Take The Leap. Take The Leave.

While Paternity Leave rates have increasingly risen across the world in the past decade, the number of fathers availing the opportunity, as well as the overall awareness of the leave itself, remain at an alarmingly low rate. After our research, we discovered that two of the most predominate reasons men aren’t taking paternity leave are due to a fear of a missed career based opportunity and/or a financially restricting reason. Worrying about the negative effects taking time off to spend with a newborn child will create, parallels the “anti-breadwinner” stigma that paternity leave is often correlated with. As a result, employers who do not provide a fair, paid paternity leave to their male employees are creating a larger problem than they realize.
After gaining a better understanding of the truth about paternity leave, we grew a newfound passion to join in advocating the cause ourselves. For our project and campaign for Dove Men+Care, we created a video depicting a realistic scenario, where a new dad struggles to find the confidence to ask for a paternity leave from his boss. The spot begins with the dad receiving a warm message from his wife, reminding him that he is missing time with his child at home. This message kickstarts the courage to open up a drafted paternity leave email, finish it, and send it to his boss. Throughout the video, we see the man gain a little more confidence with each sentence. By the end, he finds the courage to send the email off, and the video concludes with a positive message from Dove to “Take the Leap. Take the Leave”.