Mumsnet Talk

In some families, for whatever reason, the father is the main carer and the mother more of an "optional seasoning" - the same rights should be available to both parents when it comes to flexible working. I imagine for the majority of families, it would still be the mother who took this up, but it should be available to either equally.

In our family, parenting is something that is done equally, and if there was to be any reduction in hours worked outside the home, we'd want to both do that. Both parents should have absolutely equal rights to work flexibly, and I dislike the concept that fathering is an optional seasoning.

Awful way to talk about fathers.

To be fair Nicola Brewer didn't say that fathers should be 'optional seasoning', but that this was all too often the impact of leave policies which gave long periods of leave for mothers and only two weeks for fathers. She was calling for men to have better rights to paid leave.

There is an article in The Times about it
here

(I'm helping co-ordinate an on-line consultation for Mumsnet and Dad Info about these issues, to declare my interest!)

The more I think about it, the more startled I am that someone high up in "Equality and Human Rights" would make that kind of judgement about a person solely on the basis of their gender

DP and I both work for 'global' companies. Whilst the flexibility is there (I work part-time, flexible hours mostly from home with little travel), it was always an unwitten and unspoken given from the start, that the progression of the career of whichever one of us who chose to be the main carer (and it's me), would be ground to a halt.

And it has, but as we have no family help, the level of flexibility is priceless.

Oh fair enough if she was commenting that they get treated that way, rather than saying it was right.

The day to day stuff is fine as I do part-time & my husband can start early & finish early generally. However we have more problems with covering the holidays - I have nightmares every summer.
It would help us if we were entitled to unpaid leave (don't expect anyone else to have to pay for it) to cover holidays periods.

I have to say in any context, the use of the word "rights" in relation to flexible working is misleading and makes people believe that their employers have to do things that they don't. There just aren't any rights as far as I am aware.

You can read the press release for the launch of home front with quotes from Nicola Brewer, Duncan Fisher from Dad Info and Justine here

The launch meeting is about to start. I will be feeding in your comments and trying to type in responses. Come and join us!

I also think that its not so much about paternity leave, but about men making decisions to take leave. My husband saved all his leave so that he had 3 weeks completly off work (2 weeks paternity leave, then annual leave), and then 2 days a week off after that for the next 5 weeks. Yet, in this country it seems that most men can't be bothered to ask to do this.

My Finnish colleagues, on the other hand, expect to be off work for some time for the birth of their child, and are very upfront about their need to take time off/finish meetings on time to fulfill childcare needs.

Finland and Sweden also have excellent staterun childcare, the cost of which is subsidised and capped per family, which makes decisions about working much easier for families

I think she's just perpetuated the myth that breastfeeding stops at 6 months when actually babies can't drink cows milk until they are one. Should we all give our babies formula just so we can go back to work?????

I'm fed up with the whole equality thing. I went for a job when I was pregnant but didn't get it as I was told that there was a better, stronger candidate. Recently I found out that the candidate they employed didn't even meet the essential criteria. You have to lodge a claim within 3 months so no recourse for me. Sunsequently I have had to turn down a job because I can't get the right childcare so I am a stay at home mum despite having a degree and 10+ experience. I don't blame the employers they struggle to fill posts when people are on maternity leave.

I wish women wouldn't be given the impression that we can have it all when clearly in my case I can't.

My DH is significantly more than 'optional seasoning' and he would feel insulted be thought of in this manner! .

He plays an active role in the childcare, upbringing and decision making in our child's life, and has taken advantage of fleixible working for parents, as much as I have in order for our family life to be equal.

With his new job, we are both working 3.5 days per week, and each have 1.5 days as main carer, with the weekends off together as a family.

We deliberately worked our lives to be so and would not want it any other way. It was important to both of us that DH was not just a breadwinner, but took proper responsibility as a parent.

More than the money side of it, and childcare side of it. He is a fantastic parent in ways I am not, just as I am good in areas he is not. DD would lose so much if the 'optional seasoning' was no longer there. It would be a recipe with a crucial part of the mix missing.

I think that maternity pay packages rarely reflect the fact that many women are now the main earner in a partnership and taking significant amounts of unpaid leave is not an economically viable option.

I think that legislation for a more flexible approach to maternity/paternity leave would be better with opitions for paid leave to be shared between couples and for either a shorter period at full pay/higher rate or a longer period at a lower rate. I know that the aim is that by the end of parliament women will be enttled to a year of paid leave at SMP but realistically this would be a massive financial struggle for many families where the woman is the main earner.
I think it would be better to say that in the year following a child's birth a couple (where both parents have parental responsibility) are entitled to a total of 12 months leave from work and in the time that they choose to take off they can access £x amount in total in maternity/paternity benefits. This should be related to the total income of a family with some sort of ceiling above which employers could top up and should be spread over the term that a couple wish to take leave over but with the proviso that you cannot claim more in any one month that you would have earned as net pay had you been at work. This system would be more complicated to administer but would be fairer and would recognise the role of fathers much more.

With respect to flexible working I think that any employee, regardless of reason, should be able to request to work flexibly. Employers should be required to state in writing why they are refusing any such request ie make a business case against it and state what alternatives they could offer the employee. I think that where possible companies should be encouraged to enable their employees to work from home (surely this is likely to have environmental benefits too, less commuting etc?). I also think that all employees should have access to a childcare voucher scheme.

If a county council can worm their way out of their legal duty not to discriminate against a pregant woman, what lengths will small businesses go to ensure that they aren't paying out for paternity/maternity leave? I think the government are well meaning but really they need to devise ways of actually ensuring equality. Discrimination is very difficult to fight if you aren't sure if you are being discriminated against. I didn't know who the other candidate was until much later and aren't in a union and don't have the money to fight the case.

I am sitting her absolutely gobsmacked. did Nicola Brewer really say that? as head of the EHRC? surely it was in context....

we cannot have equality anywhere and especially not in the workplace until we have equality in the home. until fathers have and are accepted as having a 50 per cent role in upbringing of children we will not have equality and I am utterly appalled and very if Nicola Brewer did say that. I hope to goodness she said it as a reflection of an undesirable reality, not as a statement of some immutable fact.

What did she say?

Hatwoman - Nicola Brewer was talking about what often happens, not saying that men were an optional extra.

Thisis the link to the EHRC press release (with quotes from Mumsnet and Dad Info) which shows what she did say

ok I've read the Times article - geraldine you have grossly misrepresented what she said. There is a veritable universe of difference between saying that men are an optional extra and saying that all too often men are seen as an optional extra or that policies have the affect of relegating them to an optional extra. I fear your op will skew this thread towards a load of people responding to something that was in fact the opposite of what she said.

cross-posted I'm cross at mn now

She's spot on. What is difficult is that many women want to do a lot of the caring. They want those months with the small babies. I'm not convinced that men do. Maybe I'm cynical but I remember in my old field of work, men used to volunteer to work Boxing Day because they preferred the office to the inlaws and the family walks etc.

A spokesperson from Carers UK is saying that it is important to broaden this debate to talk about other carers as well as parents. There are more men trying to combine full time work with caring responsibilities (not parents), while women are more likely to give up work.

Carers and employers often don't know about the right to request flexible working.

Really? What kind of care work?

I work in a professional job in a very flexible organisation (at least for my type of job). However, flexibility in most professional jobs is a mixed blessing: one one hand people have the authority and seniority to manage their workload; on the other hand however problems arise when the workload is always bigger than the hours paid for, whether or not you do them flexibly.

What happens then is the parents of children work flexibly because the children don't work to an employers' timetable when they're sick etc.. But the career-building parts of the job (in other words all those things people working non-flexibly do in their sparetime) then get squeezed out.

Parents have no choice but to lose out.

In many professional jobs, this is the case whether or not you move your 'office' or 'task-focused' hours around: there are never enough to get the job done fully.

What hope is there for parents, women in particular, using their expensively won qualifications is this kind of expectation continues to shape working practices?

It's no wonder women undersell themselves and take lower paid, lower power jobs when they have kids: because these are the kinds of jobs that CAN be done flexibly...