Maternity leave being undermined by Shared Parental Leave?

It would cost more though if you are having to pay 2 lots of enhanced pay to cover a couple who both work for the same company.

Even if they didnt, it would still cost companies more to cover mat and pat leave at whatever contractual rate than just mat leave.

Hence why businesses would lobby against it.

Grimbles it would be for the same period of time in total so it shouldn’t cost more. There will be a saving because women will have a shorter time off if they share the leave with their partner.

I'm all for men getting same pay as women when on parental leave, but I cant see businesses being up for it. Having to pay 2 loads of enhanced pay? No chance!

One in eight employers responding to a recent survey said they were reluctant to hire women who might have children.here

Anything which might increase the numbers of men taking time off can only benefit women.

I actually think that it's a bit shit in general that leave taken while pregnant comes out of maternity leave - I was delighted when DS was a week early, a few days after I started mat leave because I didn't want to waste three weeks of leave sat around pregnant, but obviously I couldn't have prevented that if he'd come at 42 weeks! I do think that there should be separate pregnancy leave and maternity leave.

Settlersofcatan - 6 months into my maternity leave my child was 4.5 months old. Because i had severe complications and was hospitalised. I was still strughling with the after affects of birth at 4.5 months. I probably wasnt at 6 months but how many people start their mat leave on the day their child is born - particularly in more phyiscal jobs.
I am not arguing that women have to have a whole year. I went back atv8 months. I like a flexible and well paid system that individual families work out what is best for them. I am fed up with pretending that babies magically appear and this proess has zero impact on women.
I also wish there were more conversations about men working part time to assist with childcare in the longer term.

New account

Honestly, I think a lot of attachment theory stuff is about putting women back in their place. Not a surprise to me that Sears is v Christian and anti women working. A certain number of women also want to rationalise their decisions rather than just say they want to be at home.

Yup, agree NewAccount. Kids with attachment disorder usually have VERY traumatic backgrounds.

Stuck ‘won’t somebody think of the children’ is often used to guilt trip women into giving up work and becoming financially dependent on men (which is bad for women AND children). It’s never mooted that working dads have a bad impact on kids. Dads can go on a three week business trip when the baby is 3 months old and nobody bats an eyelid but woe betide if a woman wants to go back to full time work at any point. At the end of the day, I doubt that having the father take some time to deliver primary care is going to cause psychological harm.

Unless you think that the baby being with their father is somehow more likely to cause any attachment issues than that baby being in nursery, then there's plenty of evidence that a baby isn't going to get attachment issues just from having a working mother.

Attachment theory has lots of things to recommend it, but I think the current trend towards using it to convince women that their bond with their baby is incredibly fragile and will crumble at the slightest hurdle is both unscientific (do you know what sorts of backgrounds children with attachment disorder usually have? It's not 'well, I come from a loving family and two doting parents but at six months I went to spending a bit less time with mum and a bit more with dad') and unkind - it scares women unnecessarily.

It surprises me that anyone thinks SPL is un feminist. We split it 6 and 6 months with our first and we are the only couple I know who genuinely split domestic responsibilities 50:50. SPL was a huge part of that.

It is really unusual to be still physically suffering from childbirth six months on. Of course, I am sorry for those women but I don't think we should design the whole policy around them.

I also don't think SPL is only viable when women are the higher earners. Generally couples I know with higher earning women somehow find the money for maternity leave, it's about prioritising saving for it. My DH and I earn around the same so being off work requires financial planning for either of us.

I am disappointed that some women are so protective of women continuing to have more of a parenting role to the point of wanting to deny other people the choice. If you want to take the whole 12 months, you can - the vast majority of couples don't even consider SPL so it's hardly some big threat to the established order.

SPL is a trainwreck of a system and it absolutely disadvantages women as it is. We did it and it's a horrible arrangement because if you want your partner to have time off, you have to "give" them your leave. I ended up massively resenting my partner because I was back at work before I was physically and mentally ready

That was for you and him to sort out.

The answer is to massively increase paternity leave, not to put women in a situation where they have to cut their own allowance in order to give it to the male partner

Do you have any idea of the burden maternity leave causes for employers? Yes we just have to suck it up but it seems to me that in all of this employees' demands come before everything else.

Currently out of a team of 17 I have 3 employees on maternity leave and 2 who will go before the current 3 are back. We will have to cope somehow- oh btw the usual MN response of " just hire temps" is unrealistic nonsense.

. In countries where people take this up and do share care, I don’t think they have a big problem with attachment issues or anything like that

I have family in a country where this is the norm, but the reality is that few mothers actually go back much before a year, but because leave is generous instead they work it so either she takes a year and the other partner takes a few months after that, or they both share the first or last few months of maternity.

At the moment DS's bond with me seems stronger, which surprised me because we had roughly equal amounts of time at home with him and DS spends more time with him in the average week (and all school holidays with him). However, I think he might also just be going through a 'mummy' phase - I suspect we'll see a daddy phase in due course!

Stuck babies can have more than one caregiver or change the primary caregiver and surely that’s the ideal. It is definitely in the baby’s interest to have a strong relationship to its dad. In countries where people take this up and do share care, I don’t think they have a big problem with attachment issues or anything like that. Plus the mother working doesn’t mean she will never see the baby. Of course, in the long term, the child will benefit hugely from having parents who are both caring and nurturing AND are also both capable of providing for the family.

In terms of bond, it’s interesting to see that DD has an equally strong bond with both us, even though I went back to work at 6 months and DH remained the SAHP.

It's in the baby's interest to form a strong bond with the main caregiver - which to me means that yes, it makes sense for an adoptive main care giver (mother, father or other) to have a full year. I'm very supportive of increasing the leave available to secondary care givers but while children are very little I think it makes sense to prioritise the primary one.

DS still has a very, very strong bond to me (and don't we know it at the moment, as we're at a very separation anxiety stage!). He also has a very strong bond with dad, and I think he benefits in a lot of ways from having a father who is a genuinely equal parent. I absolutely think that it was in his best interests that we did SPL. He is also part of a family, and it was in that whole family's interests.

My friend recently had his first baby, his wife is self employed. She took the first four months off, she returned after this as the longer she had off the work the less likely she was to regain her customers. My friend would take the remaining time off until their baby is a year old, he however is only paid the statutory amount from his employer, yet someone on maternity pay on month five of leave would be on 100% of their salary until the 9th month of leave at his company at which time it would decrease to 75% until the 12th month of leave.

What about the baby though? It's in the baby's interest to form a strong bond with the main caregiver - which to me means that yes, it makes sense for an adoptive main care giver (mother, father or other) to have a full year. I'm very supportive of increasing the leave available to secondary care givers but while children are very little I think it makes sense to prioritise the primary one.

The vast majority of posts here are talking about impacts on parents, not children, which to me is an important point but not the critical one.

I think in a time where people continue to fight for equality, and there seems to be more and more equality between men and women, men and women should get the same rights re parental leave. There may reasons why the woman needs the leave more but she and her partner can decide this between themselves. Yes women are the ones to carry a child and give birth etc but that has always been the case and equality in the workplace works both ways.

It is valid to say women get pregnant, give birth and breastfeed in greater numbers than men and the ability to do this healthily whilst maintaining a position in the workplace needs to be protected in a way that simply doesnt exist for men. The ongoing childcare issue does exist for men and that needs to be done equally. It therefore should be a completely seperate type of leave paid fairly.
Adoption leave is a red herring. The babies didnt magic out of nowhere. Somewhere a woman gave birth to that child. She was entitiled to whatever maternity stuff was relevant to her circumstance.
Adoption leave is all about the needs of the child being adopted.

The problem with focusing on enhanced maternity and shared parental pay is that most people don't get it. It is entirely up to employers if they offer it at all, how much and for how long. Lots of employers who offer enhanced shared parental pay offer it for six months, but reduce that period by the amount of the leave the other partner has taken. This forces women to return to work before six months if they want their partner to get any shared parental pay. We really need to sort out statutory pay so that all parents get a better deal.

My son works for a global company and following the birth of his baby he has six months PL on full pay. Goes into the office once a month for a ‘keep in touch day’.

There's an extremely simple solution actually which is to scrap the shared element, which doesn't work, and replace it with a seperate protected allowance for the other parent which doesn't involve the mother giving up her leave to accommodate it.

It didn't work for you, and I'm sorry about that. But what you're proposing is a lot less flexible (how long would this protected allowance be?) and so would work less well for many other people. It sounds like it was a mistake for you to do SPL, but I think it's a bit sad and short sighted that you therefore want to take the option away from people like me, for whom it worked well, and instead dictate centrally exactly how men and women should split their leave.

And I can't agree with you that eight weeks is too much enough notice - I think it's a pretty reasonable balance between the needs of the employer and the needs of the employee. What would you say is a reasonable amount of notice to require?

Lukewarm, that's not quite right re Germany. Standard maternity leave is 6 weeks pre-birth (which a woman does not have to take, but has the right to) and 8-weeks (or 12 weeks for prem or multiple births) post-birth, which she has to take, i.e. the employer is not allowed to accept her services during that time. All of this is on full pay. (And if you give birth before your EDD, any of the 6 weeks you didn't take is added to your post-birth mat leave - happened to me when ds1 came at 38 weeks). After that there is a period of 14 months parental leave at (as was 4 years ago when I had dd) 65-67 % (the lower your income is, the higher the percentage) of last salary which can be taken by either parent, but only 12 months if the parents choose for one parent to take it all (lone parents always get 14 months), and if the mother takes it the 8/12 weeks she spent on post-birth mat leave count towards that, so she will only be able to be off for a year in total, as will the father if he takes it all. But if you split it (any split), you get 14 months in total. With dd, I took a year, and dh took one month when she was 5 months old and another when she was 13 months to settle her into nursery. Any other split goes, just as the parents like, and you can reduce your hours and have 65-67 % of the shortfall made up during that time or double the period over which you receive it, during which it is paid at half rate. It's not perfect but it's excellent as regards flexibility, and apparently 35 % of fathers took it up in 2017 (and rising).