Who is for equal parenthood?

I have only read the OP, not the whole thread, but I think we should think of what is best for the child and not what suits us as adults. I just know when I was little , I was TIRED after school and I wanted my MUM, and I wanted to be at home where I could relax in my own 'space', feeling safe with my MUM there. I was used to Dad being at work, but Mum was the soft one who I wanted. Maybe if I was used to it being Dad at home I would have wanted him - I don;t know. I HATED it when my Mum didn;t pick me up from school and I had to go home with someone else. I would have HATED an after school club.

I am incredibly lucky and grateful to work for a company who have treated me very well since having kids. DH's work are also pretty flexible and we have both managed to mould our working hours around the kids since tey were born. Mostly me staying at home or working part time. I now work almost full time hours again DS1 is nearly 9, but still pick the kids up from school 3 times a week. DH does mornings. (But the DSs don;t like it that I don;t see them muc in the early mornings.)

I realise we are very lucky.

Wasabi, why women business owners in particular? Are they under more pressure than male business owners? I don't support any business owners just because they are women. If the factory owners putting children at the looms were women, I wouldn't support them either. Even if they were pregnant.

I don't know, you hear all this rhetoric all the time about self sufficiency and getting on with it and pulling up by the boot straps by self styled entrepreneurs - "make it work!", they demand of everyone else, "like me!" and then when they need to adapt to a new set of circumstances and make them work, they start whining. Maybe the framework is wrong? It doesn't work for you now, doesn't it? Maybe it just doesn't work?

I don't really care about business, on an emotional level, to tell the truth. At the company I work for (in its previous incarnation) the board awarded themselves obscene bonuses for "performance" when the share price was under 1p and it was just about to go under. I mean I care about my friends who run businesses, they work hard and I wish them all the best, and I wish you all well too. Like me, and everyone else, you're all just doing your best in a capitalist world. but business is a bit doomed really. It's ruining the planet, infinite growth is a logical impossibility (this is what the rules of business demand - not just doing ok year on year, but growth year on year), most business are just money making opportunities spotted by someone in a vanishingly tenuous space - fake pheasants are for sale in pet shops, for example. Fake pheasants for your dog. We are really at the fag end of this capitalism business, aren't we, if there are people starving and other people spending money on fake pheasants for their companion animals.

I mean I just don't get all stirred by words like Business and Entrepreneur and Market in the way that you are supposed to, you are supposed to sort of straighten up and look solemn (I don't feel that way about the National Anthem either). These words are hollow to me, they just sound selfish and greedy.
Again, I am not saying people in business are selfish and greedy. Some of my best friends are in business and they are not selfish and greedy. I just don't get why we are supposed to think Business is Noble, like people doing up their houses expect to be applauded ("oh I am so TAAHRED the builder delivered the wrong heated towel rail AGAIN")

Vezzie and Vashti speak much sense. Why on earth would you want to, as a feminist, take away women's rights? We have to work around a world set up for men so much as it is.

How are you going to compensate the women who don't have a parter or whose partner doesn't want to do it?

And how is it financially beneficial for a man to take 6 months off work,even if they are paid, if it damages his career prospects?

I don't see that it necessarily involves more freedom and flexibility. It perhaps involves employing more people who each work less hours. We could then perhaps have people rewarded for their contribution to the 'big society' by reflecting in the tax system the hours of unpaid work they have done, much of which will not be looking after children, but will be spent on other tasks which currently have no economic value.

Vezzie - you are talking about profits. i am talking about flexibility for women business owners.

there is a recession. many companies make little profit. practically how do women BO, give greater freedom and choice to everyone else, while continuing to service clients?

the answer is: close down thier business, make people redundant or take up the slack personally.

Vezzie, I think we need to offer something back because at the moment many people who would love to spend more time with children are unable to because of the way work and taxation are structured.

My children are about to spend half term with my parents, and in fact my children spend about eight weeks of every year with my parents, but that is only because my parents are now retired. They really felt they missed out on the children's early years because of their working arrangements.

So I do think we have to give something back, especially for people who care for children with disabilities.

I get all that, Himalaya, but I really don't believe that the pressures that make society look to women when they need something cleaned, mended, found, cooked or tidied up will go away because men get awarded half of their partner's maternity leave. I think you're starting in the wrong place.

Without taking anything at all away from women, I think we would change more if you made it the LAW that every time a man asks a woman, "darling, where is the x?" it is ILLEGAL for her to move a muscle other than the ones needed to say, "I don't know sweetie, try the changing bag. Otherwise, just have a look"

Wasabi - anything is possible. Business moans about all new laws that hamper their greed, but they find a way. I mean do we want child labour in factories? Do we want married women to lose their jobs automatically? These things only stopped because laws were passed against them. People were arguing against those laws, of course, because of damage to profitability. People argued against abolition too.

Parental leave I would definitely support, but not a set amount for each which is non transferable. Parents in a couple should be able to divide it up between them as they see fit - and the amount should be the same per family for single parents, not half of it because they're missing an extra adult.

More flexible working, proper part time positions (not just cramming 5 days' work into 3 and only being paid for 3), job shares etc. Some jobs can easily be done from home.

So you want to cut women's entitlement to maternity leave from 12 months (9 months SMP) to 7 but convert six of those months to 'parental leave'. This would, rightly or wrongly allow employers to put pressure on new mothers to return to work sooner than they are ready and take their 'entitlement' at a later date.

You want to cut maternity leave to 1 month, and if extra time is required due to medical conditions, this is to be taken as sick leave even though:

Employers are not required to pay sick pay (many smaller employers make people take the first three days without pay and then pay SSP only).
It reduces the current 90% pay for six weeks to one calendar month
Sick leave does not have anywhere near the same job protection rights as maternity leave.

I think you have underestimated just how powerful (although by no means perfect) current maternity rights actually are.

Yes, there should be more equality in men being able to have time off in order to care for their child and first steps are being taken here by allowing the transfer of some of the maternity leave - even if there is still a long way to go.

However, as a mother, I have a biological imperative to care for my child and I do not want my rights eroded in order to meet a political agenda / ideology.

Make things more equal by all means, but do it by adding to father's rights, without reducing those of the mother.

I do agree however that the school year needs to be looked at - more evenly spaced holidays would be better.

I also agree about the chocolate (as long as it is Dairy Milk )

or male employers? how do you run a business, where everyone else has flexibility?

How do you keep clients happy & keep the money coming in to pay peoples wages?

so if employees (M&F) get more and more rights to time off, how does this work for female employers?

I am being very emotional about all this because I am not long back at work and I miss my dcs terribly. But this emotional bond with children is what parenting is. This slight craziness is what makes us do the very very best for our children, all the time, no matter what. This is what is being supported when we say we support families: we support the people who are slightly deranged by an intense emotional attachment, to nurture that derangement to the benefit of their children, whose parents would walk through fire for them. We need more time with children, not less; more derangement, more indulgence of the insane passion that means nothing is ever ever ever too much trouble and we will never get too tired and leave them behind.

We need more. We need fathers to be with our children, grandparents, uncles, cousins and neighbours to love our children; but we do NOT need to offer ANYTHING back

This is how you build the next generation.

I'm thinking of situations where my (male) cousin looked after my niece every day after school for a year because he was off work due to an accident. This was really helpful to my SIL and my niece, and my cousin really enjoyed it.

Now I'm not against nursery. DD went to one. And I'm not talking about mothers here, who generally live with the child and see them when they are not at the nursery. But for a non-resident family member or close friend caring for a child then forms a bond with that child that can last a life time, which would not have formed to the same extent if they had not done that childcare. It builds a genuine support network in that family or friendship unit. A nursery does not do that - a nursery worker is paid and usually, when that child goes to school that relationship is over.

And I'd like to see friends and family who provide childcare being seen as a really positive thing for society, and I think a way should be found to reflect that in the taxation system and rights at work and to take time off work.

Himalaya, did you breastfeed?

Vashtibunyan, so much rightness in your posts

Nausea and tiredness in pregnancy have a lot to do with how a woman bounces back - or not - after it. I found pregnancy killer and was a rag for a long, long time.

Children have to be looked after full time till they go to school, and after that, around the school day. This is a lot of time. Let's think about equality between parents for pre-schoolers and children at school, not for tiny babies under 1. We need to see measures that support a certain amount of leave or flexible working for every year of the child's life. Including the first, but not at the expense of existing mat. leave.
Why all this focus on up to one year? Is this

a. because yours go to boarding school when they are one,

or

b. because you have internalised the notion that "you can't have something for nothing" - that we somehow owe business something if we want more of something else - and that is the ONLY SODDING YEAR IN WHICH WE HAVE ANYTHING, ANYTHING AT ALL, TO BARGAIN WITH?

Stop bargaining. Stop it! Leave it alone and demand MORE

Himalaya, I suppose one of my concerns with it is that by making parental leave equal, we are reinforcing the idea that the children who have the most opportunities and who society will set itself up to accommodate are those who have two parents.

That is clearly discriminatory against children who are not in such a situation.

That then puts an onus on women (who are generally unlikely to walk away from a baby if they have gone through the process of pregnancy) to arrange their lives around being in a nuclear family arrangement (whether she lives with the other parent or not) for the supposed benefit of their child, regardless of whether or not that is in the best interests of the woman.

Rather than change the situation from the mother being always responsible to one where the parents were jointly and equally responsible, I would like both men and women to set up who cared for (in every sense of the word) children to not have a norm, but for people to set up a wide range of solutions that suited them.

No, no, no! terrible.
I say this as someone who now works full time with a SAHD DP - I am not at all against fathers doing full time childcare, or part time (actually my ideal would be for us to split it).

But SEVEN MONTHS? My sister had her kids when it was a bit like that and it was so hard. I am getting a bit teary thinking about going back to work when my dcs were that age, or losing my job. I wasn't physically fit to, really, and still feeding in the nights.

Lots of people bf after 6 months. After a year, if you are still bfing, you don't have to do it all day. In fact I managed this with dd1 when she was 9 months, when I went back to work the first time. But 6 months? Sounds very tricky to me.
Plus, the "most people..." thing is unimaginative and limited - would we like it if more people did, if fewer babies (if it suited their mothers) were dependent on formula, ever? I would. What do we want to happen?

Women should be privileged with leave and other working arrangements that allows them full access to their babies, and their babies to them, for the first year. This was hard won and it makes me angry to hear people talk about giving away women's rights in the name of feminism. In my case, had I not been allowed 12 months leave with dd2, I would have lost my job, not been "empowered". This is the job that we, as a family, now rely on. Had I tried to go back at 7 months, I would have either been sacked, or gone on long term sick and been sacked.

This is what they want! It is making it harder for women to have careers if you limit the time that they can have with their little babies and still keep their jobs. It is toadying to a horrible, markety, thoughtless zeitgeist which privileges Business above all else (I must be angry! When was the last time "zeitgeist" came into my head? I think I might go and listen to Portishead)

The thing is - the really crucial thing is - we don't need to compromise to make Business workable. We don't need to say, "I want the father of my children to have time to be a parent, so I will offer up 6 months of my mat. leave to Business, to fill the gap, to placate the great god Business". You don't need to, because Business already owns the fucking lot of us, and our houses, and our time, and our money, and our thoughts, and the whole bloody lot. Business needs to give more to us. Certainly not bloody less.

Nothing should be dependent on length of service. That's really unfair - the way the world of work is going, some people might have worked 20 years continuously and never had a permanent contract.

Yes yes yes to cities and work places being arranged to acknowledge that adults are often parents.

Yes yes yes to parental leave, but not at the expense of the mother's first year.