WILLEMSTAD - A new bill on paternity leave has been introduced by the opposition party MAN in the Parliament of Willemstad. This proposal provides for five days of paid leave for fathers to spend time with the mother of the child and the newborn baby.
According to the explanatory memorandum of the bill, it is proposed that the government bears the full costs for civil servants, while in the private sector, 80 percent of the salary is reimbursed by the Social Insurance Bank (SVB), and 20 percent by the employer.
This regulation is intended to provide justice to fathers, mothers, and children, especially since mothers already have arrangements for maternity leave, but there is no such provision for fathers in the Civil Code.
The proposal emphasizes the importance of fathers in the lives of children and points to changing social norms where men are no longer expected to be solely breadwinners but are expected to share caregiving responsibilities with their partners.
The idea is that both parents experience the first period of the new family together, contributing to family stability and strengthening the bond between father and child. Paternity leave is presented as a means to more equally distribute the division of work and care between father and mother.
The explanation also discusses how paternity leave is regulated in other countries within the Kingdom. In the Netherlands, for example, the father receives one week of fully paid leave and can also take an additional five weeks of leave at a 70 percent salary reimbursement. In Aruba, the father gets two days of leave, while in Sint Maarten, as on Curaçao, paternity leave is not legally regulated.