Senators have urged men to make full use of the new Family Leave Bill, describing the landmark legislation as a chance to redefine fatherhood, promote gender equality, and strengthen family life across the island.
As lawmakers moved to pass the Bill into law, they described it as an opportunity to bond with their children, share caregiving duties, and reshape outdated notions of fatherhood and masculinity.
Under the legislation, three weeks can be taken consecutively within the first three months after birth, or split — with at least two weeks taken in the first three months and the final week before the end of the baby’s first six months.
Government Senator Lindell Nurse said the law represents a new opportunity for men to embrace their role as fathers.
“I am calling on the men… and I’m merely echoing nearly all of the speeches which, and speakers that would have gone before who have been calling on the men to step up to the plate and use this now and recognise that this is your opportunity to really bond and to build with your offspring,” Sen. Nurse said.
He stressed that the intent of the Bill should not be misused.
“Men need to recognise that this grant of paternity leave is not an opportunity to have a little extra vacation or to go on to lie on the block with the other fellows or to do all other things except that. It is given so that you can give the kind of emotional support to the mother who would have just come out of a very stressful, childbearing situation. To give the kind of support that is necessary in those initial days and weeks,” he said.
Independent Senator Roshanana Trim described the Family Leave Bill as “more about liberation and reshaping what family means, what fatherhood looks like, and what equality feels like in daily life.”
“These old ideas that we have do not simply harm women. It also disenfranchises and impoverishes men,” she said. “The way how we talk about fatherhood and how we talk about masculinity, they steal from men the freedom to be gentle, it steals from them their ability to be vulnerable and the deep participative joy that comes from being involved in family life.”
“We often tell men — society, that is — that men should provide, but they should not feel and to lead but not lean to protect, but we don’t offer them spaces to connect and, in doing so, it deprives our forms of balance, our children of presence, and our societies of a real sense of wholeness,” Sen. Trim continued.
She added: “When we deny men the right to care, we deny families the fullness of love, but when we give them permission and grant them through the Bill that we are here today to debate, homes become gentler, and we see it in general in our communities.”
Trim said the measure goes beyond legislative change. “This is not just legislative housekeeping; we are also doing some cultural house cleaning. We want to ensure that care is something that everybody feels as though they have the right and the privilege to offer, allowing men to bond with their children in the earliest of days,” she explained.
“It begins to normalise that fatherhood is not symbolic or just about money and that motherhood is just not about martyrdom and sacrifice,” Sen. Trim said. “It allows us to escape outdated expectations from gender scripts, and it makes it a lot more balanced, more dignified, and allows for us to live more true.”
She further noted that the bill “replaces a framework around a single-gendered experience to one that recognises what modern family life is… it moves towards where we recognise that fathers and care indeed is a shared human responsibility”.
Senator Andwele Boyce commended the Bill but called attention to systemic delays that often hinder fathers from being fully present in their children’s lives.
“There are too many instances in this country where fathers are precluded from the caring and the rearing of their children by virtue of the approach taken by courts in this country that… do not move fast enough,” Sen. Boyce said. “That lack of efficiency certainly endangers the Barbadian family. It endangers… the relationship, the divine relationship building that we seek to inspire by virtue of this legislation.”
He urged action to correct the issue, saying, “Children are the victims of that lack of efficiency… Fathers are the victims of that lack of efficiency. And if we believe, as it is clear that we do, that the strength and continuity of the Barbadian family is essential to our national development, those are issues that we must fix.”
Sen. Boyce also commended private sector entities that already support family life. “I would wish to call on the private sector… to perhaps first commend the private sector agencies that in the running of their entities support families and support care responsibilities,” he said. (LG)
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