To say the new shared parental leave rules are still sexist

[RolyPolierThanThou]

I think it's a great move forward to men can now take over some of their wife or partner's maternity leave, instead of the paltry two weeks they got before. And it should help employers realise that hey, men have babies, too.

But it's still pretty sexist. Because it can only be shared if the woman is employed.

In my own situation, I've got a DH who has been a SAHD for nearly three years while I work full time. When I start my next maternity leave, we can spend a whole year together, two adults at home, raising our three while they are small and a handful.

If I were a man working full time and had a DW as a SAHM, I'd only get paternity leave and would not be able to spend a year at home, supporting her and receive SMP.

So a SAHM is expected to just get on with it, but a SAHD can be supported for a year. (I should add I'm only able to manage on SMP because we have savings. I know SMP doesn't really support anyone meaningfully. By supported I mean the partner, not the state).

Why can't shared parental leave be taken together, anyway? I can see plenty of scenarios where it would be better for everyone if both parents were home at the same time for half a year, together, rather than it being only one or the other - always leaving one person to cope on their own.

It could be because it's easy for men to have children, it does not have to be with their wives (so one every year at most, and often maximum 2 or 3 times).
Any man with functional sperm can have as much children as he wants, from different women. Therefore, there would be a big problem for the employer to ensure their employee actually works, rather than stay home or piss around with their baby mamas, and sire babies nilly willy. Or would there be a rule so that only babies from wives or first squeezes are eligible for paternal leave?

It's a extreme example, but still relevant.

It's definitely a start, and there are still some issues to be worked out, but are you aware that there's already leave-sharing available for babies born before April 2015? I think it's called "additional paternity leave". I took 7 months off work and then DH took 5 when our son was born in 2012. It's not as flexible as the new system, but it was still pretty nice.

It's a very big step but yes, I agree that it's still not good enough. It should be equal, whatever it is, regardless of who works and who stays at home.

Because impregnating women would become a career choice for some men, and employers would have to pay out a salary to someone who never works.

Perhaps they should stipulate that yoy need to be resident with the baby to take this paternity leave. So unless you had a harem of willing fertile women you can't just go impregnating women continuously to get the leave.

Just want to correct something in the Op. Apart from the first two weeks post birth which is reserved for the mother, shared parental leave can be taken at the same time by both parents. So both parents can be off at the same time if you want, up to a max combined total of 52 weeks.

Yabu, because people will start abusing it.

Now, that would be an interesting test case. I wonder how many years a man could be on continuous paternity leave before the employers decided to object. 5, 10 ,15?

I was thinking this the other day. Yes, it could be stipulated that the father has to be living with the child. Would definite be a game-changer for employment equality if men were suddenly entitled to take full parental leave if there partner was a SAHM!

*their

So my parents weren't living together when I was born. It would be unfair that he wouldn't be allowed the leave.
Just to throw a spanner in the works. It would be so hard to implement.