Most of us know that when job-hunting, having a resume gap can cause all kinds of problems, from gumming up the works of the applicant tracking systems to arousing suspicions in people interviewing us. Usually, it’s just a matter of simply explaining things (or, you know, good old-fashioned lying).
For one dad on Reddit, his resume gap is due to the most unsurprising thing possible — paternity leave. Nonetheless, it’s left potential employers mystified and even suspicious.
The dad can’t get hired because employers are so suspicious of his paternity leave resume gap.
It’s exactly why those of us with a resume gap often resort to straight-up lying. A 2023 survey by Resume Lab found that a whopping 70% of us are lying on our resumes, and it’s because of a resume gap 9% of the time. This dad’s experience is a perfect example of why this happens — and why it’s honestly probably a good idea to do so.
The dad wrote in his Reddit post that his successful 10-year career in a high-earning field, combined with his own frugality from growing up relatively poor, landed him in a situation where he was able to afford to leave work for a while when his wife became pregnant with their fourth child.
“I was getting burned out at my job,” he explained, “and decided to quit and take an extended paternity leave.”
With only about 21% of American employers even offering paternity leave — and the average amount given being just 17 days — this was a huge blessing, and one that surely made a huge difference both for him as a father and for their child.
So you’d think that employers wouldn’t blink at a gap like this — a person making a calculated choice to take time away to care for their family before getting back on the career train. His experience has been the opposite, however.
Multiple employers have not believed his explanation, including one who assumed he was covering up a jail sentence.
“I was not prepared for the uphill battle it’s been,” the dad admitted. “I have been met with nothing but unreconcilable confusion about my employment gap.”
Many peers have been mystified by his ability to afford to take an entire year off despite being at similar income levels. “I’ve been asked, ‘But how have you been paying your bills?’ as if they can’t imagine actually saving money,” he wrote.
Others, tellingly, have expressed confusion as to why a man would even want to take a year off to be home with his family. He wrote that he’s gotten tons of jokes from men who “golf on Saturdays just to get away from them” or specifically didn’t use their meager paternity leave for this reason.
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But perhaps most bizarre, he found out through a connection that one company that interviewed him went so far as to perform a criminal background check “because they were convinced I must have been in jail for a DUI or something” and using paternity leave as a cover-up excuse.
“It’s just unreal to me how American corporate culture is so bullheaded that it can’t even imagine taking time off with the family, even when you’re well off,” he wrote.
His story is an example of why American work culture needs to change, especially when it comes to parental leave.
This story is absurd on two different levels — one, that it would be considered anything other than honorable for a dad to take time away for his family, and two, that “resume gaps” are such a problem in the first place.
It’s one thing when someone has repeated resume gaps that give the impression that they essentially can’t hold down a job. But this guy has been continuously working for a decade. He took a single year off, and now he’s some kind of ne’er-do-well with a deep, dark secret? That’s idiotic.
Even more infuriating is that the notion of a dad taking time off is so surprising as to be unbelievable. Sure, paternity leave is even less common in the U.S. than paid maternity leave — only about a quarter of American employers offer the latter, and even fewer, 21%, offer paternity leave.
But finding it suspicious that a dad would take time off speaks to a deeply disturbing mentality about parenting in the workplace. You’d be hard-pressed to find a job search or HR expert who doesn’t say that lying on your resume is a huge no-no, but given the circumstances, what is this guy and others like him supposed to do?
He wrote that he’s considering putting a failed start-up on his resume to cover the gap because he’s fed up with this — a move his fellow Redditors urged him to make. “Just lie,” one bluntly told him. “You don’t have to justify being awesome.”
Honesty is the best policy, sure, but until American employers change their attitudes and approach, workers gotta do what they gotta do.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.
