Senator Gregory Nicholls has proposed that the Family Leave Bill be further refined to reflect what he called the realities of Barbadian family life — including situations where a father may have more than one child born within 12 months.
The government senator said the law should not force a father to choose which child he spends time bonding with, since the purpose of the Family Leave Bill is to strengthen family connections and support the early developmental needs of children.
“I would want to humbly suggest that some consideration in the future be given to where a person, a man, has fathered more than one child within a 12-month period, that he will be able to benefit from that,” he said during the Senate debate on the Bill.
“So that if it is that a child is supposed to be bonding with their father, and that is one of the social developmental objectives of the legislation, then I don’t think that the child should be penalised because the father has taken up with another woman in less than a 12-month period.”
He said the Family Leave Bill should reflect the realities of modern families and recognise fathers who have parenting duties in more than one household.
“We can’t say it is a good thing for a father to play a role in the early developmental life of his child, but say when you have more than one child, you can only choose — you have to pick which one,” Nicholls declared. “We can’t be seeing both things at the same time.”
He explained that his suggestion was not intended to encourage a materialistic view of fatherhood, but rather to ensure that no child is deprived of the opportunity to bond with their father because of a legislative technicality.
“This is not to encourage profligacy or what they would call the ‘sweet daddy mentality’,” he said. “But at the end of the day, we are talking about ensuring that the rights of a parent in their employment are secured when they are taking care of their family obligations at the time of the birth of a child.”
The Family Leave Bill should focus on the child’s welfare and protecting the bond between parent and child, Sen. Nicholls said
“The importance of the bond between parent and child in those early formative stages should therefore guide how the law is applied,” he said. (LG)
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