To encourage both parents to use their full quota of leave some countries have introduced bonus policies of extra leave (Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Portugal), financial bonuses (Austria, Croatia, France, Korea) or parenting training (Romania) (see Appendix 2). While this is mostly directed at incentivising fathers to take their leave, it can incorporate mothers’ leave taking as well. The evidence shows fathers respond by taking their designated leave, but the majority of the additional leave is usually taken by mothers.

Given that 26 weeks is still limited and represents a short duration of paid parental leave by international standards, we do not recommend this approach of bonus policies. If one parent does not use their whole reserved portion, then the total leave available is reduced by the amount not taken. The Grattan Institute (Wood et al., 2021) recommends such a model where 2 weeks bonus leave is available to families where both parents use at least 6 weeks of the 24 weeks leave. However, this approach risks shortening the leave available to the birth parent if the father/partner cannot take their full portion of leave. By contrast, KPMG (2021, pp. 12–13) recommends an ‘equality supplement’ of either 2 or 4 weeks, to be added to the 26 weeks, if both parents use their leave, lengthening the total available to 28 or 30 weeks. Baird et al. (2021) also suggest a bonus period of leave in addition to the 26 weeks, which they call a ‘shared care bonus’, to be offered to “couples who have shared the original period of leave equally”. This bonus differs from the KPMG model by also suggesting that where the whole or most of the 26 weeks was used by one parent, the bonus must be used exclusively by the other parent.

Need for incentives: Fathers are more likely to take parental leave when there is incentive to do so (Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2019). Such incentives include father quotas (use-it-or-lose-it policies that reserve some parental leave exclusively for fathers), high wage-replacement rates, and financial bonuses, as evidenced through the experience in Nordic countries and the Canadian province of Quebec, which have the highest rates of uptake globally (Feldman & Gran, 2016; Harvey & Tremblay; 2018; Kalb, 2018; Karu & Tremblay, 2018; Rehel, 2014). Patnaik (2019) in examining the Quebec Parental Insurance Program found that the use of ‘daddy quotas’ increased fathers’ participation by 250%, primarily through higher benefits in tandem with weeks that were explicitly framed as ‘daddy-only’. Patnaik (2019) also found that it is possible for policies such as ‘daddy quotas’ to not only induce short-term changes in behaviour but to have an enduring impact on the gendered division of paid and unpaid care work. Other studies of the Quebec experience demonstrate similar findings, including a positive impact on women’s labour force participation, especially in full-time work (Dunatchik & Özcan, 2021; Wray, 2020).

While the Nordic countries have led innovation around incentives for fathers/partners, in particular quotas for fathers, differences within Scandinavia include some lessons for Australia. At the same time as Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden increased their non-transferable quota of parental leave for fathers, Denmark withdrew theirs. This saw only a small change in the average rate of parental leave taken by Danish fathers between 2002 and 2020 (when the policy changed) even as fathers in Iceland, Norway and Sweden continued to climb (Rostgaard & Ejrnæs, 2021, p. 320). Denmark’s policy has now been reversed as the Danish government introduced new legislation in line with the EU Directorate on work–life balance, to include a non-transferable allocation of 9 weeks of paid leave for fathers to be taken before the child turns one. This is in addition to 2 weeks of paternity leave at the time of the birth.