‘Queer Eye’ star Tan France thinks our approach to paid leave needs a makeover

(CNN) — Less than one week after Tan France’s son Ismail was born seven and a half weeks before his due date, weighing just 3.4 pounds, the “Queer Eye” star was back at work.

“Nothing can prepare you mentally for that,” he told CNN in a recent interview. “I remember, very simply, crying every day. I would call my husband in tears saying, ‘I’m so sorry I can’t be at the hospital right now.’”

Before you ask, it wasn’t really his choice.

In the entertainment business, jobs are usually booked months in advance, locked in by contract and highly dependent on everyone showing up and doing their work. France said he usually knows what he’s going to be working on 6 to 9 months ahead – sometimes up to a year. With sets, crews and other support personnel all in place, he explained, “you can’t be the one who halts an entire shoot.”

“That’s just not an option,” he said. (The work he returned for was not “Queer Eye,” which filmed “months after” each child was born.)

He had planned to take six weeks off after Ismail’s birth, but the baby’s early arrival meant the juggle between new parent and employee started much sooner than he expected.

“[It was] emotions and guilt that I’ve never felt before,” he said. “Nothing can prepare you for parent guilt.”

Ismail is now a thriving, perfectly unruly three-nager and big brother to 1-year-old Isaac. But France’s experience returning to work so soon after they came into the world (he was back at work one week after Isaac’s birth, too) serves as the inspiration for his latest makeover quests: to raise awareness of the need for federal paid leave policies and get dads in on the fight for it.

Standing up

In the United States, workers are not entitled to any paid days off by federal law, according to the Center for American Progress, and it is one of only seven countries in the world without some form of universal paid family and medical leave.

The policy – or lack there of – doesn’t just affect new parents who want time with their children. Those who find themselves caring for sick or elderly family members or those with ill spouses or children, among many others, are also impacted.

There have been efforts to remedy this.

Back 2021, House Democrats aimed to get 12 weeks of universal paid leave via the Build Back Better package, which ended up stalled in Senate even after they whittled the ask down to four weeks.

Advocates in this space now have their eyes on building support for the Family and Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act, which provides the right to paid, job-protected comprehensive family and medical leave for American workers. It was introduced in 2023 and has bipartisan support.

France sees the proposed 12 weeks as a bare minimum. For context, at 12 weeks old, the average infant is not yet sitting up and still eating every 3-4 hours.

“We should be ashamed as a nation that we are letting families down so greatly,” he said.

France has partnered with the social impact arm of formula brand Bobbie for a campaign called When Dads Take Leave, an effort to highlight the valuable role fathers can and should play as caregivers.

‘I truly believe that the reason why we don’t have a law like this in place is because most dudes never had to experience it because they’re not given the [time off] to really understand that this is not a holiday,” he said.

Later in our chat, he returned to the topic: “If a man is reading this, understand that this is your responsibility, actually, more than anybody else’s.”

The ‘we’ in well-being

Not unlike his work on “Queer Eye,” where France leads the five-man makeover team’s fashion efforts, his take on parental leave is formed through a unique perspective.

He advocates as the son of immigrant parents, raised in a house directly behind the convenience store that his mother owned and worked in 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and now wonders how she juggled it all without help.

He advocates as a dual citizen who has seen how parents in his native England benefit from being able to spend time with their new children.

He advocates as a father who, like his husband Rob, has taken a hands-on role in his children’s day-to-day care since they were infants.

He advocates as a spouse who knows that even when your relationship is as solid as the one he shares with his partner of 16 years – “I’m obsessed with him,” he sweetly said at one point – that recalibrating after welcoming a baby is hard and family units are made stronger by simple things like the ability to eat dinner together.

“[W]hen we’re at home, we’re fielding the kids, we’re taking care of the kids, we’re in the same house, but it’s still very lonely because it’s not just me and him anymore. We’re not focusing on each other anymore. We have to consciously take time for each other,” he said. “Taking care of a baby — you don’t get anything back. It’s an incredibly lonely place as a new parent.”

But ultimately, he said, his efforts in the advocacy space are not about him.

He acknowledges the privileges he has — a nanny who comes four days a week, a husband who can take primary care for the children when France has to go away for work, a family unit that can travel with him to set — all which heighten a sense of responsibility he feels to advocate for other families.

“Knowing what I know now and experiencing what I know now – with all the luxury I have – (I want to say), ‘You lady or you sir, (who) don’t have what I have, first of all, I wanna shake your hand.’ Second, I want to say, ‘Hey, do you want me to hold your baby for you for five minutes so you can go shower real quick?’

His tone was joking but France wasn’t laughing, suggesting this is actually something he’d offer when face-to-face with a new parent.

“It’s given me a perspective like I’ve never had before.”

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