“Parental leave is in the Swedish DNA”

Sweden made global headlines in 1974: the Nordic country was the first to replace maternity insurance with parental leave, to which mothers and fathers were equally entitled. Foreign journalists made pilgrimages to Stockholm to interview Swedish men. However, they could not do much with the progressive political visions: In the first year, only 500 fathers dared to switch roles and thus claimed 0.5 percent of all parental days. This was only to change hesitantly – even twenty years later, the proportion of men was only one tenth.

To encourage fathers to get involved, a “dad month” was introduced in 1995: 30 days of parental allowance were reserved for the other partner, so that the mothers could no longer claim the entire parental leave for themselves. The reform had an effect: the men took ten days longer to look after the offspring. In 2002 and 2016, the government followed suit with a second and third reserved month, respectively. Thanks to the slight compulsion – every family is free to use the 90 partner days or to let them expire – the proportion of fathers has doubled since 2005. Today, men receive 30 percent of Swedish parental benefits.

win win for the relationship

One of them is Kim Torberntsson. The 31-year-old software developer has been taking care of Astrid (3.5) and Saga (1.5) since the summer, while his wife Mikaela, who is the same age, is back working as a project manager in the IT department. “For us, it was a matter of course to look after the girls on an equal footing, but also to keep our feet on the job,” says Mikaela. After Astrid’s birth, she stayed home for nine months, only to be handed over to Kim – a concept they kept with their second child. In January, Saga starts school in the crèche, Kim then returns to his job (like his wife with a slightly reduced workload). By dividing parental leave in half, the Torberntssons are among the fifth of Swedish parents who receive childcare allowance on an equal footing.

The engineer couple can look back on an instructive time, which wasn’t easy, especially at the beginning, as Kim explains: “Mikaela kept quiet and had the overview, I played more of a supporting role.” When he first took over the reins at home, it took him a while to settle into his new role; the easier it was the second time. The two emphasize how important parental leave was to their relationship. “We were used to dividing up the household chores, but with the first child everything got haywire,” Kim recalls. Parental leave has created a better understanding for the partner who takes care of the baby and the household around the clock or who comes home tired after a long day at work.

The nine-month absences of the young parents from the workplace went smoothly. Kim’s position was not replaced: “My team is used to parental absences, the work is then distributed to fewer people and rolls a little slower.” Mikaela’s baby vacations weren’t a problem either. She was only underchallenged professionally before the second birth: since she had just changed jobs, she was entrusted with too few tasks until her parental leave.

480 days parental leave

Sweden’s parental leave is an expensive family policy project financed by employer contributions. In 2021, the equivalent of almost CHF 2.9 billion was paid out to around 823,600 mothers and fathers. The legal entitlement to parental leave is independent of the form and length of employment. The only condition is to inform the employer at least two months in advance. Employees are protected from dismissal during parental leave.

480 vacation days can be taken per child; of these, 390 days are remunerated at around 80 percent of the previous salary (with an upper limit). Many companies offer supplemental insurance. For the remaining 90 days there is a minimum rate of 180 Swedish kronor (16 francs). The system is very flexible and allows for many variants of vacation. So that the parental allowance lasts longer, mothers in particular take unpaid vacation days in the first year of their baby’s life. This distorts the statistics: if you add up the paid and unpaid days, Swedish mothers take more than 70 percent of all parental leave. As various studies show, generous parental leave worsens career opportunities and the development of wages and the pension fund over the years. Women with low and medium salaries who decide to take long breaks are particularly affected.

In an OECD comparison, Sweden’s parental leave is not the longest or best paid. The fact that the employment rate for women, at almost 80 percent, is one of the highest in the world is due to the overall package of family policy benefits, which includes cheap places in crèches from the first year of life and day schools with subsequent leisure time care. In addition, parents with sick children under the age of twelve are allowed to stay at home with 80 percent wage replacement. The acronym for “Care for sick children” (VAB) gave rise to a separate word that you encounter everywhere: the visit to the optician was canceled recently, and she “vabbed” just as much as an interviewee and the son’s mathematics teacher – on the same day.

If the child is ill, work can wait

The Swedes usually take these frequent absences calmly: children get sick and have to be cared for, so the work of the parents has to take a back seat. The inglorious climax of this phenomenon is February, which has long been popularly known as “Vabruar”. In 2021, the state insurance fund compensated almost 854,900 “vabbende” mothers and fathers; on average, every Swedish child was cared for by a parent absent from work for almost six days. In contrast to parental leave, caring for sick children is practically the same: fathers receive four and mothers six out of ten VAB days.

In the best-case scenario, employers succeed in replacing employees who are absent at short notice. Most municipalities, cities and regions have their own staff pools to fill the gaps in schools, kindergartens, hospitals and homes that arise from caring for feverish offspring, but also from longer parental leave. Swedish parents are allowed to stay at home – with or without wages – until their babies are 18 months old. If the children are between 1.5 and 12 years old, unpaid leave is no longer possible. However, fathers and mothers have the right to reduce their workload by a maximum of 25 percent. However, part-time work is not very common in Sweden: six out of ten mothers work 35 hours a week or more, compared to 80 percent of fathers.

Absences are an opportunity for internal further training

Questions about how to cope with the constant absences cause astonishment in Swedish companies. Parental leave is not an issue, but has been a matter of course for decades. “Parental leave is in our DNA,” says Lena Eliasson, head of HR at the defense company Saab: “The fact that our employees stay at home to look after children is so natural that we hardly think about it.” In the current year, more than 7 percent of the approximately 14,000 Saab employees were on full or partial parental leave. According to Eliasson, absences are bridged individually, whether by deputizing or redistributing tasks. And since babies don’t fall out of the sky like lightning, staff shortages can be planned in advance.

Even Scandinavia’s largest financial group, Nordea, sees the issue calmly. In the vast majority of cases, employees on parental leave are replaced by deputies who are recruited internally, says a spokesman. The bank, with a good 6,000 employees, sees this as an opportunity for further training: Anyone who works in a different position for a few months gains experience and acquires new skills. The same applies to employees on parental leave, which is why staff are encouraged to take time off with their children. How many employees have currently exchanged the office for a children’s room, kitchen and playground, the bank wants to keep to itself.

On the other hand, Carina Järnkrok, Human Resources Manager at Etteplan Sweden, did the math. At the subsidiary of the Finnish technology service provider, 187 of around 650 employees were on parental leave of varying degrees in the past twelve months, which affected 4.5 percent of all hours worked. 0.8 percent of the total working time was lost due to the care of sick children – around a quarter of all employees “vabbed” at some point. “With a little creativity, the failures can always be solved,” says Järnkrok. Her department is currently missing two people; one was replaced internally, the other by an external force.

Bosses rarely become full-time fathers

Many families justify the fact that parental leave is not taken on an equal footing, contrary to political ambitions, with the higher income of the fathers. If they took care of the children for a longer period of time, wages would fall that could not be afforded. This applies above all to lower-income families.

However, research by the Swedish Social Insurance Agency shows that it is not wages but the level of education that is the most important variable for paternity leave receipts. With a few exceptions: in addition to men who have a migration background or are poorly integrated into the labor market, the self-employed and top managers also take paternity leave to a lesser extent – ​​or not at all. Even in progressive Sweden, there are hardly any corporate bosses who become full-time fathers over a long period of time. According to a survey published in 2019, 93 percent of women in management positions took more than six months of parental leave, compared to only 12 percent of male bosses.

Overall, only a tenth of all fathers do not receive parental allowance. After almost 50 years, paternity leave has become the norm in Sweden. Niklas Löfgren, spokesman for family policy at the Social Security Office, says that people tend to look askance at people who don’t stay at home with their children. Political advances from the red-green side to reserve half of the vacation time for both parents in order to promote equality are not able to win a majority in Sweden either. In a survey from the summer, seven out of ten respondents found that parents should decide for themselves how they want to share time with their children.

It is no more than a rumor that fathers like to take their baby holidays during the hunting season or to coincide with major sporting events such as a football World Cup. Statistically, however, it can be shown that Swedish fathers and mothers prefer to claim parental allowance in the summer months and around Christmas.