However, according to a study conducted jointly by Inserm and the Sorbonne University’s Pierre-Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health, taking two weeks of paternity leave could have a beneficial effect on the mental health of fathers. Their work is published in the journal “The Lancet Public Health”.
To conduct their study, the researchers followed volunteers from the Elfe cohort, which represents 18,000 children born in 2011 in France, and their parents (heterosexual couples with some 13,000 mothers and 11,000 fathers involved). After the birth, the couples indicated their intention to take paternity leave.
Two months after the baby’s birth, 64% of the fathers stated that they had taken paternity leave, and 17% intended to take paternity leave. Meanwhile, 19% did not intend to take any.
The parents then answered a questionnaire to determine if they had suffered from depression. According to the analysis of the results, “4.5% of the fathers who took paternity leave and 4.8% of those intending to take it had postpartum depression, compared with 5.7% of those who did not use it”, Inserm explained.
However, a two-week paternity leave didn’t prove to be enough to help prevent mothers from developing postpartum depression. In fact, among mothers whose partners used their two weeks of paternity leave, 16% of them had postpartum depression.
Among couples where the men planned to take their leave, 15.1% of women suffered from it; and among those whose partners had not taken any paternity leave, 15.3% did.
“The negative association observed among the mothers could suggest that a two-week period of paternity leave is not sufficient to prevent postpartum depression in women,” explained Katharine Barry, Inserm doctoral student at Sorbonne Université.
Team lead Maria Melchior added: “Despite taking many possible confounding factors into account, we were unable to sufficiently evaluate the pre-existence of depressive disorders outside of another pregnancy in the mothers.
“It is, therefore, possible that those fathers whose partners are at greater risk of depression take paternity leave more readily.”
According to her, family policies targeted at fathers could “advance equality of the sexes in the labour market and increase the fathers’ participation in the family sphere”.