Parental entitlement in most cases depends on the age of the child for whom the application is made. In some situations, the entitlement is dedicated only to the father or only to the mother of the child and the entitlement cannot be transferred to the other parent or guardian. This applies, for example, to paternity leave or the 9 weeks of parental leave.
Paternity leave is an entitlement that is dedicated exclusively to the father of the child and is in no way dependent on the employment status of the child’s mother. According to the provisions of the Labour Code (Act of 26 June 1974, Journal of Laws of 2023, item 1465), an employee-father raising a child is entitled to paternity leave of up to 2 weeks, but no longer than:
- until the child is 12 months old or
- until the expiry of 12 months from the date on which the decision declaring the adoption of the child becomes final and no longer than until the child is 14 years old.
In 2023, as a result of the implementation of the work-life balance directive into the Polish legal order, the paternity leave provisions changed with regard to the maximum time for a working father of a child to exercise said entitlement. In previous years, paternity leave was granted until the child was 24 months old. It is therefore worth recalling that the time to take the leave is now halved, and if paternity leave is not taken, the entitlement is lost and the employee is not entitled to payment of an allowance for the time taken.
The possibility to take paternity leave in parts, has not changed and still the employee father can divide the leave into no more than 2 parts, none of which can be less than one week.
In order to exercise the entitlement, the employee should submit a request for paternity leave, either on paper or electronically, no less than 7 days before the start of the leave. The application must be accompanied by a copy of the child’s abbreviated birth certificate and a statement of the number of parts of leave taken to date.
For the duration of paternity leave, the employee is entitled to maternity benefit of 100% of the benefit base. This is certainly a huge advantage of this entitlement, so it can be assumed that this is also one of the reasons for the increased interest and use of this entitlement by employee fathers. According to data published in the report ‘Dads on parental. What the numbers say about fatherhood in Poland’, prepared by the Share the Care Foundation and the Social Insurance Institution, in 2022, only 3.7 thousand working fathers took advantage of paternity leave, while in 2023, the number was almost six times higher and amounted to nearly 19 thousand applications. In 2024, the number of fathers taking paternity leave continued to increase, although exact figures are not yet available.