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Jamie Lawrence, Editor, HRZone: What will crack the insidious problem of men just not feeling able to take parental leave or even admit to employers they want to spend time caring for their children?
Sir Cary Cooper, Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health, Manchester Business School: It’s a really big issue. Men don’t apply for parental leave or flexible working as much as woman do and that is a real issue.
And the reason they don’t - I’ve done a big study funded by the Lottery fund and I did it with Working Families and a colleague from Lancaster - and we looked at both a large public and private sector body and tried to find out why men don’t do this.
And the answer was "it will adversely affect my career." Yet women apply - they also feel it will adversely affect their career but not to the same extent that men do.
Because for men it’s about them feeling that the organisation will think they’re less committed - and they’re not, and won’t be, they are just trying to engage with their family and participate and be ‘new mannish’ and get some good balance between work and life but what inhibits them is the fear that taking flexible working and parental leave will adversely affect their careers.
Via David Hain
