Dive Brief:

• Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced he would take four months paternity leave after the birth of his first child with wife, Priscilla Chan.
• Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Facebook (in a Facebook post from Lori Matloff Goler, the company's vice president of human resources) extended that four-month leave to all employees, regardless of gender.
• Starting in 2016, new dads and same-sex partners will receive receive four months of paid leave . Facebook, based in Menlo Park, CA, had been offering four months of paid parental leave to some employees. The Facebook post from Matloff Goler noted that Facebook employees who had or adopted a baby in 2015 will also be eligible.

Dive Insight:

"This expanded benefit primarily affects new fathers and people in same-sex relationships outside the US," wrote Matloff Goler. "We want to be there for our people at all stages of life, and in particular we strive to be a leading place to work for families."

Matloff Goler also wrote that a prime driver was recent Pew Research, which found almost half of fathers are worried that they don’t spend enough time with their children.

“Our approach to benefits at Facebook is to support our employees and the people who matter most to them," she wrote. "We want to be there for our people at all stages of life, and in particular we strive to be a leading place to work for families. An important part of this is offering paid parental or ‘baby’ leave.”