To think it's sad that take-up of Shared Parental Leave is just 2 per cent?

[AHedgehogCanNeverBeBuggered]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43026312

DH and I are sharing parental leave between us, 9 months for me and 3 months for him. Whenever he tells anyone the response has been universally positive, generally praising him for doing this. When I've told other women they've often reacted with shock, saying they'd never give up some of 'their' leave to their DH/DP. We know another couple who have had huge rows over this - they'd initially planned to share leave 9/3 like us but at 6 months the DW backed out and said she was keeping it all to herself.

I think if women are ever going to achieve equality in the workplace then more men should be encouraged to take up this scheme, but what if women don't want them to? I feel very strongly that a man should be entitled to time off to bond with his child, but our friends' situation has made me wonder whether it's right to allow the mother to make the decision unilaterally (although as she has to carry the child and give birth it kind of makes sense to have first dibs, although fathers do seem to be pushed out here).

Thoughts? Should we be encouraging more men to take this up or something different?

if my husband had tried to come after my mat leave i would have told him to geeeeettt lost. luckily we are both happy with our roles in our family.

It would be nice if the dad could just have a bit more time off say two months. Think dads don't take it as mums want it (Esoecialky if still feeding)

We considered it but timings meant it made more sense for me to have the year off (both work in education), especially as I was breastfeeding.

OH now works part time and does more child care than me. In the long term this is favourable to him having had three or six months intensive baby-minding, although it has really opened my eyes as to how 'anti-dad' a lot of activities are by default because it is always mums that attend.

Ideally we'd have had more time off all together at the start; I would sacrifice maternity leave to allow that.

My baby is 6 months and I have a few more weeks at home before we're doing this. My husband is freaking out a little bit about his impending responsibility!

I've had a great time at home, but I am ready to head back to work. I thought it was important we both learnt to be solely responsible for him, and both got both the perks and downsides of working/staying home with a small baby.

I also think it is important that men do this from a general society perspective. Employers will find it harder to discriminate against women if 20-40yo men are also likely to take extended parental leave

We did this with DC1. What pissed me off was that DH was treated as some kind of legend for doing it, my maternity leave was seen as a massive inconvenience. It was fab - it meant that when I went back to work all I did was go to work and get back into the swing of things, DH did all the house/child stuff and bought DC1 in at lunchtime for a feed.

DryIce I am in exactly the same position but a few weeks behind. I think the default position should be six months each rather than the 12 months for the woman. So many women I spoke to said they couldn't believe I was sacrificing half of my "gap year". I found it a bit pathetic to be honest.

But it would be tricky for lots of mums if the default was 6 months as lots of babies are still exclusively breastfeeding. it would put pressure on some to change to formula or spend hours expressing.

I have to get c sections and it takes at least 6 months to recover so no way I’d be heading back to work and handing my mat leave over .

But then in those cases you just adjust it with your partner surely? i don't see why one parent should be the default parent. If that works for your family then great but treating it as a default just makes it harder for women in the workplace. I think women who openly refer to their time off as "holiday" / "gap year" and berate those who decide to share parental leave are reinforcing the gender pay gap. I was astonished at how many professional women took this approach when we were pregnant.

I agree OP. I have several workmates who are recent dads (over the past few years) who say they'd have loved to take parental leave but their partners wouldn't let them.

Similar story with them wanting to go part time, my boss works full time and his wife 3/5 days per week, he proposed they share and both work 4/5 days (same wage, same job mostly) but she wasn't having any of it as she wanted to keep her 3/5 pattern and wasn't willing to work 4/5 to enable him to go down to 4/5 and spend more time with the child.

It's going to take a while for societal attitudes to change I think, I imagine if you're used to women going back part time and see that as a positive thing you might be reluctant to work a little more to enable your partner to work a little less. It's shit but I don't know what can be done about it as it's an individual family decision. I do think that it ought to be a shared decision.

What an interesting discussion! I find myself in the minority I think, but I think it's incredible and a huge step forward in equality. It's obviously not going to work for everyone, but it does provide a choice that wasn't available before.

I agree with a pp who said give it a generation- my feeling (based on no scientific research whatsoever) is that it is such an inbuilt societal norm that men bring in the money and women raise the kids that it influences our decisions from early on. Many of my female friends actively considered maternity leave and part time working options before choosing a career. Men on the other had tended to consider other characteristics of a job.

We're in the seemingly unusual position where my DH is the primary career and I work FT and bring in the money. It works really well for us, but it could have been so different without spl. We both changed direction career wise after kids and it took us a while to find what worked for us, but we had options available. It took us both a while to be comfortable with our roles (our parents didn't exactly help with that!) but DH is fundamentally better and happier at being on team Home and me on team Work.

Obviously, mum will always need some time at home to recover from birth, breastfeed etc, but after that parenting roles are up for grabs!

I think women who openly refer to their time off as "holiday" / "gap year" and berate those who decide to share parental leave are reinforcing the gender pay gap. I was astonished at how many professional women took this approach when we were pregnant.

I agree with this, throw. Barring physical medical issues such as recovery from birth and organising around breast feeding, if women want equality with men they are going to have to take the approach of trying to treat/view both parents as equally important/responsible for the childcare. If parental leave is available and financially viable you can't decline it because you believe your year off work with the baby is more important than the child's father's time off work with the baby and then complain that your career has stalled from being off while your partner's career has gone from strength to strength due to being present.

I think a lot of women do want the entire year off to themselves and would resent sharing any of it with the child's father, because that's how it's always been and we have a default assumption women take maternity and men crack on with work straight after the birth. Which just serves to maintain the notion that mothers are more important and dads are secondary and leads to all kinds of shit down the line where women have the majority care taking, complain dads don't know how to take care of their child properly, and so forth.

From day one if there are opportunities to reinforce equality in your family between parents, grab it. If you're unwilling to do so because you put your desire to be at home above your partner's (if he wants it too) I do feel that reinforced gender stereotypes and is selfish.

I think the breastfeeding is a bit of a red herring, to be honest. EBF rates at 6 months in the UK is something like 1%.

My baby is currently ebf, but I've spent the last few weeks getting him used to a bottle so by the time I go back my husband can feed him expressed milk or formula. I'll only be missing a couple of feeds max, and he is having some solids already so will be even more in 6 weeks when I go back

I think it's great that shared parental leave is available as it adds to the choice. It should be choice for each family though. Me taking the full year worked for us, spl works for others. It does feel it could become another way to judge women for doing what they feel is best.

Great post LemonShark. Agree with everything you say.

NerrSnerr, it is a choice but the difficulty is that some women (or a lot in my personal experience) are not open to that choice at all. I don't see why women staying at home should be the default. It should be a choice for each family.

Once men are equally as likely to take time out as women then we will be far closer to gender equality.

Of course, it would be nice if both parents could take a year though!

One thing we discovered is that we were financially better off for me to take fully unpaid leave once my enhanced maternity ran out. My husband then got two months of full pay because his employer pays for 2 months longer than mine does. If I'd have received statutory maternity pay then he wouldn't have been entitled to those 2 months of pay.

Scandinavian experience shows that nothing will change unless a part of parental leave is for dads to use or lose.

I wanted and needed to take a year off (it turned into 18 months with holidays and parental leave on top). I was still breastfeeding during the night at 12 months (with DH’s support) and simply wasn’t ready to go back. The new parental leave policy wasn’t available when our children were born, but we wouldn’t have taken it up anyway.

I can quite unde why some women don’t want to share it but think it’s good for the option to be there for those who do.

I really don't think we can say "but breastfeeding!" as the reason for this or for why women "deserve" all the leave. The US has a significantly higher rate of breastfeeding than the UK and women there are lucky to be able to take 3 months off maximum. Whatever women are doing with their 12 months of leave, it generally isn't breastfeeding.

I went back to work 8 months after the birth and my son didn't drink anything other than water and my milk until he was nearly 2. Women in many other countries manage with significantly shorter leaves - I actually don't think it's on for women to insist on bogarting the leave against their partner's wishes. 9/3 or even 10/2 are perfectly viable arrangements - SPL doesn't have to mean each partner gets 6 months each. More men taking an extended period of leave to be a primary childcarer can only be good for equality at home and work.

I don’t honk breastfeeding is a red herring. Not everyone wants to bottle feed and many babies don’t take to it. I didn’t want to use formula and hated expressing when I tried it, so wouldn’t have wanted to seek forced to bottle feed just to go back to work earlier.

My American colleagues express milk, they’re pros at it. I did the same when I went back after six months leave. My son didn’t like bottles, so we used a cup, and it was ok. I continued feeding him until he was two. I was lucky not to be out of the house all day though - those days were unusual, which definitely made sharing care of the baby much less stressful.

A lot of women in the US don’t return to work at all because their leave is so short. Most of my team is based in the US and I have lost 2 team members in the past 6 months due to this. Just because leave is shorter in some other countries doesn’t make it right

Parental leave works well in Scandinavian countries because it’s longer and more generous in terms of paid leave. Their culture is far more supportive of families in general.

If longer leave is so important for breastfeeding, why are we so very bad at it as a nation, and why are multiple nations with shorter leave than us as standard doing it significantly more? We have literally the lowest rate of breastfeeding past 6 months in the world. Only 1% of women are feeding at ALL at a year.

Most 9mos can also manage fine on water and food during the day and will, if necessary, feed a few times at night to get their milk. Babies older than 6mos can use cups if they don't like bottles. There are lots of ways to return to work without bottle-feeding or using formula, as women know who have to do it whether they like it or not.

I like the scheme and I wouldn't stop my DH doing it but financially it makes no sense for us. DH is by far the higher earner and it isn't worth him taking months off work. If we were more evenly matched then we'd probably think about it!

@QueenAravisOfArchenland I agree there are many ways to return to work and breastfeed from 6 Months. Some people may choose not to though and People like me should not be made to feel bad and as if they're letting the side down for choosing to stay at home for longer with breastfeeding as one of the main reasons. I am aware I am projecting

Supportive culture in Scandinavia didn't just appear out of the blue though, When the shared leave was first offered in Sweden, barely any men used it. After the dedicated daddy time was introduced, the rate jumped up and now 9 out of 10 men take parental leave.