working fathers in Spain have the same right to "breastfeeding leave" as moms.
Under the new legislation both mom and dad are "allowed to leave work for an hour during the day or reduce their working day by half an hour during the first nine months following the birth of a child," according to London's Daily Telegraph.
The European Union Court of Justice in Luxembourg decided last week that the existing Spanish "breastfeeding leave" law caused an "unjustified discrimination on grounds of sex" because fathers don't have the same rights as mothers.
Breastfeeding leave for dads? Is there something extraordinary going on with male anatomy in Spain that we don't know about?
Once upon a time working mums in Spain were given "breastfeeding leave," short breaks from work to nurse their newborns. Later, working fathers were entitled to "breastfeeding leave," if the mother was fully employed. Breastfeeding for fathers was about bonding with the child and helping out mom. Now the court has ruled that all working fathers, even if the mom isn't fully employed, are entitled to "breastfeeding leave."
And the court has redefined the term: "Breastfeeding leave should now be considered as time purely devoted to the child in order to reconcile family life and work after maternity leave."
Why the new legislation? Spanish dad Pedro Manuel Roca Alvarez challenged the law because he "said his request to take breastfeeding leave from his job in Galicia was rejected because the mother of his child was self-employed."
The court sided with Alvarez and said that not granting dads the same rights as moms was "liable to perpetuate a traditional distribution of the roles of men and women by keeping men in a role subsidiary to that of women in relation to the exercise of their parental duties."
The bottom line is that in Spain moms and dads are now viewed as equals in child-rearing. Can you ever imagine such a ruling in the United States?
Read more:
Dads in Spain entitled to 'breastfeeding leave' : The Mommy Files
