Thread by @ezraklein

I managed to miss most of the horrible Paternity Leave Discourse because, well, I'm on paternity leave until January.

But: Parental leave should be universal, and it should be universally taken. And not just so men can be helpmates to their wives, who're doing the Real Work.

Men should take paternity leave because they should care for their children, and experience the love that grows out of caring for their children.

To miss that is to parent (and live) in grayscale, not color.

I've seen a lot of older men who have no idea how to care for babies. They can't change a diaper, they don't know how to quiet a tantrum. They hold the baby for a minute and pass them back. They want to connect and build a relationship, but they can't. It's a lifelong loss.

This is something @AlisonGopnik says, and it's among the most important lines I've ever heard: We don't just care for others because we love them. We love them because we perform acts of care for them. vox.com/podcasts/2019/…

This is a way that shitty ideas about masculinity really hurt men too. We tell men that missing out on infant parenting is escaping gross work. We don't tell them what they're missing.

That's what was so telling and sad about Tucker Carlson's comment, among others: To think all a parent does for a baby is breastfeed is to reveal pretty clearly you've been on the outside of the experience, looking in through a foggy window. businessinsider.com/tucker-carlson…

But a lot of fathers (and mothers!) never had a choice. They weren't given the time to care for their infant children. They weren't given the cultural permission to do it. They still aren't.

Parents have done remarkable, heroic work under these circumstances. I'm not saying, in any way, that you can't be a great parent if you didn't get or take leave. It's the acts of care that build love.

But we shouldn't have made it so hard for you.

That's a policy choice that we are closer to fixing. Many states, like California, have fixed it. We should fix it nationally, too.

That there's no chance of Congress passing a strong, well-designed parental leave program this session is heartbreaking.

What you see in all this, though, is bad policy is supported by bad culture. Watching adult men with children struggle to imagine what a man might do with parental leave, or what parental leave might do for them, is a brutal commentary on fatherhood in America.

Anyway, I'm trying to stay off this site during the rest of my leave, but everyone should read Gopnik's "The Gardener and the Carpenter." It's life-changing. us.macmillan.com/books/97812501…