Your views on getting dads more engaged and other questions....

Do you feel that current policies around maternity leave, paternity leave, work, childcare etc assume, and therefore usually lead to women adopting the primary caregiver roles for children?

Undoubtedly yes.

If so, what do you think about this?

I'm in favour of it.

How involved would you say your DCs' dad is in their daily lives

Reasonably so, and I would be happy for him to be less so as I see the children's daily lives as my domain.

and how much support did he give you during pregnancy and birth?

Lots, which I appreciated.

Were you happy with this level?

Yes.

Is more support always a good thing?

No - it can also be perceived as interference.

If you think your DC's dad could do more to get involved with your DC's lives, what would make the difference and encourage him? Is this different depending on the age of your child?

I am generally happy with the level of involvement.

Shared Parental Leave is introduced in April 2015? Are you likely to use this policy? What do you think of it generally?

I would not have used it, had it applied when my children were born. It suited our family for me to be the main carer. In principle, too, I think babies and small children fare better with one reliable carer (their mother, all other things being equal), rather than having their care shared between adults - though appreciate that this is an unpopular view on MN.

YY^ to Hakluyt's post above.

Depressing that once again, women are being asked to "fix" things for men. If men want more paternity leave, equal custody arrangements, more say in the raising of their children, then they should stop whinging about it and blaming women and actually do it. If a man has taken equal responsibility for the raising of his child from birth, for example, he is in a much better position to petition for joint custody. If enough men said to employers that paternity provision wasn't adequate, something would be done about it. But stop making it women's job to organise it for them!

not working for money, working btw, putting the effort in to it rather than taking the easy path/ what your parents did/what your friends do etc

My DH is a very equal parent - possibly that I took a relatively short maternity leave, then went back to work ft and travel for work (and he does too, no family help or nanny though), so we really have to pull together to make it work.

I think its not about leave, or policies, its about going into parenthood wanting to be equal parents and working to do so

We also need to look at the automatic right mothers have to custody on divorce and separation too.

If fathers are to have equal parenting roles, they should have equal rights to main residence and the family home.

My DH is very involved and does everything he can for his kids. In his last relationship, he was the one who took them to clubs and activities, taught them to swim, ride a bike. They both worked so no parent was the "main" carer. Then when she wanted to separate all of a sudden he had no rights. He wanted to be the resident parent and remain in the family home, but was told by his legal team that unless he could prove her "unfit" (drugs, abuse), she would automatically get main custody if she wanted. Purely because she was female she got the house, car and kids, while he was left with nothing but the once a week access she allowed.

I do think the policies are discouraging for couples who want to share parenting equally. I ended up going back to work before the end of my paid maternity leave, and DP taking unpaid time off, because we wanted to share the childcare, but you have to be pretty stubborn (and financially stable) to do that.

My dp has always done half the childcare though and still does. That hasn't really been difficult as we have always been agreed on that as important. He's had less support from work - he had to resign twice, from different jobs, to get part time work agreed. The only downside I'd say is that

a) we have two semi-trashed careers rather than one flying and one stalled one. It's nice to share the workplace discrimination but not totally ideal.
b) people tend to think DP is a Living Saint for doing half the childcare, while I'm a Neglectful Absent mother for only doing half. Grr.

My husband would have loved to have shared the parental leave and we would have done so if the rule that are coming into place in 2015 were available to us in 2011 and then 2013. I think this concept of being able to share the parental leave is a great one and I would have been very supportive of my husband taking part in it.

Having said that, due to changed working circumstances my husband is at home half the week with our boys and he loves it; he will never regret this time he has had with them.

Why is it up to women to fix it? Are dads fighting for shared leave, flexible working etc?
The whole question of what can we ie women do to fix this really annoys me. Why does it fall to women to fix things for men and the family as the norm?

We need men to make this happen, I mean.

It's not up to women to get more men involved in their children's lives. Why is this our responsibility to "encourage"? It is up to men to make sure they insist upon paternity leave, flexible working etc.
It's an economic question; womens whole lives ending up derailed onto the Mummy Track. This happens because it's them who take all the leave, then comes the idea that the mother is some how solely responsible for childcare costs, and if her individual salary doesnt cover these costs, so we end up with an unbalanced model of family, with men taking disproportionate responsibility for bringing home the bacon, and not enough for the domestic sphere.
If we want things to be more equal, we men to make this happen, by demanding it from their employers. Then it's our job to support them.

I don't think leave should be 'shared'. Dads should get more than 2 weeks paid leave (that's what my husband got anyway). It should be a month to really be able to help out on those precious weeks. Otherwise I think it instills the thought that men go back to work & its the woman that changes the nappies, gets up at night, etc. I'm very lucky that my husband is very hands on despite working 13 hour shifts.

I live in a country where parental leave can be shared, and it was. DH is very involved and we support each other. Whether this is because of him using some parental leave or whether he used it because he is involved... I don't know.