'Mummy Tax' thoughts?

It took me longer than a few months to recover from the birth, is maternity leave considered to be solely about being at home with the baby or is there any acknowledgement that having a baby can be very physically demanding and that women require a certain period rest to adjust and still be functional workers. To consider any part of maternity leave a luxury sits wrong with me, it's not really a holiday is it? It would be like sick leave becoming a luxury in my opinion.

It was my choice to have children and therefore I don't see why the state should support me for my choice. The fact of the matter is that the country is skint and cuts have to be made wherever possible. I haven't had a real terms pay rise for four years, so why should I get one just because I'm on maternity leave?

I do wish they'd stop courting the votes of the pensioners though. Many of the people on pensions today will be on extremely generous final salary schemes so I do slightly resent the fact that pensions aren't means tested.

Not doing? Doing... Tsk!

"The Government is not doing what we all do when we have no money." Really? By consistently creating policies that hurt those most in need? My approach is always to make more not just wildly cut back...

Bobbi - yes, that's what I meant when I asked if you were referring to costs of covering the absent person. I only mentioned it because I have seen SMP referred to as a direct cost to employers more than one in the media, which of course it isn't.

employers covering maternity leave is far more costly than simply paying a recoverable SMP payment; it's recruitment costs, additional training expense on top of temp wages - it's time consuming and difficult. I think it's naive to suggest that this policy is the ConDem way of keeping women out of the workforce to keep the men employed - in fact reducing statutory maternity and paterntiy pay / time off would in fact probably make a group of women more employable because they'd be viewed as less of a "risk" as an employee - discriminatory or not, employers do not want disruption and expense, they need continuity adn simplicity at a time when business is very tough for a number of reasons.

Yes it is a cut in real terms. Since I haven't had a payrise since the end of 2008 I know all about them. So do lots of other workers who haven't had a payrise for years.

I don't see it as anti-women particularly, and I can't see why it has been singled out tbh. Unless you take into account that more women than men are turned off by this Government and Labour want to capitalise on that.

Treats - well said. I think too many people are too keen to jump on the bandwagon without really thinking things through. There is no money. The Government is doing what we all do when there is no money.

Poster - I hear what you're saying but I find that kind of argument a bit problematic.

My mother spent as many years in the workforce before having her first child as i did. But she wasn't entitled to any pay when she took time off to look after her baby. I'm not inherently more deserving of SMP than she was. All that's changed is a government policy. I regard myself as fortunate to be a beneficiary of that.

It's similar to wealthy pensioners today saying that they've spent their working lives 'earning' their free bus passes and Winter Fuel Allowance and therefore they're 'entitled' to them, regardless of whether they need them or not. Generations of pensioners before them didn't get any of these things - many of them worked much harder, fought in wars, etc - without getting these freebies when they retired.

This isn't a "things were so much worse in the old days, so just be grateful for what you've got" argument - I don't agree with that. I'm just saying that we can't think of our entitlement to benefits in terms of getting back what we've put in. On that measure, the disabled - who would never be able to work - would just be left to rot.

We pay our taxes to maintain the civil society that we all live in and benefit from. Sometimes we benefit, more often - if we're lucky - we're net contributors. We have to agree amongst ourselves what our priorities are when it comes to spending the central pot, and we can't start from a position of how much we've each put in.

In other words - what CinnabarRed said........

By the way, I do appreciate there are levels of poverty in the uk too and I didn't mean to belittle that in my post before anyone says otherwise, just that there are things I have seen which make me realise how grateful I am for the nhs and the benefit system-however small the amounts offered, if it means a child is clothed, fed and educated.

I think the argument that the cut shows the Tories as anti-women who want to keep mothers at home is rubbish. Surely if they wanted us to stay at home then they would have increased the amount so there was little incentive to return to work as SMP was enough to live on.

I hate the term 'mummy' tax.

It's not a cut as the amount mother's will receive is actually going to increase by 1%.

Maybe I speak from my experience of living abroad where true poverty-no education, no healthcare, no clean drinking water-is all around but I think we are so lucky in the uk that we get help financially to have children when working. Even in the US maternity is practically non existent so I feel grateful for any money coming my way, especially as in many ways it is a lifestyle choice to have children (or not). I would imagine I am in the minority though.

But my tax...

My tax isn't about creating your own 'pot' of benefits - it's about contributing a fair share to society, for society to distribute to those in need.

Treats- its a luxury I have spent my working life paying for. If I had been allowed to save that portion of my tax my smp would have been fab.

My issue is that it makes it financially harder to leave an abusive twat. I expect to see reported violence against women and children increase.

Of course the Tories haven't considered the effect in their nannies, cleaners and cooks. Bastards

Genuine question - do people really think that the ConDems enjoy making these decisions?

I just know that, if it were me in their places, I would agonise about my choices for hours, even though I may well ultimately arrive at broadly the same decisions.

I think the front page of the Guardian said it all this morning.

Gideon and Dave with big smiles and laughter in the commons after announcing more austerity.

No worries. I should have phrased it better.

GalaxyDisaster

Yes, that I would certainly accept.

Cinnabar - I didn't actually mean it that way round. I meant that I suspect that, of people who take the full 39 weeks, the majority are higher earners (rather than saying that high earners necessarily took up the full entitlement).

Djembe - what i meant was that working mothers theoretically have the choice between staying at home on SMP and going back to work. Nobody is being 'punished' - they're just not getting a better deal by staying at home on SMP than they would by going back to work. Personally I think that's fair.

Being paid to stay at home with your children for nine months IS a luxury. And it's only been introduced comparatively recently - I think since 2007?

I feel that anyone on a household income of £150k or less doesn't actually count as human in their eyes of the current government

What hansolo said!

IMO the ConDems have shown, at every turn, that they are institutionally sexist.. and their policies/cuts have affected families with children terribly

That picture on the Guardian front page of Gideon and co chortling "ahaha, we've shafted the poor again!" made me actually shudder...

I would be interested to see how many lower earning families actually take up their 39 weeks. My guess is it is mainly higher earners

Don't bet on it. I am, by anybody's standards, a high earner and I count myself very lucky for it. But I've set the level of my outgoings according to the level of my (normal) income. The drop from my normal monthly wage to lower rate SMP was more than our family's outgoings could cope with. As it happens, I was always planning to go back to work because I love both my job and being capable of supporting myself financially, so I simply went back after 26 weeks rather than 39.