Rather than extending maternity leave, I would favour extending it as parental leave and making it exchangeable between both parents, however they like.
This is done in some fields already, like academia, where both parents can elect to take leave. Not even close to equal numbers of men and women use it. If you make it exchangeable, only women will take maternity leave, and the reasons are fairly obvious.
* Giving birth is physically very traumatic, and requires a certain amount of recovery time.
* Breastfeeding makes working from the office difficult, to say the least.
* It's very difficult for many women to spend long periods of time away from their infants. This may not be PC, but it's true. Men may love their newborns, but they don't spend every minute away from them obsessively imagining their mother-in-law dropping their kid on the head.
It may tend to have different effects if paternity leave is available state or country wide. Then social norms may begin to change. See, for example, Iceland:
"…if you are in a job the state gives you nine months on fully paid child leave, to be split among the mother and the father as they so please. ‘This means that employers know a man they hire is just as likely as a woman to take time off to look after a baby,’ explained Svafa Grönfeldt, currently rector of Reykjavik University, previously a very high-powered executive. ‘Paternity leave is the thing that made the difference for women’s equality in this country.’"
This is not a changing social norms. It is just parents trying to get as much money out of the state as possible. It sounds as if the state pays 4.5 months for women and 4.5 months for men. So it makes sense for men to take off the 4.5 months and collect the free money (granted they don't earn their wages during that time, but it is still paid holidays).
Just look at countries where it is optional who takes the maternal leave. Didn't someone further up in the thread give an example?
Edit: reading again what you wrote I am not sure: is the law in iceland that each parent can take up to 4.5 months leave, or is it 9 months they can divide freely (ie 9 months mother, 0 months father or vice versa would be possible?). I thought they can only take at most 4.5 months each.
I only just know read the article you linked, and it didn't actually give numbers for the proportions of men and women taking the leave. So the claim in the article is worthless (it sounds like just some politician justifying their policies).
I have read before that things in iceland are quite different, though. I think it is much more common that the whole family (grandparents) takes care of children and divorced women, so maybe there is less pressure on them.
But it doesn't mean that. The mother has the option to share the maternity leave time. In practice, men aren't as likely to take time off, not even in Iceland.
Currently maternity leave is exchangeable by law in Canada, so it's not really a question of who takes it, but it's a question of how much you can take and where to distribute it.
IMHO the only negotiating factor on whether the mother takes maternity leave or whether the father takes it (likely after the baby is on formula) is income. If the mother makes a considerable amount more than the father, the logical step is for the father to take the maternity leave meaning the household has a greater net income when it has greater expenses. There's no sense struggling to make bill payments, and increase stress on a relationship over money issues.
This is done in some fields already, like academia, where both parents can elect to take leave. Not even close to equal numbers of men and women use it. If you make it exchangeable, only women will take maternity leave, and the reasons are fairly obvious.
* Giving birth is physically very traumatic, and requires a certain amount of recovery time.
* Breastfeeding makes working from the office difficult, to say the least.
* It's very difficult for many women to spend long periods of time away from their infants. This may not be PC, but it's true. Men may love their newborns, but they don't spend every minute away from them obsessively imagining their mother-in-law dropping their kid on the head.