Maternity leave being undermined by Shared Parental Leave?

@Pota2 I said unscrupulous employers, not all employers.

Also eight weeks notice is ridiculous and unreasonable. You can't predict at three months post partum how you'll be at five months post partum, which was my situation.

It is quite right that these men should get the same benefits as women if they are sharing parental leave. My only caveat should be that the enhanced benefits offered by each employer should be split pro rata according to how much of the total available leave is taken by each partner. Lots of employers only have enhanced benefits for the first 6 months of maternity leave and then its SMP only for the remainder (and even that stops after 9 months) - I don't think it would be fair for a mother to claim their full 6 months of enhanced pay and then hand over to the father who then also gets a full 6 months of enhanced pay - they should get 3 months each of their respective additional packages.

I don't think it is valid to say that women should remain entitled to more because of their biological role because adoptive parents are entitled to the same treatment as biological mothers with no biological role.

Ensuring that fathers are entitled to exactly the same benefits as women in the event of taking parental leave will be hugely beneficial to all women. Feminists should be fighting for the men on this one. As long as the benefits for women are better than for men, there will be more employers discriminating against women of childbearing age in recruitment and promotion assessments. Only when there's equal costs and a significant chance that a male employee may trigger these rights will there be equality in the workplace.

"You have the legal right to change it with eight weeks notice. I can completely see how in practice that would have felt very difficult/impossible if they'd already hired a replacement because of the consequences for his relationship with work, so I have sympathy and can see why it didn't feel possible to you to change it, but legally it was. I don't see how they can make it much more flexible than that without putting employers in a ridiculous position."

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.

Couldn’t disagree with you more OP. Parity of parental leave and pay can only benefit women. The current system means that women, by dint of that first year or so at home, become the default carer for the DC. This directly leads to them returning on part time hours, or being the one who does nursery pick up, or covers the sick days. Genuinely shared leave would make that burden much more likely to be shared between the mother and father.

Further, there would be significantly less chance of (conscious or unconscious) discrimination against women at work. You can’t really overlook a woman for promotion on the grounds of her potential future caring responsibilities if a man is just as likely to have those responsibilities.

The other factor that’s never considered is prematurity / NICU time. One of my twins only came home properly just before 3 months old. I know a twin mum who had one twin in in for 7 months. Those months can be eaten up bloody quickly if you have an early or unwell baby.

Overall I do think SPL should be on the same terms of ML, if your employer offers enhanced mat pay.

The UK rates of statutory maternity and paternity pay are very low by European standards. German pays 100% of income during maternity leave, which is 14 weeks. That removes the immediate financial penalty for women taking a decent amount of leave.

Germany then offers both parents 12 months leave at 65% income (with a ceiling of 1,800 euros/month). Parents can take leave at the same time or not at all. This is a much better model than Shared Parental Leave.

There is a lot of debate in the UK about increasing the rate of pay for fathers, as they aren't taking shared parental leave (probably fewer than 1% take it). But its the whole system of pay which is underfunded, not just pay for fathers.

One of the clear messages from countries which did pay fathers more for their leave is that fathers still don't take it up. I think Germany had 3% take-up even with its well-paid leave. They did manage to increase this by providing bonus paid leave when couples did share leave, but it has been an uphill battle to get fathers to take even eight weeks time-off.

It is also frustrating to hear Government tout shared parental leave as the solution to the poor treatment of new mothers at work. It really hasn't shifted the culture and we can't expect it to sort this out. One in every nine pregnant woman loses her job because of maternity discrimination, so the problem is pretty thoroughly entrenched. And watching women lose their jobs for taking maternity leave doesn't give fathers much confidence about taking a chunk of leave.

When I had my DC SPL was not available at all. Mumsnet backed the campaign for it and I was interviewed by The Times as mine was a good case to use (10 years ago)

I was main breadwinner on 4 X DH salary. My company only offers SMP so I couldn't afford to be off for more that the 6 weeks at 90% plus a couple of weeks holiday

It made me furious that we could easily have afforded for DH to take 6 months off at SMP which would have been incredibly beneficial, but I could not transfer my allowance

I agree pay should be the same for all to make it fairer but just grateful we even have this now - too late for me but better for others

The case failed in part because they were trying to compare shared parental leave pay with enhanced maternity leave pay, which are completely different things. The court held that the purpose of maternity leave was in part to allow women to recover from childbirth, whereas the purpose of shared parental leave was to allow parents choice in respect of childcare.

In Snell v Network Rail the claimant won his sex discrimination claim because network rail paid women enhanced shared parental leave pay, but only paid men the statutory rate. Rather typically, network rail then removed the enhanced pay aspect from women. So I can sort-of see the OP’s point. However, I wholly support shared parental leave, having taken it’s more restrictive predecessor, additional paternity leave. It allowed us to test who was better at being the stay at home parent (DH), and has indirectly contributed to my progress in my career.

OP I completely disagree. I’m currently 38 weeks pregnant with my first, and DH and I will be splitting our year’s allowance - I’m taking the first 6 months, he’s taking the second.

Advantages to us:

• Our baby gets to spend the whole of her first year at home with a parent
• I don’t lose a whole year of pension contributions.
• My DH will be the primary caregiver for 6 months, meaning there’s less chance of me getting stuck as default parent.
• I don’t make the sacrifice to my career of taking a whole year out.
• I’m the higher wage earner so our family finances suffer less.

I don’t see how this is detrimental to women’s rights? If uptake of SPL was higher then I suspect a lot of the workplace stigma around working mums would lessen.

DH is going to be paid at the same rate as if he were a woman taking the second 6 months of maternity leave. Ideally the situation needs to be that two parents working for the same company earning the same amount would have the same income regardless of how they choose to split the year. Putting a financial penalty on women going back to work to give some leave to their partners is wrong.

There's very little flexibility in the system once you've decided to split it, even if circumstances change. My partner's workplace had hired someone to temporarily replace him based on the dates we gave and we were told basically that we couldn't change it once we'd agreed to it.

You have the legal right to change it with eight weeks notice. I can completely see how in practice that would have felt very difficult/impossible if they'd already hired a replacement because of the consequences for his relationship with work, so I have sympathy and can see why it didn't feel possible to you to change it, but legally it was. I don't see how they can make it much more flexible than that without putting employers in a ridiculous position.

In my workplace many couples both work there and many do SPL. It also means that there is less unconscious bias around appointing a woman of childbearing age as a signficant period of time out of the office is just as likely to be taken by a man now. I am hugely in favour of it. Our workplace recognised that there was a discrepancy with payment for men if their partner worked for the same org than if they didn’t. So now it has been equalised. Creating no unintended consequences of the differential in pay.

Surely by this logic a year's maternity leave is only an option when the man is the higher earner?

I would imagine that this is usually the case, yes. A woman cannot take a year's maternity leave unless either they have significant savings to cover the loss of earnings or her partner earns enough to support the unpaid portion. So if the woman is the breadwinner then it's often not really viable.

leghair no I don’t think employers will reduce enhanced mat pay because they don’t have to offer it in the first place. It’s a benefit that many employers do offer and if they do, they should offer it on equal terms. Employers don’t have to provide health cover or gym membership either but many do in order to attract candidates. I can’t see that stopping.

Grasspigeons again, this is not compulsory. It gives the option to split the leave and normalises male caregiving.

Also this has naff all to do with trans as the OP said. Second wave feminists have been fighting for this for donkeys years. The whole second wave movement was about breaking free from the caregiver role imposed by society.

It’s not just about careers. It’s about fairness. Women do a disproportionate share of work and many work in the home and our of the home. We end up with less money and we have no assurance of who will provide for us, even if we are married (because divorce is very easy and it’s rare to get long term alimony). Why shouldn’t men also take up the slack?

@grasspigeons

Its often quoted on here about 6 months of leave for each parent being fair but people dont factor in that many, many women have to start their mat leave before the baby arrives due to pregnancy complications or the type of work they do so they may be returning at 5 or even 4 months after birth if they split the leave equally in the name of equality.

Yes exactly, this was the issue that I had. I hadn't physically recovered when I went back to work. There's very little flexibility in the system once you've decided to split it, even if circumstances change. My partner's workplace had hired someone to temporarily replace him based on the dates we gave and we were told basically that we couldn't change it once we'd agreed to it.

Yes and this is actually another massive issue with the SPL system, it's only a viable option for couples where the woman is the higher earner.

Surely by this logic a year's maternity leave is only an option when the man is the higher earner? Yet a lot of people still do it, and make it work, when the woman earns more or the couple make roughly the same.

I think SPL should be paid at the same rate as maternity pay. However, I think it is important to be aware that unscrupulous employers are likely to equal the playing field by reducing enhanced maternity rather than increasing SPL. So those fighting for this need to be sure it's done without any reduction in current benefits.

Incidentally, DH also had, in practice, extended paternity leave (he's a teacher and DS very obligingly came two weeks before the summer, so DH was at home for eight weeks) and that wasn't nearly as good for us as SPL. At that point babycare was all about breastfeeding and so although it was nice having some around to make me food and change nappies, it still felt very much like I was doing all the caring and DH was in the background (that was a big shock to me as I thought it would all be 50-50 from the start because DH would have all this time at home). For us DH being at home later was much better, not just for my career (which extended paternity leave at the beginning does nothing for) but also for their bond and him learning how to be an equal parent. Four months just the two of them during the day transformed things like who the 'default parent' is (it's neither of us, or both of us, depending on how you look at it - and DH is the only dad I know who does not just the basics of caring for the kid for a few hours but things like appointments, packing for the child for holiday, buying new clothes when they're needed, etc), in a way that him being around when I was too in the early months wouldn't and didn't.

@pota2 Yes and this is actually another massive issue with the SPL system, it's only a viable option for couples where the woman is the higher earner.

So basically if you want to split childcare with any equality, then you not only have to give up part of your mat leave but you also can only do it if the mother's income can support the father being on statutory pay (or no pay, depending on when it's taken).

Having navigated the system it's a joke. There's a reason why uptake is so low. If fathers were able to take a decent allowance of paid paternity leave and choose when to take it (a la places like Norway, as far as I understand it), it would encourage genuinely equal childcare. The current system is just token lip service to the idea of promoting equality.

To be clear, I'm absolutely pro men being at home with babies, my issue is that the current SPL system makes that a really unattractive option for most people in reality and it needs a complete overhaul.

I feel very strongly that the physical-ness of pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding is massivley downplayed in society (exclusive breastfeeding at 6 months may be rare but plenty more are still breastfeeding alongside weaning). I have concerns about women being forced back to work before they are fit. Fine if you have an easy pregnancy and birth and a nice office job. Bit harder if you are still having physio and complications from stitches and you are trudging round a care home moving patients. I had one easy pregnancy and birth and one incredibly difficult one which changed my view on this.

Its often quoted on here about 6 months of leave for each parent being fair but people dont factor in that many, many women have to start their mat leave before the baby arrives due to pregnancy complications or the type of work they do so they may be returning at 5 or even 4 months after birth if they split the leave equally in the name of equality.
I fully appreciate that getting men involved in childcare early is incredibly important but the emphasis should be on men requesting longer term familiy friendly working such as leaving each day for nursery pick up, working part time, taking days off at short notice as your child is sick. Its no point taking months 6- 8 off and then returning to city working hours expecting the mother to make all the other long term adjustments.

That said i think men on parental leave should get the same rate women on parental leave would get for those particular months so i dont see why this case failed. And I like a system where families get to chose what works for them. Which i believe we have.

I think men being entitled to the same pay as women if they take SPL would benefit women.

Women of a certain age are often overlooked for jobs or promotion because of the cost of maternity leave. If men were entitled to the same this mentality would hopefully change.

However I do think it shouldn't be at the cost of the women's leave. It should be in addition to.

I agree with @Pota2. SPL is hugely important to women's equality in the workplace - to make sure that women are not always the default parent, to make sure women of childbearing age are not disadvantaged compared to their make peers when applying for jobs or promotions, to even up the playing field.

Maternity rights are hugely important, yes, but the next step to improve equality for women in the workplace is to make sure nothing disincentivises men from being equal parents.

I said ‘some of the leave’ - I did not say ‘a full year’

Although I also had a son (with later diagnosed SN) who would not let me put him down and did not settle in nursery, which raised a whole other set of issues.

I agree that SPL is a good thing and supports women more than maternity leave. Women now have the option to return to their careers sooner and have their partner take on the caring role, women have fought so hard to be seen as equals in the workplace and not just carers this is a big step in encouraging more fathers to take on caring responsibilities.

Extending paternity leave, so both parents are at home at the same time, is thrown about too often. It will never happen and makes no economic sense, but shared leave gives parents a choice they have never had before.

Men receiving equal pay for SPL encourages this shift, it's too common now for women to be overlooked or held back because they have children or are of childbearing age (I'm a little bitter on this having just been denied a promotion solely because I'm pregnant. Of course it went to the man whose wife gave up work to do all child care).