Parental Allowance: Fathers do not like long job breaks
"You can rely on the new fathers!" Federal Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) can not be happy enough about the new data on parental allowance published by the Federal Statistical Office on Wednesday. According to this, 18.5 percent of fathers - that is almost one in five - take a break for their offspring. As a result, their share, which used to be "poured in concrete" at 3.5 percent, has increased fivefold over the past 14 months. For Ursula von der Leyen this result is "a quiet revolution".
The family minister is particularly impressed by the men in East Germany: "In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, almost one in four fathers applied for parental leave in the first quarter of 2008.", In second place in the ranking of parenting fathers are Bayern with 23.1 percent, followed by Thuringia (22.9 percent) and Brandenburg (22.5 percent). "The fathers in the new federal states are new frontrunners," rejoices von der Leyen.
Another good news for the Ministry of Family Affairs: The Germans are getting more children: At the beginning of 2008, the birth rate was 2.5 percent higher than in the previous year.
However, the numbers also show that the vast majority of men only take a short break. Of the approximately 67,000 working fathers who applied for parental leave in 2007, ten percent rose from the job for a full year. That's just 6884 men. In the case of working women, however, 85 percent remained with their children for twelve months.
