Stop decrying our men – Scott-Mottley
OPPOSITION SPOKESPERSON on Justice Donna Scott Mottley has said that she is surprised that the concept of paternity leave is mostly being condemned by men, given that a child needs both parents.
“They would say, it is a worthless set of men them, they are going to have eight babymothers,” said Scott Mottley, who is also the leader of opposition business in the Senate.
“We always decry our men. There are fathers who are running households now. There are fathers who you see on the road who wash clothes, comb hair, and do everything for their children and you see them walking their children to school. That is what we need to encourage because that kind of connection and those kinds of family values translate into building a nation which works differently,” an impassioned Scott Mottley told editors and reporters during a Gleaner Editors’ Forum last Thursday.
PUSHING FOR PATERNITY LEAVE
“Instead of encouraging and speaking in such deprecatory terms that them ‘wutliss’ and they going to [have] three baby mother for the year, what we need to do is to be uplifting the men to make them recognise how things can be different if they are really present, and this is part of why we are pushing for paternity leave,” she said.
The Government is currently facilitating discussions on the Paternity Leave Act based on recommendations in the National Policy for Gender Equality. Paternity leave would allow men to take a short period of time from work following childbirth to help care for their children and assist the mother.
Although the issue is still being debated, Justice Minister Delroy Chuck argued last week that it should ideally be granted to men if they are married or living with the mother of their children.
“If you want paternity leave, you must be living with the mother for a few months before birth. If it’s your wife, no problem,” Chuck was reported as saying during a Ministry of Justice child diversion sensitisation session in Montego Bay, St James, last Wednesday.
Scott Mottley believes that the focus should be on promoting good parenting.
“By that, I want to be clear. In order to parent, you don’t have to live in the same household, but you have to be present in the children’s life,” she said.
“Part of what I think our objective must be is to get men living in the household, not to exclude those who are not there, but to see now if by the bonding that takes place between baby and child, men will want to be present in the training and upbringing and setting the values, and then helping with the homework,” she argued.