Singapore wants more babies but fathers underuse paternity leave – ‘work never stops’

He said the reason for his reluctance to take more was his coworkers despite their encouragement for him to spend time with his daughter.

“I didn’t feel guilty or backlash or concern over taking paternity, apart from burdening my teammates … I also didn’t want to be away from work for too long at a time as it meant more load on my teammates and more for me to catch on when I return,” the 31-year-old said, adding that he intended to spread his remaining leave across the year depending on his wife or daughter’s needs.

Singapore introduced government-paid paternity leave in 2013. Last year, it announced a doubling of the leave from two weeks to four for fathers of children born after January 1, 2024. However, employers have the discretion of whether to grant the additional two weeks.

An electrical engineer, 32, who declined to be named, had his request for four weeks of leave rejected for the birth of his second child in January this year. The company did not explain the rejection and he instead used two weeks of his wife’s maternity leave. In Singapore, fathers can share up to four weeks of their wife’s 16 weeks of government-paid maternity leave if their wife agrees.

“It’s a need to have a month’s leave to support my spouse at home, to look after our newborn and help with house chores,” he said.

For legal associate Chua Siang Yee, despite taking eight weeks off for his daughter, he still felt guilty. The multinational law firm where he works, Allen Overy Shearman Sterling, lets employees take double Singapore’s four weeks of government-paid paternity leave.

Chua, 35, and his wife had been trying for over a year to conceive and were on the brink of using assisted conception so they wanted to spend as much time as they could with