The 10 U.S. Companies With the Best Paternity Leave Benefits - LIST

New fathers in the U.S. lack something the governments of 96 other countries, including Croatia, Albania, and Serbia, require companies to offer: paid paternity leave. But at a handful of companies, fathers can take months off with pay, take advantage of on-site child-care centers, or have the cost of adoption and family planning covered, a new report shows.

For a report released Thursday, Fatherly, a lifestyle site geared toward young fathers, teamed with management professors at the Wharton School and the Silberman College of Business. They looked at 50 U.S. companies that offer at least one week of paid paternity leave and employ at least 1,000 workers and graded them based on the length of paid leave they offer, plus such additional perks as flex-time policies and a culture that promotes work-life balance. 

Check out the 10 companies with the best paternity leave policies below and see the full list on Fatherly's website. 

1) Google

Paid paternity leave: 12 weeks, or 18 weeks if the father is the primary caregiver

Other perks: Google offers parents one-on-one consultations to figure out day-care options, five free days of backup child care, $500 to spend on "baby bonding," and four child care centers on its Mountain View campus.

2) Facebook

Paid paternity leave: 17 weeks

Other perks: New parents receive $4,000 to spend on their children, subsidized day care, the option to work from home, and $20,000 worth of family planning benefits (which covers egg freezing, sperm retrieval procedures, and fees to use a surrogacy agency).

3) Bank of America

Paid paternity leave: 12 weeks

Other perks: After taking 12 weeks of paid leave, parents who need more time can leave for another 14 unpaid weeks. The company also offers employees a health service, TelaDoc, that allows them to call or video chat doctors to get consultations, diagnoses, and prescriptions for their children or themselves for a $40 co-pay.

4) Patagonia

Paid paternity leave: 8 weeks

Other perks: Patagonia's full-time employees can drop off their children from the time they're newborns until they're 9 years old at child-care centers on the company's campus. The centers' staffers don't just babysit—they can also coordinate after-school pickups. 

5) State Street

Paid paternity leave: 4 weeks

Other perks: Fathers don't have to take the four weeks of paternity leave all at one go; they can take one week, return to work, and then choose to spend their remaining three weeks of leave a couple of months down the line, if they like. The company also requires managers to approach employees about flex time, which means that even employees who are too hesitant to ask about scheduling flexible hours will be able to have the conversation with their boss.

6) Genentech

Paid paternity leave: 6 weeks

Other perks: Fathers can leave for another six weeks, unpaid, after they've exhausted paid paternity leave. Genentech also encourages employees to take advantage of its flextime program. It looks like it's working: 55 percent of employees use flextime.

7) LinkedIn

Paid paternity leave: 6 weeks

8) Arnold & Porter 

Paid paternity leave: 6 weeks, or 18 weeks if the father is the primary caregiver

Other perks: The law firm has a panel of partners who can advise employees who want to shift to working 25 hours a week. It also offers on-site day care for children and $10,000 worth of financial assistance for families looking to adopt children.

9) Roche Diagnostics

Paid paternity leave: 6 weeks

Other perks: Roche employees at the company's Indianapolis headquarters get to enroll their children in a city-run camp. The company also offers unlimited sick days and the option to telecommute. 

10) PricewaterhouseCoopers

Paid paternity leave: 6 weeks, plus an additional 2 weeks if the family has more than one child

Other perks: PwC allows employees to take flex days or, in other words, take certain days off in the week as long as they end up still completing 40 hours of work a week. The company also offers unprescribed sick days, so employees who have to go home to take care of an ill child can get paid while they're off.

(bloomberg.com)