The Labour of Love

She's having a baby! Over a decade after the birth of her last child, Cherie Booth, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is visibly busting with the news of the impending birth of her fourth child. A prominent lawyer with ambitions to be a High Court judge, Booth is the picture of the modern woman. At 45, she has a stable career and family life, despite her view from the fishbowl of British public scrutiny.

Yet lately she's been having a few problems with her preeminent husband. It seems that Prime Minister Blair, obviously a little unmanned by the prospect of juggling running Britain in one hand with cradling a newborn in the other, is shying away from wholeheartedly embracing his responsibility for his new kid.

While Booth has publicly suggested that her husband take off some time from work for the baby's arrival, Blair has hedged and hawed and altogether made a fool of himself. Asked by the BBC whether or not he would take leave, he whined, "I've got a country to run...I honestly don't know what to do."

What Blair needs to do is to get with his own program. A self-cast sensitive '90s man, Blair is known as the electric guitar player who reinvented Labour from a staid party of yesteryear to a modern force to be reckoned with. It was his own government that just passed a law which allows fathers up to 13 weeks of unpaid paternity leave during the first five years of each of their children's lives. With Booth already earning an estimated three times her husband's salary, Blair's missed paycheck should little affect the family's pocketbook.

Sure Blair has a nation to care for, in addition to his little tykes. But ideally, the values that one teaches at home should be in keeping with those one practices in public life. What example will Blair's three teenagers take from a father who passes a law encouraging the family bonding that he would rather distance himself from at home? One would hope that we've reached a time in which male sensitivity is as socially acceptable as workaholism and family disregard.

Here in the United States we also have a law, under the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act, that allows for paternity leave. Unfortunately, this privilege is one of the most underused by American men, young and old. Studies have shown that the more time fathers spend alone with their babies during the first few months of life, the more involved they will be throughout their children's lifetimes.

However, fathers need not regard paternity leave as a temporary sacrifice, that in a long-term utilitarian calculus will ultimately pay-off when they can connect to their kids during those trying years of teen angst. Instead, they should give themselves the chance to see the world anew through a baby's eye. And that enlightened vision should include rethinking their own roles in family interaction.

--DALIA L. ROTSTEIN