Model babies attached to figures in London including Gene Kelly, Thierry Henry and Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Dads campaigning for enhanced paternity leave have strapped ‘babies’ in slings to statues of famous men across central London and called on the government to improve the UK’s parental leave options, which are ranked the least generous in the whole of Europe for fathers.
Activists from a new campaign group, the Dad Shift, tied model babies to statues of the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the actors Laurence Olivier and Gene Kelly and the footballers Thierry Henry and Tony Adams, in an attempt to focus attention on the importance of father-baby bonding.
And you guessed it, Dadsnet is a founding partner of The Dad Shift movement. Exciting times! There’s no doubt that we need the paternity leave laws overhauled here in the UK and to be at the forefront of change is an honour.
Here in the UK we have the worst paternity leave offer in Europe, with just 2 statutory weeks of leave, paid at £184.03 a week. Consequently, recent research found as much as one in three UK fathers took NO paternity leave after the birth of their child at all, and one in two families where the fathers took paternity leave reported struggling financially afterwards.
The Dad Shift & our army of campaigners plan to deliver an open letter to prime minister, Kier Starmer, later this month, calling on him to take quick action to improve paternity leave.
“Proper parental leave for fathers and co-parents is good for mothers, good for babies, good for fathers and good for society too. Countries with six or more weeks’ paternity leave have a gender pay gap that’s 4% smaller and a workforce participation gap that is 3.7% smaller too, meaning change can help grow the economy while helping British families,” the open letter says.
Campaigners are asking for “parental leave that is affordable for people to take, gives a substantial allowance of time, and supports equality among parents”.
Some of the latest polling carried out for the campaign launch found that 90% of fathers said they wanted to be a bigger part of their children’s lives. The Labour party promised in its manifesto that its government would “review the parental leave system, so it best supports working families, within its first year in government”. So now really is the time to do this.
The Dad Shift’s co-founders, George Gabriel and Alex Lloyd Hunter, travelled around central London to attach model babies to the statues of men. The sight of the statues of famous male figures with babies strapped to their chest attracted plenty of attention & interest from morning commuters & passers by.
“A lot of people stopped to take photographs; people responded very warmly. We meant it to be a positively provocative sight,” Gabriel said. “There’s such an imbalance in our portrayal and understanding of figures in public life. Women are often asked questions about their lives as wives, mothers and daughters, while male figures in public life are often not invited to share that part of themselves. We wanted to call attention to their role as fathers and also the need to better support people when babies arrive into their lives.
Sitting between platforms eight and nine at Paddington station, Brunel (who had three children) looked very at ease with a baby nestling in his right arm and his top hat in his left hand. Kelly, swinging from a lamp-post in Leicester Square and brandishing an umbrella, looked cheerful, a baby strapped tightly to his chest.
John Seward Johnson II’s statue of a harried city worker, briefcase and raincoat in hand, who has been trying to hail a taxi since the sculpture was made in 1983, was instantly transformed by the addition of a baby in a sling into a frazzled parent trying to drop his child at nursery before work. Elsewhere, campaigners strapped twins on to Stephen Melton’s statue of a yuppie trader talking on his mobile phone.
So… Now it’s your turn to help and join the campaign. We need to get as many signatures on our letter to the PM as possible. We already have the backing of MP’s across the nation and even some celebrity interest from the likes of Russell Kane and others.
