Shared parental leave - doesn't go nearly far enough

I suspect it'll take a court case to make companies offer men enhanced paternity leave.

I work in the NHS (8 weeks full pay, up to the 26 week mark at half pay and then 12 weeks SMP) and haven't heard anything about them rolling it out to cover fathers.

I don't know if he will though? Under the new shared leave thing does that mean if his firm offers 6m full pay to women on maternity that he could take half of it?

Madame, if you get 6m at full pay and your DH does too then you should be ok
To take 3m, I think!

I hear you sleepless. I don't want to take more than 3m. But if DP cannot use the second 3m at full pay I may as well take the full 6..

Where I used to work it was 9 months full pay, which sounds nice but it actually trapped me into taking more leave than I wanted, as I would have been worse off back at work with childcare costs than on mat leave. I expect that sort of arrangement will die the death with these changes

Btw I work for private sector (finance) and my company offer 6 months full pay

Ugh I think pp are right in saying employers would just reduce the length of the enhanced pay period rather than have loads of men off for months and months on full pay.. Argh. One step forward two back ! Or hopefully two forward one back ? If it becomes normal for men to split the leave...

Sleepless. I think most of those men would end up taking 4 weeks max.

I think a lot of companies currently offering enhanced maternity pay will end up reducing or removing it rather than offering the same to new fathers. For example, where I work I was lucky enough to have 16wks on full pay. 90 odd percent of the workforce is male, though, so the company I work for have been able to offer this without it costing them a great deal. I fully expect that as soon as new fathers ask HR why they aren't being offered the same deal everyone will just be on SMP.

Before shared leave the situation was that a higher earning female partner often had no choice but return to work and put her baby into childcare earlier than she would like.

Especially with first children, more women than people realise earn more than their partners.

The new system isn't perfect, but neither was the status quo.

Certainly in dh's work there has been a slew of parental leave requests since shared leave became available. He works in a low pay job and many of his colleagues have higher earning partners.

Dh has also cut his hours for childcare reasons and again, many of his male colleagues also work shifts around childcare commitments.

It will be interesting to see whether taking leave increases the number of men going pt, and eventually may help with the gender pay gap.

It's not all plain sailing, dh's employer refused to confirm his leave until less than a week before I was due back at work, but my understanding is that it's been easier for men at his work who have taken it since.

Yup.

And those employers that offer enhanced maternity pay currently do so as it's a good way to attract and retain talent; no need to assume it will be a race to the bottom now a few men will also take it up.

Of course, fewer companies may offer enhancement over all as economic times get tougher.

I'm talking about new regs in 2015 that allow you to split the leave

Also it obviously will make a difference who earns more - if your DPearns more you might not survive with him on stat pay on leave and you on full pay in work ??
And I imagine for most couples the man earns more

Sorry but I am confused. My employer offers 6m full pay and then statutory. Let's assume DP's employer offers same (maternity) package. If I take 3m off full pay can he (under the new shared leave regs)

• take the same 3m as me off full pay?
• take only the next 3m off full pay?
• or does he get stat only?

Surely it would be discrimination not to offer the same leave benefits to a father switching to be the parent on leave at 8 weeks as the company in question would offer a woman taking maternity leave at that point.

The problem will probably come where a company offers great benefits. That company will probably find that mothers and fathers take leave from them at the enhanced rate in preference to their partner taking leave paid only at the statutory level from a less generous employer. It will then become a race to the bottom to avoid being the employer with the parent taking leave.

I think that more concurrent leave would be very useful. I was pretty ill after DD was born and DH's employers were really good about him taking more than 2 weeks. I can't remember if it was holiday or unpaid, but they had no notice of it. I certainly couldn't have coped with him going back to work after 2 weeks of paternity leave.

I agree that statutory pay for men should increase and be available simultaneously, at least for first few weeks.

What I think will be interesting however is to see how firms who provide enhanced pay for women will respond to new laws. So, the company I used to work for have six months full pay. I am very interested to see if in time they allow men who take over their wife's entitlement to get the same enhancement. If so, at that point, we might see some situTions where it makes more sense for the men to take the leave if his dp works for a less generous company.

This will be very interesting and will probably throw up all kinds of new issues.

I see the point about if parental leave is additional then it gives couples an advantage over single parents (though presumably they also have the advantage of two salaries). However I feel that you could find a way of addressing this separately.

I think parental leave should be additional to maternity leave because I don't think that extra benefits for men should come at the expense of women's hard earned benefits. I think men should have a separate entitlement, which would allow both parents to be off at times if they both wished to. It would mean that women couldn't be put in a position where she feels she has to return to work just because her partner values time with his young baby too.

I'm currently a SAHP, my DH took 1 week off at full (ish?) pay courtesy of a scheme by his employer, 1 week at the statutory rate and 2 weeks of annual leave when our son was born. This time was so valuable to us and really gave him a chance to bond with our baby and support me. He felt it was too soon to go back to work, despite having more time than many men. Sharing my entitlement to maternity leave (i.e. none) wouldn't have helped us. But he is an employee who should be just as able to build up entitlement to leave.

I'd support an increase to paternity leave rather than a sharing of maternity leave (with extra support for single parents if that is required).

Assuming you're in the UK, Very, that's incorrect. The law changed in April 2011 to allow fathers to take additional leave after the baby is 20 weeks old. My husband and I took advantage of this and he was paid remaining the SMP I did not take from the time my baby was 26 weeks old. Crucially, the 2011 rules don't allow for leave to be taken concurrently (including annual leave the mother took before returning to work) but the ability of fathers to claim state parental pay is no different to mothers from the 20 week point. So yes, differentiation now is entirely down to company policies.

The new, shared after 6 weeks rules don't take effect until April 2015, where both parents will be entitled to the same statutory pay.

Given the OP was in large part about equivalency of pay enhancements, and the new system has yet to be introduced and therefore tested, the way company policies are going to address equivalency for shared parental leave is pretty crucial.

Company policies for enhanced pay that go as far as 20 weeks post-birth (which for most will be later than 20 weeks after the start of ML) are pretty rare, so most men wouldn't be captured by them currently, and if they were it would be for a matter of a couple of weeks tops. That will change next April.

I agree that attitudes are a huge problem. Unfortunately my husband's experience was not as positive as your husband's.