My initial reaction to this headline — “Want Equality? Make New Dads Stay Home” — was skeptical. I thought: Actually, I don’t want equality that much. But the author, Joanne Lipman, seems mostly to have in mind company policies requiring new fathers to take time off, not a government regulation forcing them to do it. The idea is that a lot of new fathers would like to stay home with their babies but worry that it “would signal that they weren’t serious about their jobs.”


The theory implies that companies that voluntarily adopt this policy will become more attractive to employees. So let’s see if that happens and avoid any governmental mandates on new fathers or mothers.