To think maternity leave should be capped at 6 months to protect small businesses?

I think the problem with describing it as ‘lucky’ and a ‘privilege’ is that it implies it’s just a nice to have, and not something we should continue to expect. I don’t consider it ‘lucky’ that I have indoor plumbing, or that children are no longer forced into the workforce at 14. Society improves over time, and so should our expectations.

If you are getting the impression that I think women should go back after 6 months you are mistaken. All I was doing was pointing out that it's been that way before, because some posters didn't seem to realize that to return to work with a breastfed baby or a baby that didn't sleep through was what a lot of us had to do in the past, and it is lucky and good that things are better now.

Hardly any women would return after mat leave if you halved it. And small businesses with short mat leave policies would be boycotted by parents of young families, as you might scrap things like emergency leave to care for dependents (even NHS provides 10 days within 12 months to parents or gaurdians) so recruiting would be even harder.

Mat leave isn't a holiday, it's a year to bond with the new human you've birthed and recover from pregnancy and birth. It puts a huge strain on the body. Some birth injuries and pregnancy illnesses take over a year to recover from.

Since covid I don't think the problem is mat leave, which is only used about twice and only by a small percentage of staff. It's covering sick leave when people take 6 months or a year off for stress or other vague reasons.

@Ciaroscuro as you'll see upthread, I live abroad and only had 6 months mat leave, I've just done my first week back. My employer is getting a very slow and tired version of myself. 3 women resigned right before coming back (out of a team of 15, that's significant) because they couldn't make it work. Our main competitor has just announced they are improving their mat leave allowance to 9 months in an effort to keep women on (unpaid, but at least you keep your job).

Yes, women (myself included) manage. But it really isn't a race to the bottom. And frankly, more women nowadays need to work. Governments keep saying they want women to work. But if they also want us to make babies, they need to make allowances in these early years.

Parenting is damn hard work. A year's leave is a great step forward. Let's keep it.

Yes, surely the point is how many women did not and could not in fact 'do it'.

Well yes, I stopped work. That's how I managed

But as you say yourself you wouldn’t advocate for going back.

I think it’s unhelpful to describe it as a “privilege”, it’s a recognition at a societal level at what is best for mother & baby.

Maternity leave is mirrored in adoption leave in that most, if not all companies, have the same leave for both. Reducing entitlement to maternity leave would result in a similar reduction in adoption leave which would be disastrous for adoptive parents who, if anything, need more time to adjust to parenting, and to settle traumatised children into family life. Parental leave should be protected, not reduced.

Funnily enough my child who just turned 18 on 2nd April, was born on their due date and was one of the first babies to qualify for a year's leave. It started for babies with a due date of April 1st 2007 or after. So it is literally only this generation of children now where parents got a year of leave.

In fact I only took 9 months as I couldn't afford to be unpaid for the last 3 months.

Anyone with a child aged over 18 today managed to return to work at 6 months or less, or had to stop work. Yes it was worse, and yes we managed it. But this thread with people saying "how on earth would that be possible with a breast fed baby or one who doesn't sleep?" - just be aware, my generation of women did it and we survived. I wouldn't advocate for going back, but just be aware of the privilege you have there.

it’s that I think we need to more open discussion around the strain long-term absences place on small teams and how to support everyone better through it.

So is your next thread going to be about long-term sickness absence? I'll give that one a miss...

Or why not just expect managers to manage, instead of wanting "open discussion" moaning sessions where people throw around unevidenced assertions and short-sighted solutions, and wail and gnash their teeth.

My immediate reaction: your business is not more important than me and my child.

With a pinch of: How dare you suggest I cut maternity leave short because it’s “not fair”?

This attitude is exactly the problem, so, I stand by my first reaction.

If supporting parents isn’t built into how you run your business, you’re doing it wrong.

In regards to feeling disconnected there are things in place to help with that. Many companies offer mums a phased return, I know when I had my first I had the option of ‘keeping in touch days’ so for a few weeks before the return I could go in 1 shift a week. I didn’t do that, yes I’d been off for 12 months but I wanted to spend as much time with baby as possible before returning.

How will a discussion about long term absence help? People are entitled to have baby’s and entitled to maternity leave. Sitting everyone down for a discussion is not going to make someone think “I won’t have the baby I’ve always longed for because it will cause disruption me being off” and no expectant parent should be told they’re causing disruption. It’s part of being a business owner, unless your only going to hire males or women who can no longer reproduce there’s nothing to stop it, you just get cover and get on with it

God wasn't it awful for businesses when child labour was banned and children were no longer allowed down the mines or in fabric mills.

That would solve all the child care related problems.

They means that women should go back to the kitchen and let men do the work. Or they should quit whining and go back to work after two weeks if they want to keep their jobs because they are subhuman weaklings for not just putting small businesses first.

How very dare they not submit to making all the money for someone else.

Send the babies into the office to do some typing, perhaps.

That's what many do to stop the problem the OP is talking about.

Hmmmm. I’m only taking 6m (I dont like being at home and will not breast feed for reasons not in scope) but my husband is taking time as well. However, my team were never going to hire someone to cover my role regardless as the training load is not worth it for even a year (specialised software development). But I’m in a big corp so the team will just have less output for this year and that’s just planned for. My role is not critical and I’m not the only one who can do my job. I am fundamentally replaceable and I wonder if big corps just have the ability to have the skills coverage?

From the business point of view if I was someone was the only person who knew my bit the company would be boned. I’m really not sure how to square that circle if resources are tight, because the incentives for the business owner are to discriminate unless they are motivated to be a good person and not just motivated by profit. And they are most likely just motivated by profit as they are a business.

This is a lot of words that say nothing. If you’re not calling for separating mothers from babies at six months, what are you suggesting? What would be “fair”?

I could not have returned to work at six months – physically, emotionally, mentally, breastfeedingly. There isn’t a fair or flexible solution to that except the very good one we have in place already, that was hard-won: a full year of maternity leave plus the right to accrue annual leave during it and take that too. The only change that system needs is to pay women more for taking that time.

I finished work 2 weeks before my due date. My child was born 2 weeks post due date. I would have gone back to work leaving a 5 month old with who exactly? I couldn't put that kid down as he cried all the time and I don't think a nursery could have provided that level of care.

As it was, we had to give 3 months notice and at the time we only got 9 months leave, so I gave notice based on my 5 month old who screamed pretty much none stop and didn't sleep. By 9 months they were much more settled and I would have been able to think about returning to my job. A year's leave seems much more sensible.

I was told in no uncertain terms by a previous employer that if I got pregnant he would sack me because he couldn't afford to plan for it.

I left eventually (before getting pregnant) his business went under within 12 months. Someone was doing the work of about three people and he broke them

OP I don't know what you mean when you say it should be limited to six months with the possibility of extending it "with government support". That's... Already more than what happens, if you're talking about money. I certainly didn't get any pay beyond the bare minimum from my employer (I think 16 weeks?), yet I took 12 months and received (a piddling amount of) statutory maternity pay during that time.

It's really unclear what you are actually concerned about. It seems like, when you boil it down, you're worried about disorganised small businesses who can't manage to arrange suitable cover, and get their knickers in a twist. It's really not that hard to recruit a 12-month temp, especially as you have months of warning. My mat cover was great and brought a different perspective to the role, we learnt from each other and it was a benefit to the small business I was in, to have a fresh pair of eyes.

Think back to the 1980s when maternity leave was very short... How many working mums did you know? I was a child then, and the only working mums I was aware of had jobs like being a dinner lady. That's because most women basically gave up work when they had their first child, and had one or two more kids while a SAHM, then maybe tried to find a part-time school hours job at minimum wage. Those women were lost to the workforce.

The thing is, unpopular an opinion as it is, having a child is a physically and.emotionally life changing experience. We need to accept that mothers and families need time to recover, build attachments and learn how to parent. When mothers and families flourish, so does society. We need to offer mothers.more time to spend with their children in those crucial first 3 years...not less.
Even more unpopular...no-one thinks that nurseries are great places for very small babies to be full time. Bearing in mind most women don't work up to their due date you are basically proposing that we get babies under 6.months into nursery as a matter of course. There just isn't an expert in child development who would advocate that as an ideal option.
On a more personal note, if I had had to return to work after 6 months with my children the negative fall out from that in terms of my family and workplace would have been substantial!!

Ok, so:
You think we need to 'balance everyone's needs better' and that SME are being badly treated
But it isn't about the money and temp cover isn't a solution
Yet you don't want to force women back at 6 months

So what do you want? It feels to me what you actually want is for women just to feel suitably guilty and ashamed of their selfishness in taking mat leave.

If the amount of leave was based on business size, how would small businesses retain talent.