This is how I took paternity leave.

Little Demon VS Little Demon

My daughter Kokeko, just waking from her nap, is doing what you might call contemporary dance-like movements. My wife laughs. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, I'm overcome by quiet regret.
Ah, I should have developed better cooking habits!

Kokeko, two and a half months old. My six-month paternity leave has now entered its second month.
I decided I'd start helping with meal prep, which I'd left entirely to my wife. With that in mind, I've been spending more time in the kitchen lately. But being hopeless at cooking, I end up taking 45 minutes on recipes that say 20. I started by aiming for roughly one dish out of every two, but honestly, I'm just holding things back.
I'm grateful (and surprised) to my wife for silently watching over me (*2), and I'm determined to improve quickly. If I hadn't taken paternity leave, I wouldn't have had this chance. It's me who's being raised.

Speaking of meals, at the midwife clinic my wife started attending, they pointed out that Kokeko's "weight gain is too slow." But to fix this, I have to increase the number of feedings, whether Kokeko wants it or not. This means waking up Kokeko, whom I desperately put to sleep, multiple times just for feeding.

So, late at night or early in the morning, I play the villain who shatters Kokeko's peaceful sleep. But "hardening my heart" is just too painful, so I try to at least make my heart feel like a "little demon." Though sometimes I wonder, isn't Kokeko the little demon?

And soon, the time to start the "daycare hunt" (※3) is approaching. We're a dual-income household, and my wife is scheduled to finish her maternity leave next spring. I plan to write about the daycare hunt eventually.

Honestly, right now I'd love to ramble on about the nuances and details of childcare. But I'll put my heart into a little demon mode and return to this series' original concept. As I wrote in Part 1, it's about "talking more about childcare leave than childcare itself." This time, I'll rewind and discuss "what I did before taking childcare leave." Not so much a how-to, but rather one example of how it went for me.

A 16-Year-Long Chance

Let me start with an old story. About 16 years ago, I was a university student job hunting. During an interview at one company, I asked a question:
"Can you actually take childcare leave?" (I thought it was just a "vacation" back then)
I asked it on a whim. I'd just made up my mind to get a job after much deliberation, and I wanted to know as many "perks unique to company employees" as possible.

The interviewer's first response was, "It's unpaid." He followed it up with a joke: "Don't tell me you've got a baby in that backpack of yours," and laughed it off. I was foolish enough to show up to the interview in casual clothes (!), but I was annoyed. "That's not the answer I wanted. And it's not funny."

Times have changed. Nowadays, there are probably plenty of male students asking about paternity leave. That backpack memory lingered in the back of my mind, and when I learned my wife was pregnant, I thought, "Now is the time." Now is the time to "seriously" take paternity leave. As I mentioned before, above all, it just seemed interesting. Plus, since there aren't many male examples yet, I figured this was a "prime opportunity."
This job has that aspect to it. If I could digest the experience in a way that makes sense for a copywriter, wouldn't I be able to come up with some new words? Well, if you call that ulterior motive, then it is.

Was I anxious about leaving the workplace? Not entirely. Copywriting is a technical skill; the longer you don't write, the rustier you get. That worried me. But then I thought of it as an opportunity to add another area of expertise to my repertoire, and I could shrug it off. It's just one phase of life. But how long is "one phase"? Weeks? Months?

Six months into the unknown

Around the time my due date was six months away, I pored over the handbook (※4) and company rules regarding parental leave.
It's rather complicated, so I won't go into detail, but male employees can take childcare leave within 364 days starting the day after the child is born. If certain conditions are met, you can add two more months to this period (※5), and depending on how you arrange it, you can even split it into two separate periods (※6).

According to HR, for example, ten male employees took childcare leave this past March. There really are "pioneers" in every field, aren't there?
After reading interview articles with those who've taken it (Note 7) and talking to a male junior colleague who took paternity leave last year, I learned the following:

・ The duration of paternity leave taken by male employees concentrated within the range of 2 weeks to 3 months.
・ Some said taking two months felt like the bare minimum.

That made me wonder: wouldn't taking, say, six months feel like stepping into relatively uncharted territory (at Dentsu Inc.)? It got me excited. It's simple, really—if someone had already taken six months, I might have shouted, "Then I'll take seven!" It's not an auction, though.
With respect for those who came before me, I wanted to see the view just beyond the next step. Driven by that desire, I decided on a neat "six months." The main reason I didn't go for a full year was consideration for our household finances.

During childcare leave, you don't get paid by the company. Instead, you receive "Childcare Leave Benefits" from the public employment office. In principle, you get an amount equivalent to 67% of your base salary, calculated on a daily basis (*8). Whether you think that's a lot or a little probably depends on the person. I thought it was "surprisingly generous." I'd later realize it wasn't quite that much (*9).

About three months before the due date, I went to the HR department to get the childcare leave application form. They set up a session to explain the system and procedures.

The staff member mentioned that there's an employee named Kumaki who knows more about the benefits than any other male employee who's taken childcare leave. An authority on this within the company! ...Wait, Kumaki is my cohort, isn't he? (Though I've never spoken to him). I immediately emailed him and decided to go talk to him.

Meet Kumaki!

"Last year, about three people from your cohort came to talk to me too."

Kumaki greeted me with an air of confidence, as if to say, "Welcome to my lab."

"All three of them left for their parental leave looking pretty pleased with themselves."

Somehow, even his words carry that masterful air.

"I've already run simulations using the Uogawari case." "Huh?"

The documents Kumaki pulled out listed Plans A, B, and C, each with a calendar and detailed calculations. Based on the rough schedule I'd emailed him beforehand ("roughly six months"), he'd calculated how refining the period could maximize coverage of lost income (via benefits)! Who is this guy, Kumaki?

"There's no easy-to-understand info on men taking childcare leave, so I went to the Hello Work office and bombarded them with questions," he explained.

・How to combine childcare leave and paid vacation to minimize income loss.
・Since benefits are paid even on weekends, it's more advantageous to include weekends at both ends of the leave period.
・Depending on how you take childcare leave, social insurance premiums for that month may be exempted.

And so on—a wealth of knowledge and techniques you'd regret not knowing!
Many hesitate to take childcare leave due to income loss, but Meister Kumaki argues that with accurate knowledge, people should be able to consider it more positively.

For now, I decided not to rely solely on the benefits. Instead, I'll use part of the money I'd set aside for mortgage prepayments (basically savings) to cover living expenses. Furthermore, I'll use some of my existing paid leave for part of the six-month period.

Still not taking parental leave?

Now, I needed time to inform my work colleagues about taking parental leave.

Copywriters handle multiple projects simultaneously, with separate teams for each project. So, over about four months, I gradually informed everyone on all teams (and each client). I let the fact that "Uogawari will be absent" slowly sink in. It sank in so much that people started saying, "Huh? Aren't you on parental leave yet?" (It actually happened). And I turned down any offers for "new projects" that might overlap with my parental leave period. I steeled my heart.

Everyone responded with surprise and smiles. I don't know what they truly thought, but I'm incredibly grateful for this. Thanks to everyone, this series exists.

For each project, I passed the baton to a new copywriter who filled the gap left by my absence. This process took about two months.

【1】Decide who to assign the work to (in most cases, this was left to my judgment).
[2] Create concise materials outlining the entire scope of the work.
[3] Explain the details to the person using that document.
[4] Bring them into the team and work together (about one month).
[5] I stepped down just before my parental leave.

As a subtle point, there's the idea of "treating the copywriter taking over to nice meals" here and there, but that's fine.
I don't exactly have a ton of popularity, but luckily, I did have some experience as a trainer during new employee training and OJT (※10). Thanks to that, some juniors I'd trained before agreed to help this time, which was a huge relief. That's the good part about the organization.

The Ultimate Baby Gift

I informed my direct supervisor about five months before the due date. While announcing my wife's pregnancy, I also shared my intention to take childcare leave. My boss's response was exactly as I wrote in the first installment of this series – I can only say I'm incredibly fortunate.

Of course, childcare leave is a right for all workers, regardless of gender, and should be available unconditionally... but well, workplaces vary, don't they?

If you have a male colleague or subordinate who is about to become a father, why not consider this first?

Parental leave is the ultimate baby gift. It provides lifelong warmth for him and his family.

Taking it or not is a personal choice, but keeping that option clearly open—for example, suggesting to male employees, "Are you taking paternity leave?" or "What are your plans for paternity leave?"—isn't that something you could easily do? Like tying a ribbon on a baby gift.
That's my suggestion from a copywriter (currently on leave).

Now, there was one thing I seemed to prepare for fairly carefully, yet ended up being critically unprepared for. In my case, that was precisely the "improving my cooking skills" I mentioned at the start. I was so preoccupied with work-related preparations that this was a blind spot. Parental leave, which lays bare your weaknesses as a homemaker, is truly formidable.

Right now, Kokeko has fully awakened and started wailing "Waaaaaah! Waaaaaah!" I thought this kind of sound only existed in Giant's recitals (*11). And it's slightly hoarse (*12). There's a theory that you can identify a baby's needs by distinguishing between five types of cries... Is this like the Chinese "Four Tones" (*13)? Summer is ending before I can master it.

Next time: The Chapter of Going Out Alone with Kokeko.

※1
Contemporary dance is one genre of performing arts (though "genre" feels too vague for it). It's often the polar opposite of classical dance, primarily avant-garde physical expression encompassing highly abstract movements, anarchic movements, movements that reject meaning, movements that aren't even movements anymore, and so on.

※2
Fishmans sang about the preciousness of someone who simply "watches over" you, maintaining a steady temperature through both joyous and ordinary times, in their 1994 song "Gratitude (Surprise)".

※3
The term "ho-katsu" (childcare search) encompasses the entire A to Z of enrolling a child in childcare facilities. It's peculiar that while it functions as an abbreviation, it lacks an official name.

※4
Dentsu Inc.'s internal handbook "Happy Dentsu Dad & Mom Life." Despite its pop tone, it covers nearly everything about childcare leave and is essential reading for employees.

※5
The national "Papa Mama Childcare Leave Plus" system. For men, if certain conditions are met—such as the spouse's childcare leave status and the start date of their own leave—the period can be extended "until the child reaches 1 year and 2 months old" (though the maximum leave period remains 1 year).

※6
For men, taking and "completing" parental leave within 8 weeks after the child's birth makes it possible to take leave again.

※7
From the October 2015 article "What Did a Male Dentsu Inc. Employee Gain by Taking Parental Leave?" on Nikkei DUAL, an information site for dual-income couples.

※8
During the first six months of childcare leave, the allowance is set at 67% of base salary, and 50% thereafter. However, there is a cap on the amount.

※9
I'd like to write about my actual experience with this topic separately sometime.

※10
OJT stands for On-the-Job Training. It refers to training conducted through actual work duties.

※11
A term referring to the self-expression activities and auditory assault activities often held by Gian (Takeshi Goda) from Fujiko F. Fujio's manga "Doraemon" in the town's vacant lot.

※12
"Howling" refers to the unpleasant oscillation phenomenon ("screech," "spee") caused by output imbalance between audio equipment like microphones and speakers. Its verb form is "howl." A baby's cry sometimes breaks in a high-pitched way, like howling.

※13
Distinguishing the meaning of each syllable by using four different pitch accents (tones).