So what do we think about these parental leave proposals?

I really don't think that laws should always operate on the assumption that women need protecting from their partners in all respects. I actually find that a bit offensive, that laws should be all based on poor little women not knowing their minds and being pushed around by all and sundry.

Yes some women are in abusive relationships but that should not be seen as the norm.

as for it being a cultural pressure that makes some women long for the workplace when on maternity leave, I was surrounded by women who liked taking time off, personally I still find it easier to have some time away from babies, in a nice comfy peaceful workplace where noone cries or yells and you can have a cup of coffee without interruption. babies are all very well but they are also a bit relentless, full time.

yes I guess any discrimination on the basis of having taken the leave would be illegal so best not to know IYSWIM

I'm surprised they bother asking about paternity TBH a week or two for what will be a pretty rare event (most people 2 times max) is it really that important?

was there a huge number of questions?

so does no one feel this would increase the chance of employers quietly pressurising women to return to work regardless of what their partners were doing?
would in my field I'm sure

if not the employers maybe the female employees would put pressure on themselves

I've just been asked to give a reference for a former (female) employee. There are a standard set of questions on it such as "how much sick leave was taken in the last year of employment", and immediately under that is the question "how much paternity leave has been taken" - with the word paternity in bold - presumably in case you mistake the question for maternity, which I presume is illegal.

It does though imply, that employers are viewing paternity leave in a similar way to sick leave - which will definitely inhibit men from taking it. So there may need to be an update on legislation in this area.

or what I mean is, that a woman should not have to go back to work so that the dad can take paternity leave. Her leave should always be "open" to her, whatever the dad decides to do.

I completely understand that many women are dying to get back to work ASAP after a baby.
Though I do wonder if that, too, is a reaction to how society has been structured-- but that's for another thread

It's not about legislating for a minority of dysfuncional relationships. As others have said, it's about clinging onto hard-won gains for women. the patriarchy had no problem with women working barefoot and pregnant- literally- in factories for a pittance. Maternity leave is something that women fought for; it was not something handed out.
There seems to be a misunderstanding among some women that it's maternity leave that oppresses women . Or that having babies oppresses women. that's pretty backward logic
It's the patriarchy that oppresses women, it's men who oppress women. So I don't understand why women are so keen to hand back the hard-won gains of the women's movement, such as the right to bodily integrity after birth, over to men.

Got no problem at all with men taking leave alongside women, but it should definitely never be either-or

As a Dad I would have taken this with my DC. I would have loved it.

I think that you have to consider those relationships but not legislate for them IYSWIM?

So when thinking up the policy and funding you have to be aware that they exist; and that the change of policy may have an impact. Say you might get more women with very young babies leaving abusive partners so you might need to fund more specialised support services or suitable centres for them to stay. Or you might get more women trying to combine breastfeeding with working so you need to prioritise that in training for health professionals. But having additional considerations for some people shouldn't mean that no families get the choices.

Fennel, exactly. Many of my friends in Canada have gone through this and usually the mother takes the vast majority, while the father takes a month or two at the end. If they take more it's usually because the mother is self employed and not eligible for leave, for instance. I have never seen a case of "parental leave rage" where a couple is at loggerheads over who gets to stay home. Of course there may be issues in couples where the balance of power is not equal, but we could say that of any choice made within such a relationship.

Can you honestly legislate for the minority of relationships which are dysfunctional though? I am sure that in most cases nothing will change - as has been pointed out many times, more often than not the man is the main earner - and there is the usual inertia when changes come about. But maybe, as time goes by, life will get easier for mothers who want to keep a career going.

In practice, in countries with this sort of policy, you do not get both parents scrapping over who gets to take the leave. Women take most of it, and a few men take a little bit. You'll only get significant numbers of men taking it if there are specific "daddy days", and even then men don't rush in their droves.

I don't think there's really too much danger of this policy leading to fathers pushing reluctant mothers back into the workplace.

Whoever gets the last word depends on the relationship I suppose.

Same as at the moment most families decide together what is best, but in a bad relationship the partner could force the mother to go back to work before they were ready, if they were like that IYSWIM.

I don't think there will be any rules about who gets to decide these things.

Hmmm.

How would these rules apply in situations where the parents can't agree (esp where they are not together and don't get on)? I presume the woman gets the last word?

I don't think anyone has said anyone else is being anti-feminist - there are different views on this thread but all of them have some merit from a feminist POV.

The idea that women are the ones who carry a child, give birth, and can BF, and that is a special thing isn't saying that men are rubbish at looking after babies, but more trying to keep in mind that having a baby is a singularly huge thing for a woman and the reason that maternity leave was invented in the first place was to allow women to have babies without losing their livelihoods over it. And that as soon as we manage to achieve a whole year of maternity leave with a job being held open, immediately some of that gain is taken away from being specific to the woman and shared with men as well. In the context of a society where men are in charge and women have to fight for every gain, that can be seen as giving ground I suppose.

I suppose there is a concern that while most women will be in a position to choose whether to hand some of the leave to their partner, some partners will force their partner to hand the leave over.

Personally I think that the risk of this is outweighed by all the people who do not have abusive partners who will be able to choose.

how did this become about SAHM/WOHM?

I don't understand the argument that this proposal harms women. Women can still take just as much maternity leave as before, if they want. They will now have the choice to hand some of that (some or all of the second 6 months) to their partner.

I can see the arguments that this doesn't go far enough in ensuring men play they part in looking after their children. But I really struggle to see how this is a bad thing for women.

Is it somehow anti feminist to suggest that men might be just as good at looking after children as women? If so then I have really misunderstood feminism...

It would have been great for us. I didn't WANT to be at home for a year, or even 6 months, with my babies, and DP likes being at home.

In practice he just took unpaid time off, and I went back before I had to, but it was very irritating that we couldn't just pass on my maternity leave to him.

my mother worked full time up the career ladder and had five kids. Yes, it certainly made her MIL (my gran) uncomfortable.

I decided on another path, and I don't think my mother or maternal grandmother have quite forgiven me for having children so early. So my path also made people around me uncomfortable. Certainly my peers think there's something wrong with me for becoming a "dull" SAHM, and I myself have real issues with the financial dependence aspect

It's The WOman On the Other Shore isn't it: you have to live in another woman's shoes to know what it's like for her.

The SAHM/WOHM debate is just made up by the media to stop women from feeling solidarity with each other. We all do our best with what we can in the way we can.

"they shouldn't confuse feminism with shopping a la Sex and the City."

Never seen it. Not interested in it from what I've heard. But I think the characters that you mention are no more relevant to most working mothers than to SAHMs. The WOHMs I know are dedicated to the well-being and happiness of their children, they just choose to go about acheiving that in a different way.

I have had enough little comments over the years from some of the people I work with to know that they aren't entirely comfortable with me. I have 3 DC, I work full-time, I do well at my job, I have well-balanced happy kids. That surely shouldn't happen!

Well if I were to have any more babies DH would be sadly disappointed as nobody would be pinching any of my Jeremy Kyle time

I read that in Sweden men still dominate in the upper echelons of the corporate world, and women are still overrepresented in the lower end of the economy. Will hunt for the article

finance isn't the only career which would be toasted by taking extended pat leave

certainly in my career the unsaid pressure whether form outside or even within would then be 'well he can take pat leave, it's not paid anyway oh sod it I'll go back to work'

I don't buy the 'well it works in Sweden' line we're not Swedish or in Sweden we have culturally different ways of behaving both at home and at work, different childcare and tax different parenting beliefs.......

I'M a SAHM angry rad socialist femmo- not a stereotype
WOmen should absolutely keep chipping away at the system in every which way they can, through their work and careers, but they shouldn't confuse feminism with shopping a la Sex and the City. They were supposed to be liberated women when they were anything but. Those women were patriarchal constructs. From Miranda who looked down on steve because he did the baby work, to Carrie whose life purpose was to get a man who didn't respect her, to Sam who was a parodical charicature of male sexuality super-imposed onto a woman, to CHarlotte the stepford wife.

ullainga
the majority of leave would I'm sure still be taken by the Mothers therefore as far as I am concerned doing this would 'harm' the majority of families at the expensive of giving a choice to only a very few, not worth it IMHO

also there is ?evidence/a suggestion/? a belief that small children are better cared for in a home environment by either 1 or a very small number of careers, if what I think would happen is correct this policy would then be actively harmful to most families

Agree with you there sakura. It has driven the patriarchy mad over the millenia that only woman can do this wonderful thing.

But the thing that drives it even madder is woman (and men) who don't conform the easy well-established stereotypes.

Ormirian, the patriarchy loves nothing more than a steady cheap supply of female labour. The industrial revolution was built on cheap female labour, where women were paid a pittance, and had to stand up in the factories, pregnant and barefoot.