Herald reporter Nicholas Jones and his son Leo.
Herald reporter Nicholas Jones is back at work after nine months off to be a stay-at-home dad. What was that like?
At night we marvelled as Margaret’s stomach rippled and - woah, was that a fist, foot or elbow? - expanded outwards.
The induction began Monday morning, but Leo didn’t arrive until Thursday, by way of emergency caesarean and after an agony of Oxytocin, undimmed by an epidural pump later found to be unconnected.
I was so eager to be a good dad, but crumbled in our hospital room. Margaret was incapacitated and my prior tutorials on nappy changes and swaddling were lost in an exhausted, anxious fog.
What tightness was right? It felt like the slightest miscalculation could injure. My sister-in-law swept in to soothe the new father.
Leo was born in May 2021. We nested through winter in our sunny little home, among flowers and frozen meals.
When my six weeks off were up I worked from home full-time - a silver-lining of the pandemic, not afforded to other dads in non-office jobs.
I was a shout away for help or milestones; when Margaret’s arthritis flared and she could barely change nappies, replenishing the food station by her breastfeeding spot, winning an early smile from Leo and catching his delight when the neighbour’s cat came to say hello.
On his first birthday we rented a bouncy castle and made fairy bread. He crawled through the ball pit with his cousins, unwrapped a fire truck and trotted around the garden, past the persimmon and with one hand held by Margaret’s mum, the other by mine.
It was a dream of happiness, scarcely believable after years of wishing.
A prior pregnancy came and went like a bolt, a year after we started trying and around when we began wondering what was wrong.
After the positive test I cycled to work with a gale at my back and orchestra in my chest - silenced when the sonographer later found nothing where a heart would beat.
Margaret miscarried on Christmas Eve 2018. We looked straight ahead. “At least we can get pregnant,” we repeated, over and over, like a spell.
Nothing. We turned to fertility treatment. First Letrozole, then IVF - interrupted by Covid restrictions - and one, two, three embryo transfers, without luck.
Then, in August 2020, the faintest of lines on a pregnancy test, following the fourth transfer. We tested twice-daily, triumphantly time-stamped the results in Sharpie and lined them along the bathroom vanity.
All the same, we didn’t dare believe until the first ultrasound.
Braced for a black nothing, I cried watching his tiny heartbeat.
A few months before Leo was born I wrote articles about maternity wards that were locked down, as Covid spread at the beginning of the pandemic.
Visitors were banned, partners ordered out after as little as 30 minutes.
“I got wheeled back on to the ward, and got left in the room with my son,” one first-time mum who had an emergency caesarean told me.
“I’d just had major surgery and was told not to get up, and I couldn’t even reach him.”
Hearing such testimony didn’t help the nerves. Thankfully, when 40 weeks approached, the country was in level 1.
The blur of Leo’s first months included Omicron’s arrival, Auckland’s long lockdown and re-emergence under the traffic light system.
Before our happy boy turned 1 I took time off work to look after him full-time.
A few factors allowed the changeover with Margaret: we both earned about the same, enough to get by on one income for a limited period (crucially, we’d had family help to buy our home, unlike so many others whose lives and choices are crushed by unaffordable housing).
My employer, NZME, approved a sabbatical, meaning my job was generously kept open for my return. That path was forged a few years earlier by a friend and colleague. Isaac and I had worked together in the Herald’s political gallery and, while I rocked and cursed at my keyboard during moments of deadline pressure, he always stayed calm.
He has the same energy as a parent and during his time away from work brought Will and Finn to the pub near our offices, where they munched on hot chips and were fussed over.
It looked good, and taking over when I did felt like cheating - Leo was finally sleeping overnight, and Margaret worked at home lots, so I’d hardly be in the deep-end.
Looking back, my expectations were laughable. I mulled starting a book, figuring there’d be time during his naps and in the evenings. At the very least, I thought I’d clear my bedside stack of novels.
Margaret gave me a detailed handover. As involved as I’d been, she’d taken the lead on (and done hours of first-time parent internet research) his sleep schedule, put-down routine and meals.
She was the one to say, “He should have a nap soon,” and was better at problem-solving - hunger, tiredness? - if he was grizzly.
This was a continuation in roles formed in the early months when Margaret did the crucial work of breastfeeding, and I scurried around doing housework, cooking dinner and changing nappies.
I was like a traveller happy to lug a backpack but leave it to a companion to negotiate the foreign train stations and booking offices.
Flipping this around was uncomfortable for us both - I met the gaps in my confidence, Margaret let me go, knowing I wouldn’t do everything in the same way (or as well).
That feeling soon faded, as did the checking of my phone for work emails. Slowly it sunk in: the days belonged entirely to me and Leo.
We began them with a circuit, through the alleyway to see the stray cats, on to watch diggers and dump trucks clearing old state houses (thank you to the drivers who waved), then playing with the toy cars outside the wonderful Young George cafe. On a perfect day, we’d time our arrival home to see the rubbish truck.
Auckland Zoo was a weekly excursion, where Leo was as thrilled by a sparrow approaching for his lunch, as the siamang gibbons swinging overhead.
Other afternoons he’d sit in our local playground, moving bark around with a stick and awaiting the rush of big kids walking home from Ōwairaka School.
A couple other dads regularly had their kids there, and a man minding his grandkids wistfully told me of his years as the primary caregiver and the bonds it formed.
Other reactions varied. An old friend raised his eyebrow when told of my sabbatical, and queried, “Was that your decision?”
Alongside Leo the world slowed, and - after years of mindlessly bowing to my phone screen when a gap opened in the daily grind - became incredible again; tūī in the flowering harakeke, a worm in the compost, the police helicopter overhead.
Why, then, did I also clock-watch? Keeping a toddler entertained and safe required near-constant attention, beginning around 5am and ending, with luck, in time for a Love Island episode, as a treat before sleep.
The weekend afforded an extra pair of hands, but also more social and family commitments, to test energy and logistics.
I hadn’t properly appreciated the relentlessness of that seven-days-a-week schedule, which stretched for months ahead.
When my attention wavered at work I could browse the internet, look out the window or walk around the block for coffee.
Now, I pooed with the door open, calling out, “It’s okay, coming soon.”
I muttered and cursed when he woke early from a nap, as the old iPad glitched after I’d resorted to Bluey, and when he squeezed corn-chicken pouch over the couch.
I even resented Margaret’s occasional work commute - imagine, 45 minutes each way to read or people-watch!
She was now the parent with energy to build a fort or play horsey. My back ached. By the afternoon I often felt too tired to properly enjoy Leo.
So we made changes. My parents took him every Thursday (thanks, Mum and Dad!), and my year off was shortened by a few months, necessary for a mortgage approval, but also helpful in the way a long-distance runner calculates remaining distance.
I also briefly returned to reporting. Before my sabbatical I’d interviewed an Auckland Hospital doctor who, days into Russia’s invasion, returned to her native Ukraine.
Dr Iryna Rybinkina’s NGO, Smart Medical Aid, sent medical supplies to front-line hospitals and organised the evacuation of injured children to the Czech Republic, where they got world-class surgery and rehabilitation.
I asked her if I could meet them, and used a scholarship to fund my flights to Prague. Margaret took two weeks’ “holiday” to look after Leo.
One of the kids I met was Dmytryk, a 4-year-old who, like Leo, loved the swings at his local playground. He’d just got there when Russian missiles exploded nearby.
Shrapnel tore a hole in his back and damaged his spinal cord.
Only his mother, Nataliia, accompanied him out of Ukraine - his father was bound by a wartime decree banning most men from leaving.
Dmytryk lay for six weeks on his belly at the University Hospital in Motol, Prague, and endured major surgeries and skin grafts. He can now walk but still needs intensive physical and psychological rehabilitation.
I met Nataliia in an empty cafe in the tourist district. She set up cartoons on her phone when Dmytryk wriggled with boredom.
Life in a strange land wasn’t easy. A nearby creche set-up for Ukrainian refugees provided Nataliia’s only alone time, which she devoted to Czech language classes. However, Dmytryk often refused to go, because he felt safe only with her.
I went on to report from Ukraine, and met more families grappling with loss and displacement.
They told me how blissfully ordinary life had been before the invasion. And how badly they wished for that to return.
On the plane home I thought about my immense luck, to have that ordinariness. The first hug with Leo was the best of my life. He showed me his new toy car and we went to Rocket Park. After the swings, we ate pastries in the sunshine.
Maybe my attitude shifted, or maybe he entered an easier phase. Whatever it was, the days again felt more magic than slog.
We fed grass to the lambs at Ambury Park with his Playcentre mates, met his cousins at the pools, and, on wet days, toured the kiddie rides of St Lukes mall (Leo blessedly young enough not to realise they shudder into life for money).
He got a scooter for Christmas, we went to bed at 8pm on New Year’s Eve, and a couple of weeks into January I returned to work, with Tuesdays off to look after Leo.
When Canvas editor Sarah Daniell asked me to write this, I was wary of seeming like I expected or deserved praise and acknowledgement for standard parenting - something especially galling, no doubt, to those with more than one kid or solo parents, who I bow before.
Another risk: coming across like the world’s first parent - a brave explorer reporting back. I still feel out of my depth plenty/most of the time.
Writing something personal was also uncomfortable. Mostly, I was conscious of the privilege that made the time off possible. We lag behind many other countries in support for parents, including partners (see the sidebar below).
I hope this changes, and that reading this plants a seed for someone else.
We’d waited for Leo for so long, but without Isaac’s example I wouldn’t have spent most of his second year alongside him.
In New Zealand, eligible primary caregivers are entitled by law to take up to 52 weeks of parental leave.
Of this, government-funded paid parental leave is for one continuous period of up to 26 weeks. Payments range from $212-$661 a week, before tax.
The remaining 26 weeks is unpaid “extended leave”.
(Exact eligibility depends on how long someone has worked for the same employer, and their hours worked.)
Paid parental leave can be split between partners, but that’s uncommon - out of the more than 57,000 people receiving paid parental leave in 2021/22, only 1254 were men - just over 2 per cent.
Fathers or partners are entitled to two weeks of unpaid leave, if they’ve worked for their employer for 12 months or longer.
Once paid parental leave ends, families get a “Best Start” payment of $65 a week (soon to rise to $69), until their baby turns 1. This continues until the child turns 3, if household income is under $95,133.
A number of employers, particularly in white collar professions, are now topping-up government-funded parental leave.
For example, at NZME, the publisher of the Herald, primary caregivers get a one-off payment of $5000, before tax. Employees who are fathers/partners get two weeks’ paid leave, which can be used flexibly.
Financial services firm EY is another with extra support - from next month employees with any service period get 26 weeks of paid parental leave, which can be used flexibly and during the child’s first 24 months.
This is on top of the Government’s paid parental leave provisions, and is available regardless of whether the employee will be filling the primary caregiving role. The policy applies to stillborn birth, adoption and surrogacy, and five days of paid leave is available for early pregnancy loss and fertility treatment.
NZ Government-funded paid parental leave has increased under Labour, from 18 to 22 weeks in 2018, and to 26 weeks in 2020. Labour also introduced Best Start.
Unlike New Zealand, more than half of OECD countries offer some paid leave for fathers and partners right after childbirth, including Australia.
Sweden has one of the most generous schemes. Parents with joint custody are each entitled to 240 days of parental leave. Of these, 90 days are reserved for each parent, and the others can be transferred from one to the other.
Swedish fathers currently average about 30 per cent of all paid parental leave - commonly, a couple weeks from birth, and the rest from around 10 months.
Canvas asked political parties for their parental leave policies.
National will announce its final policy before the election, but in the meantime, its MP Nicola Willis has a member’s bill that would allow both spouses or carers to split parental leave and take it at the same time.
The bill will have its first reading later this year. The Act Party will support it, a spokesperson said. The party opposes “wholesale extensions” to paid parental leave, “because the Government books are under too much pressure - however we support extensions for prem babies and multiple births. The state should be there more when it’s needed most.”
The Green Party wants to extend paid parental leave to 15 months, and let both parents take it at the same time in the first three months.
“We’d also increase payment rates,” said Jan Logie, the party’s workplace relations and safety spokesperson. “These are less than the full-time minimum wage - we’d increase that to the average wage.”
Paul Mackay, BusinessNZ’s employment relations policy manager, said companies operating in a tight labour market were seeking ways to keep hold of good workers.
“That’s why you’ll see some companies, particularly the larger employers, looking at all their policies with a view to how attractive they are - in order to attract and retain talent.
“On the flipside, any regulated minimum entitlements need to take into account our small-to-medium sized businesses and their ability to cope. In such a tight labour market it could be harder to attract temporary employees to fill a role in a job-seeker’s market.”
Small employers make up the majority of businesses here, Mackay said, and they should not be overburdened: “It is a balancing act.”
Jess Berentson-Shaw, co-director of policy think-tank The Workshop, said low-income Kiwi parents face a “fiendishly complex” system of support and associated taxes, and strict criteria often excluded them or limited support, including paid parental leave.
Increasing support should happen in a way that doesn’t exclude, she said - by length of employment, working hours or how a person lived. For example, any paid “partners leave” should allow a solo parent to nominate someone to fill that crucial role.
“International evidence is really clear - unconditional income support leads to the best outcomes.”
Companies offering additional parental leave reflected a shift in society, Berentson-Shaw said.
“People are looking for workplaces that say, ‘You are a parent, that affects your life and we are willing to support that.’”
“But that’s primarily in white-collar, more highly paid [jobs] ... that should be extended to everybody.”
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