John Gandy said he will celebrate Father’s Day like a lot of fathers probably will – watching golf.
While the 29-year-old and new father watches the final round of the U.S. Open in the living room of his Chattanooga home, he will also be playing with and admiring the six-month-old twins he and his wife, Jourdan, are adopting. His big Father’s Day present will come a day after the holiday when the adoption of the twins, a brother and sister, is legally finalized.
John, who is an investment officer at Unum, is one of the fathers who has taken advantage of the Chattanooga-based insurance company’s six-week paid parental leave program that launched in 2018. John said he was the first one on his department’s team to take advantage of the new leave program starting in December when the twins were born.
A survey recently conducted by Unum of 500 new U.S. parents across the country found that 37% of new fathers said they feel there is still a stigma in their workplace around new parents, with 80% of them experiencing it firsthand.
Even though 62% of the 500 parents surveyed said their employer offers paid parental leave, 50% spent 30 days or less away from the workplace when they had or adopted a child.