Paid paternity leave is important and should be more widely available than it is. However, the standards are and must be different from the average employee for a man charged with running a government agency.
Politico reported this week that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has been on paid paternity leave since mid-August after he and his husband, Chasten, adopted two infants. Probably more fathers should take time to spend with newborn children, but notice how during this same period, U.S. ports ran into serious backlogs, as did the airlines, leading to a transportation crisis that threatens to upend the entire supply chain.
Yet the Transportation Department lacks even an acting secretary.
Buttigieg’s responsibilities as a high-ranking government official necessitate some sacrifice on his part. He’s not just some corporate staffer— he is a literal Cabinet secretary, and it is perfectly reasonable to expect him to show up and do his job.
The fact that no one in the Biden administration asked that of him shows it didn’t think he’d be of much use anyway. Which makes sense — he was wholly unqualified for the position in the first place. The most telling part of the story is that nobody in the media even noticed that Buttigieg was missing.
Still, the administration could have at least better prepared the department for Buttigieg’s absence by appointing an acting secretary. Or it could have limited his requested time off with the understanding that he accepted a Cabinet role knowing full well the time he would have to put into it.
