Dads face workplace balancing act

Alan Fitness, his son Ben, 2, and daughter Jessica, 7, watch the gaff-rigged Nova Scotia schooner Pinky 2 sailed by John Laker, at this year's Fathers Day regatta in Waihi. Photo / Bay of Plenty Times.

In Steve Biddulph's book Raising Boys, he says if you routinely work 55 to 60-hour weeks including travel time, you are not cutting it as a dad. Next time you consider a promotion, think about what it will involve, he says. Try telling your boss: "My kids come first."

How many working dads are telling their workplaces that their job as a father comes first? It would take a brave man in this climate.

Andy Levien has been braver than most, helped by the fact that his wife is in a full-time corporate job. When he and his wife, Emma Rutherford, had Annabel seven years ago, he was working in a manager role but he and Emma split the childcare down the middle. He would work three days one week, then have two days at home and they would switch the following week. It was not easy, he remembers. "In hindsight it was pretty much impossible."

These days, he is the one more likely to get to the school assembly, go on the school trip or do the walking school bus, rather than Rutherford, who works at TVNZ.

"I am far more flexible than Emma. She is more corporate than I am. I am working for a company that is privately owned, whereas she's working for the big corporate."

When the kids recently had chicken pox, Levien, who has a senior role in a property management company, was the one at home working.

"You just work around what the kids are doing, what's priority for the kids. I don't want to miss a school assembly. You know that if you miss out on them, it's lost forever."

Despite his flexible schedule, Levien is an incredibly hard worker, he just works at times when no one else does. He is usually home for dinner but will often return to work in the evenings to catch up on emails.

The recession has revived more of a bums-on-seats mentality among employers and Levien is fully aware of this but says he "knows his worth".

"I am definitely more aware in this climate that I have to be more visible in what I am doing. I am more upfront in what I am doing. I let the boss know every Thursday that I am doing walking bus or, by the same token, that I've got a few quotes to do so I will be in at work that night."

The trick is to be transparent, he says. Levien dishes out flexibility too. When someone from his team asks to pick up the kids from school, he will listen to them too. "At the end of the day, it's give and take. I will only do it for workers who are hard workers and who will do things for me.

"Flexibility is still down to the individual manager," he says.

Judy McGregor, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner, has looked at fathers' approaches to flexibility at work in a book edited by Marilyn Warning and Christa Fouche, Managing Mayhem: Work Life Balance in New Zealand.

In it she argues there is still a strong attachment to the idea of the "stoical and self-sufficient Kiwi male who brings home the bacon", despite the increasing female participation in the labour market in the past 25 years.

She quotes academic Paul Callister: "Fathers are now under double pressure to be both good providers and good fathers."

While McGregor understands this is not a conducive climate for fathers to ask for more flexibility, she is seeing what she says is a breakthrough at the moment _ young fathers are complaining they are not being given a fair deal in paid parental leave.

One man approached her whose wife had had her second baby and did not get paid parental leave (PPL) because she was not working. At the moment he is entitled to nothing. "He was saying: `Why can I not be entitled to PPL in my own right?"' Five years ago she would never have been asked that, says McGregor.

Of course in New Zealand there are still plenty of men who don't take paid parental leave because they can't afford to if they are on one income. And for most men, it's still not "role modelled" enough, says McGregor.

Certain sectors are still far behind in offering parents the flexibility they desire.

"In accountancy and law _ male partners in these big firms, they are not running home to do the soccer coaching," she says drily.

Age and success can be key to determining how much time you spend with your kids as a dad.

If you are younger, you may be working longer hours because you are trying to succeed. If you're older, and have made your mark, you can have more flexibility.

Go to Devonport on a Monday morning and you'll see plenty of older dads trawling round with strollers.

The general manager of sales and marketing at Wellington-based Property IQ, Steve Langridge, has had his kids a bit later than the average, at 38 and 42.

"You are higher up in the organisation, you have more responsibility."

It makes it harder to work flexibly, he says.

He sees his kids at breakfast and gets home at a quarter to seven, so spends 45 minutes a day during the week. "It's very hard coming home seeing the kids for just 15 minutes." Sometimes you are your own worst enemy."If I were to disappear on a Thursday to do soccer coaching, it would not be an issue," he says. But work demands mean he'd need to think hard about whether he could afford the time off.

For Langridge, it has been his sport which has suffered since the kids came along. "Golf has gone out the window, I play less soccer. Business has not suffered but leisure has."

When he does have intensive time with children, when his wife takes a two-day break, he finds he misses them when normal life kicks back in.

To some dads, working flexibly means getting home at 6pm instead of 7pm. It's a big step leaving work at 5pm, unlike the rest of the men who don't leave until after 6pm.

Jonno Ingerson, the research director at QV.co.nz, is one of those who does make an effort to get home early, leaving work at 5pm. He realises that the time between 5pm and 7pm is the witching hour.

"I do the reading with the kids _ I've got to be there as a support," he says. "Then once they are in bed, I get out the laptop from 8 to 10."

Recently Ingerson went to a Kea Boy Scouts meeting with his son because it was a dad's night. It was an early evening meeting and he hesitated about going but did in the end and all the dads were there, so he was glad he went. Dads are increasingly expected to show up to these things no matter how important their jobs are.

Many believe parenting is easier if you are running your own company.

John Bolton, the entrepreneur behind Squirrel Financial Solutions, says it would be very hard to go back to the corporate world now he's had experience running his own ship.

"The nice thing is, I can come to work in jeans and a T-shirt and I can go to the kids' productions. I could do that in the corporate world but it just feels that much easier. I don't have to explain it to anyone," he says.

But he is having to work hard to keep the business growing.

Bolton takes family holidays but often keeps working. They just came back from week in Wanaka, skiing. Bolton says he ended up having to work quite hard and had just 2 days of skiing out of their 10 days.

Once the business has grown to a certain level, he tells himself he will step back and spend more time with the kids. The mortgage specialist's dad was the classic Kiwi father _ "quite tough but always spent a lot of time with the kids doing fun stuff with us. He didn't work huge hours at all.

"We work a hell of a lot harder, and juggle so much more. Most of our friends are in the same situation. You get home, have dinner, put the kids to bed, then spend a couple of hours working in the evening."

Bolton knows English dads who have come to New Zealand for the lifestyle. They want to get away from the 70 to 80-hour weeks they had in Britain, expecting to work 40-hour weeks and have weekends.

He knows of several who have quit jobs here because their companies wanted too many hours.

Bolton sounds as if he envies them their resolve. "I want heaps of time with the kids, I don't get nearly enough," he says.

The hardest thing about his recent trip to Wanaka was that he wanted to spend time skiing with the girls, but it just didn't happen.