Make Time for Daddy

By Jodie Morse

Parenthood did not come easily to Kevin and Kim Knussman. First there was a painful year of fertility treatments. Then complications in Kim's pregnancy forced her doctors to induce labor prematurely, leaving her bedridden. Kevin, a trooper with the Maryland state police for 18 years, applied for extended leave to tend to his wife and infant, a request that fell under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act and a state law that provides paid leave for primary caregivers. He was allotted just 10 days, at the end of which his wife was still hemorrhaging and too weak to care for the baby. He asked for more time, but claims that the personnel manager responded, "Unless your wife is in a coma or dead, you can't be primary care provider."

When Kevin went back to work, he filed a complaint that he had been denied the leave solely because of his gender. Then he sought help from the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the state on his behalf. Last week a jury sided with Kevin, awarding him $375,000 in the first-ever sex-discrimination case brought under the federal act. The state argued that Kevin did not alert the right people to his wife's condition and failed to prove that he was the primary care provider. "It was never a gender-based issue," says Maryland assistant attorney general Betty Stemley Sconion, who may appeal the verdict.

The long legal fight has turned Kevin into a poster dad for the Family and Medical Leave Act, now six years old. Though about 2 million people a year take parental leave under the act, only half a million of them are men. Kevin is working to even the scales. He has testified before a federal commission and even got a mention in Hillary Rodham Clinton's book It Takes a Village. But the biggest changes are back home. When he and his wife had their second child, in 1996, Kevin was granted a full 12 weeks of paid leave. "It's such a precious thing to hold that little life in your arms," he says. "And I lost that the first time."

--By Jodie Morse