Military Update: Senators OK extra leave for military dads

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Military Update: Senators OK extra leave for military dads
By Tom Philpott, Special to Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, May 10, 2008

About 76,000 active-duty servicemembers will father babies next year if recent military birthrates hold. The Senate Armed Services Committee has voted to give those new fathers 21 days of paternity leave after their children are born or within 60 days of fathers’ return from deployment.

New dads are expected to use the extra three weeks of leave to bond with infants and care for their mothers, without dipping into 30 days’ annual leave earned by all active-duty servicemembers.

If the Senate committee plan becomes law, paternity leave would be granted regardless of marital status, as long as new fathers claim the infants as dependents. As many as 32,000 soldiers, 18,000 sailors, 17,000 Air Force personnel and 9,000 Marines stand to benefit next year alone.

The Navy is leading the charge for paternity leave to improve sailors’ quality of life. Every service except the Air Force, which worries about the impact on mission readiness and unit workloads, is said to be supportive.

Sens. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., embraced the Navy’s idea, attaching it as an amendment to fiscal 2009 defense authorization bill during committee mark up the last week of April. The Senate panel, unlike its counterpart in the House, makes final changes to its defense bill behind closed doors. It’s unknown whether any senator questioned whether paternity leave is appropriate for a military in wartime.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=54671