To think the amount of SMP is entirely unreasonable?

Oh and to add if women are forced (under your scheme) to go back to work full time after 6 months, to have had maternity pay, most would just not do it. Meaning either they won't have children at all this a declining population and the economic disaster this would bring, or they would all quit their jobs and claim benefits.

@Oldermum84 I’m not sure whether that would happen if paid maternity leave was capped at 6 months. Maternity provisions in the US, for example, are appalling-if you get 3 months’ paid leave you’re considered lucky. Yet birth rates in the UK and US are roughly equivalent. I think people would adapt to 6 months especially if it were better paid.

You’re right they shouldn’t be paid, they should be forced into poverty or abortions

It took us about 5 years to get rid of debt built up over the first two of our second kid's life. But hard on small businesses if you make them pay more and how much more can you put on the tax bill. All very tricky.

Yes, I’ve seen posters on here arguing for a 5 year mat leave (on the basis that one of the Scandj countries offers that). Women with 3 or 4 kids would be out of the workplace for 15-20 years!

Basic maternity pay in this country (90% pay for 6 weeks up to 39 weeks of SMP) for employees is the most generous benefit I think we have though? Especially when you add in child benefit which you get soon after birth. Together that’s more than the state pension. It’s way more than carers allowance. Substantially higher than unemployment benefits. PIP is different because that’s calculated on actual costs of living with a disability.

On top of this, many women have enhanced pay up to 6 months full pay as many on here have said they’re getting. I’m struggling to understand why this is not enough when it’s already so generous?

I honestly don’t think you realise how good you all have it (including myself who had second child fairly recently). The women before us fought so hard to get enhanced maternity pay from employers. Why are you not more grateful to them- they didn’t get it but paved the way for us. I personally know women in their 50s who got my company to change their policy.

I think this just shows how entitled the younger generation are today- it’s all take take take. And I’m part of this generation. There’s no willingness to endure hardship and sacrifice coffees/ holidays/ discretionary spending. It’s quite sad really. We are soooo lucky compared to our predecessors… have some gratitude.

I do think we as a society could do a lot to help women by state subsidy if good quality childcare for families, so that woh or sah are genuine choices, not forced by cost and circumstance.
Maybe we could do something at the tax end for sahp or workers who aren't taking up a limited childcare place, idk. I feel like there's lots which could be done to assist women and even up the sexes a bit, but doesn't make it an expense that employers directly gave to cover .

I mean 'you' generically, sorry if that sounded accusatory

In what way have I made employing women unattractive? All I have said is that SMP should be higher.

@Oldermum84 if anyone is being short sighted it's you. If you make hiring women an unattractive prospect for employers, you'll have more women claiming benefits. Or being forced to rely on their partners to support them if they have a baby. Maternity pay and leave has to be fair, not only to the woman but to the employer and tax payers too!

I'm 50 years old - I've had 4 children and I've experienced this from all sides. You can't make hiring women a risk to employers - this will just set women back and cost the state a lot of money. And you can't argue that we need people to be having lots of babies - there's 60 million people in this country. That's plenty of potential workers and tax payers.
I'm in favour of 6 months full pay and fathers taking the second 6 months of parental leave, I'm just not in favour of limitless billing the employer or state for numerous mat leaves.

@SouthLondonMum22 I think ideally, women should be able to survive on their husband's income while being SAHM if that's what they want.

Defo not state paying women to be a SAHM lol.

I’ve already seen in mentioned here several times that mothers shouldn’t be ‘forced’ to work when they have young children.

I think some feel like they should be paid to be SAHM’s - I’ve seen that a few times on here too.

I can only repeat what I have already said.

If women were given more generous payments' there would be threads on here in 2 years asking for more.

The deal now on leave and money is not too bad. Subjective I know but that's my opinion.

I don't want to pay any more tax to allow anybody to have longer off work.

I'm not interested in anybody claiming they are doing the nation some sort of service by having children. People have children because they want them. Fair enough. But don't claim that you're doing this to provide the next generation of workers and tax payers.

If you can't afford children, then don't have them. It's not a right that I have to pay for.

I know someone who was back for less than 3 months.

TBH OP I tried not to have coffees out too often on maternity leave ( maybe once a week) I went to free church groups or the library loads, ate at home whenever possible, oh and went back after six months. That was 21 & 17 years ago.

I’m also not a huge 6 figure earner and I’d happily pay more tax for a more equal society. I don’t see SMP in the scope though, given there are many other much more pressing issues. It’s way down on the list. It’s on the list but we cannot fund everything even with a tax increase.
There is UC for low income families who cannot be sustained on SMP, which is fair and reasonable to ensure women and children are not in poverty.

That’s literally the welfare state though.

maybe you wouldn’t have to, it should be high earners and on an individual level it’s a small amount. I’m not a particularly high earner by
MN standard, but I’d gladly pay more tax for a fairer and kinder society, because it’s for the greater good and individually it’s a small amount that I wouldn’t notice

Or maybe people who go to work instead to keep more of their pay to spend on their own personal lifestyle choices instead of handing over more and more to pay for other peoples lifestyle choices. There has to be a cut off point otherwise as we can see people just stop working or work less...what was today's figures 10m people who aren't working...

The more we get taxed in every direction it's becoming less attractive to work we already see people.sayimg why bother working x hours when I get more on benefits because working full.time only earns me £100 more...I don't blame them for thinking that way

Oh and to add if women are forced (under your scheme) to go back to work full time after 6 months, to have had maternity pay, most would just not do it. Meaning either they won't have children at all this a declining population and the economic disaster this would bring, or they would all quit their jobs and claim benefits.

Do you think this really an effective answer?

Or instead should women not be supported to maintain the population, thus maintaining the economy? Should they not be supported to return to jobs and therefore pay tax? Should they not be able to progress with careers
and continue to increase the tax they are paying? Should they not be supported to use a level of childcare which will then have tax paid on the payments (whilst enabling them to earn a living) to be able to support themselves to not live on benefits, and pay tax on those earnings for many many years afterwards?

Don't be short sighted.

Nobody plans to get injured even if they were larking around. Maternity leave is important and extremely undervalued so comparing it to sick leave isn’t helpful. It’s apples and oranges. It should be better funded but it’s not necessary to bring sick pay into it.

@YOYOK

It's not silly to compare sick leave to maternity leave. My point in the example I gave is that the blokes at work incurred silly injuries playing footie in the office football team - and then had full paid sick leave for 13 weeks to "recover" and yet as a woman at my work you weren't entitled to any full paid maternity leave even though there is certainly a period of recovery time you need post birth.

You wouldn't have to pay more tax. If more women have more babies, those babies will end up working and paying more tax. It pays for itself. And in the shorter term more childcare is needed which is paid for and tax is paid on this. People are too short sighted to see the benefit of paying more for maternity.

Right.

I pay more tax for the NHS, elderly people and those with disabilities. I don't want to pay more tax for maternity.

Probably best if small firms avoid employing young women.

No but if you can’t afford an employee off surely that calls into question the sustainability of the business

but I do believe that small business should be subsidised in offering a more enhanced maternity and sick pay. I’d gladly pay more tax for that

I'm not talking about increasing population, rather maintaining it. A decreasing population is good for no one except the environment, and the environment can be helped in other ways (yes, more needs to be done but killing all humans can't really be the answer).

No, I don't expect women to be asked - they have to tell their employer when they get to a certain stage in pregnancy, so in your example of a colleague going off after being back 3 months then employer would have known she was leaving again before she was back, so the cover employee could have been asked to stay on. This would be much harder if she came back for 9 months, they wouldn't have known she would be pregnant again so soon and would have to recruit separately (yes the cover may not always be able to stay on, but in most of my experiences of this type they do).

And no, I'm not expecting an employer to pay for a woman to "sit at home" (this use of language indicates to be you've never been on maternity leave - it is not a holiday?!) I'm expecting the government to. As previously stated it is in the government's best interests for women to have babies and return to work.