Maternity pay has gone too far

Well if shes trying NOT to get elected she should crack on

Why do those countries have better female participation?

Absolutely. I work for a small family firm and while in many ways they are excellent I'm 100% sure that my boss would make the absolute minimum allowances for pregnancy if he could because we have 5 employees!

It doesn't matter what proportion of women breastfeed, what does matter is that that decision should never have to be a financial one - whether that's because of a need to return to work or because of the price of formula.

All women should have the right to EBF should they wish to (and of course to formula feed free of judgement should they wish).

policies like this are to give the far-right Tory voters something to wank over

Agreed. SMP was very limited in my day (90s) but back then it was easier to survive on one income. Given the cost of living (including the crazy childcare costs). Just because I never had that, does not mean I begrudge other mothers from recieving more SMP.

Doesn’t she, hilariously, get lots of love over on the “feminist” board?

Obviously she is - as always - being an idiot, a misogynist, classist, hateful etc. No surprise there. Do we think wanting to roll back mat pay is a popular opinion among Tory members though? That would concern me more than Kemi being her usual ridiculous self.

IMO parents in the UK deserve far more maternity leave/pay. Where I live (Brit in Canada), we can take up to 18 months of statutory paid maternity leave. If you choose 12 months of leave, you get up to 55% of your salary, and if you choose 18 months, you get up to 33%. Many companies, like mine, also offer to top your pay up to be closer to your salary for a set period of time. 18 months afforded me the time to establish breastfeeding, see DS meet numerous milestones, figure out naps and sleep, wean him, etc etc. It’s been incredible and something I wish all my friends in the UK could have the option of. Parents need more support and paid leave, not less. Never less 🤦🏼‍♀️

Inadequate mat leave is the prime example of structural sexism in this country. It's a tool of oppression and inequality. Why is having a baby not treated exactly like sick pay, you are unable to work because there's a tiny wee person wholly dependent on you, you are unlikely to be getting adequate sleep and you also probably went through a lot physically. A woman can get months of full pay from her work for something like a hysterectomy, but not for giving birth. We need to view childbirth and the initial months of childcare not simply as a women's burden, it's society's burden and women should be adequately looked after while they do it

I facepalm every time this woman opens her mouth.

That is true. I was last to stop exclusively breastfeeding at 9 months in my peer group.

But I did need that 3 months after to sort myself out. Up until that point I hadn't really had a chance to sort my own life out after a year of personal neglect. My milk wasn’t the type you could store unfortunately so it was straight from the tap or not at all.

Finally had a chance to attend physio and put my body back together. Get haircut, go clothes shopping, dentist, resocialise myself, engage brain and catch-up on training for work, catch up on sleep etc.

I will 100% be doing a year again this time.

BUT AT LEAST THEY KNOW WHAT A WOMAN IS (bleated all the idiots)

aka half the population we can shaft as we don’t see them as worthy as the menfolk

Can you tell me where this is from? It doesn't look right in relation to Turkey so I'd like to look in more detail as to what they base this on (purely for my own interest!) For the avoidance of doubt I don't agree with KB at all, I think the current entitlement feels about right but I was lucky enough to have a CS maternity package so got 6m paid before going onto stat and then unpaid so can't speak from personal experience. @completelyjo

I hope nobody ever votes for this misogynistic, homophobic, racist person, and she disappears back into oblivion.

This is why she has come up with this nonsense. Because she wants to be Tory leader and in order to do so, she needs to appeal to the 80 year old Blue rinse brigade that makes up the Tory membership. People who had babies in the 70's and think the world should still be the same.
Hilariously shes has to desperately row back after all the men in the leadership race disagreed with her!

Exactly this. The UK has among the least generous maternity/paternity leave in the world.

We need to be heavily encouraging an increase in birth rates, by investing in improvements to maternity pay and services, not restricting it further.

This has made me feel quite annoyed. I had tried for years to get pregnant and DD was a much longer fir surprise but it did put a strain on us that I had resigned from my job a week before I discovered I was pregnant and they wouldn’t let me retract my resignation. I couldn’t start the course I was going to do either because I wouldn’t have finished it in time so I had to trudge all over London picking up any temp job I could find. Luckily I could claim MA and when it finished I went to work PT. This should be here to help women in that kind of situation. Would she have thought I had ‘chosen’ it?

Hmm, I completely disagree with Badenoch on this but not sure right wing, pro natalist Hungary run by Victor Orban is something to aim for either. His main aim with encouraging child bearing is to keep immigrants out.

more like big business and lobbyists behind it

It isn't just that. What if you have a difficult birth that takes a long time to recover from?

Agree with your post. My mother worked in the civil service in the early 70s. She said women were going into labour in the office because there was no maternity leave so they worked for as long as possible, then largely didn’t return after they’d had their babies.

1. She does seem to be saying maternity pay is going too far, which I think most of us disagree with
2. For my two cents, we need to make paternity leave much more significant if we want to rebalance the workplace at all - even with Shared Parental Leave, women are still disproportionately better off taking mat leave than SPL because employers don't tend to top up any shared leave.

She’s talking crap, to put it frankly. I read up to the sentence “There was a time when there was no maternity pay and women were having more babies.”

Well yes, because a household could previously function on one persons wage. A completely pointless comparison.

I ended up burning through savings during my maternity leave because statutory just wasn't enough to pay for expenses that don't stop. Like paying exorbitant amounts for mortgage, council tax, other taxes, bills, rapidly increasing food prices. If the country wants no immigration then they can't expect the fertility rate to maintain the population long-term because women can't afford to have babies until later life and and can't afford to give them the best start in life if maternity leave pay can't cover basic costs. South Korea doesn't support mothers and women in general and the fertility rate is considerably lower than the min it needs to maintain the population.
She's a pick me girl.

It's pretty typical to go on maternity leave at 38 weeks and give birth at 41 weeks, meaning that after six months' leave most women will have a baby who isn't even 5.5 months.

That means the baby can't have solids or water and so relies on breast milk or formula. If your baby won't take a bottle (and I wasted many hours and tears trying), then your baby needs your breasts.

Few jobs allow for women to return in a sufficiently flexible way to EBF a baby who isn't ready for solids.

Nine months pay just about allows the baby to wean well enough to be left (can take a while for some after all) and/or for the mother to finish work a little earlier should she need to.

Supporting pregnant women and new mothers is feminism 101 surely.