Why don't men get 1 year paternity leave?

[Catinthetwat]

I was just wondering what people's thoughts were on this?

I think it's hard to defend unequal access to parental leave. This is important for men, women and for children. The only argument against is an economic one. Is that a good enough reason?

The government are currently looking into extending the 2 weeks paternity leave to around 12 weeks I think - which would be a start.

So, men should be given 1 years paternity leave with pay and benefits equal to women - aibu?

They can though using shared leave. The real question is why this isn’t happening. Comments like it only takes one to take care of a baby and men can’t breastfeed don’t help. Women are no better at caring for babies than men and breastfeeding isn’t essential. Reading this thread it seems like a lot of women want to monopolise early parenting. Presumably they’ve been conditioned to do that. A lot of men would struggle to even ask to be the primary parent when wives, health professionals, employees and all and sundry just assume that they aren’t the best option and won’t be doing it.

Thanks for your thoughts, Costanza I only ask because my organisation is trying very hard to promote the scheme but we have not had one single application. I work in HR so the reason is obvious to me (our gender pay gap is 44%).

It's not about needing two people to care for a baby, nor is it about saying that men need leave for physical reasons, clearly.

Women don't want to monopolise early parenting. In most cases women are still recovering from birth, birth injuries, c section recovery, and so on. Needing women to return to work and/or give up their leave entitlement to enable men to take leave is not a helpful model imo. It shouldn't be about one parent being the primary carer, it's about both being able to be involved and see caring for a child as their responsibility.

You're welcome. I research womens career development so I'm interested in it from that different perspective.

@CostanzaG you said

"I've come across couples where the dad wanted to take up some shared parental leave but the mum refused to give up what she saw as her leave. "

Well, it is her leave. In order to facilitate men getting shared parental leave, women have to voluntarily give up their maternity leave. It is exactly what is happening. Longer paternity leave should not be at the expense of women's maternity leave.

assassinated some women do want to monopolise the childcare. I've spoken to women who have said that to me.

But if we come at from the perspective of parental leave then it should be shared. Some women would welcome that. We missed out on shared parental leave by 6 months and I was pretty gutted as both of us would have welcomed a scheme which allowed us both time off work to bond and spend time with our baby.

I don't think it's a lot of women who want simply to monopolise early parenting. I think a lot of women simply recognise they need x months off work, for various reasons, hence why maternity leave can be up to a year. Paternity leave should be a separate entitlement that doesn't involve taking away leave entitlement from women.

Assassinatedbeauty- it’s simply not true that women need a year to recover from birth, or to ensure the baby can be successfully bf. As I said earlier, there may be a tiny number of extreme cases where a woman has such a horrendous birth injury that she needs an entire year off. But that’s as much of an extreme as the woman who bounces back into the boardroom a week after giving birth- these cases are outliers. They aren’t representative of the majority of women. Legislation is rightly geared towards where the majority of cases lie. Many more couples could share parental leave without it impacting whatsoever on the mother’s recovery from birth or on bf. It may be that the mother doesn’t want to transfer a few months to the father because she wants the whole year for herself (and if the couple are in agreement about this then no problem- it’s their business) But this would be about what the mother wants rather than what the baby needs.

How people feel is obviously very much influenced by generation anyway. It’s interesting that people having babies now might see SPL as the mother ‘sacrificing’ something that belongs to her, because the entitlement to a year is with her first and foremost. While those of us who had much shorter maternity leave in the first place tend to see SPL as flipping brilliant, and would have jumped at it.

assassinated I didn't say a lot but some women do. Women have said that to me... In those cases it had absolutely nothing to do with recovery.

Lots of women don't want a long time off work but don't necessarily want to out a child in childcare at a very, very young age. I would have gone back to work earlier if DH could have had a few months off.

Women have said that on MN threads too Costanza: that they aren’t prepared to transfer any of their leave to the baby’s dad. Which is fine if that’s what the couple want. It doesn’t necessarily follow though, that men should be entitled to extra leave on top of whatever is already available. Legislation around leave is pretty good as it is, and allows for flexibility if that’s what the parents want. Interestingly, bf rates in the U.K. are lower than many counties where maternity leave is less generous - which also blows out of the water again any suggestion that returning to work earlier is what’s stopping many women from bf .

You're spot on noalarm

I also think that it’s human nature to always want things to be slightly ‘better’ than the current situation. I remember when ML was increased to 6 months with an optional extra 3 months unpaid, then increased to 9 months paid, with the option of a whole year, then SPL was introduced as an added bonus.... to be perfectly frank, if the govt introduced new legislation for the father to have an extra 3 months on top of the mother’s year, you can bet your bottom dollar that before long you’d have people clamouring for the dad to get 6 months, or even a whole year (as the OP started with!) And then of course you’d have couples where the dad might not use his time off so the mum would be clamouring to have ‘his’ time in addition to her....

Legislation has to balance the needs of everyone - employer as well as families. And remember for every person on leave from work, there’s someone having to cover for them on a temporary contract (which can impact on clients, productivity etc) And of course on a temporary contract, an employee isn’t going to be able to get a mortgage, is less likely to be able to start a family thenself (due to the insecurity of their situation.)

It’s all very well to suggest as the OP did that mum and then dad could each have a year off every time they have a child- but frankly the impact (not just the immediate finances but on the workplace in so many other ways) would have to be borne somehow

Yes it is true
noalarms

It’s just that I had never heard that before - that there is a correlation between breastfeeding and socioeconomic status so I thought that was interesting.
To clarify - I’m bf’ing my 16 month old and I am from what I would describe as from the lower end of SES. Sorry - I know that’s not what the thread was about but just thought this was interesting is all.

*@AssassinatedBeauty *
It's not only income tax that could fund this. Corporation tax is at very low levels at the moment, a small rise on that would be able to fund an increase in paternity leave and probably many other things as well.

Companies are already leaving the UK because of Brexit, upping the corporate tax could cause even more to leave. If the economy slows down more it would also mean that these kind of ideas cannot be funded.

Tbh I think that a year of leave is very generous. It would be better to make a provision that in the case of PND or a severe birth injury the other partner gets more leave to care for the mother. I don't think it's necessary when mother and baby are doing fine, then shared leave is enough.
If a year of shared leave isn't enough, then what is?

It’s all very well to suggest as the OP did that mum and then dad could each have a year off every time they have a child- but frankly the impact (not just the immediate finances but on the workplace in so many other ways) would have to be borne somehow

I think as a society we should think about what we want to achieve and how we want to live.

People mostly, work long hours for the majority of their lives. It's sad if they can't take some time off to spend with their children. Very sad indeed.

My point about tax was that there are other ways to fund changes to parental leave other than income tax. Companies are not going to flee the UK after a very small rise in corporation tax. Nor is it going to tank the economy.

As a starting point I would like to see statutory paternity leave increased, 3 months would be a good next step. I would like to see self employed fathers being able to get paternity allowance, rather than nothing. I would like consideration of a model like Scandinavian countries where parents get 480 odd days leave to share between them, with each having an amount of days they must take.

It's straightforward for me. If you want fathers to be more involved in child care then we need to give them the opportunity to do that, without taking away from women's leave.

Catinthetwat- but parents can take time off to be with their children. Legislation to enable that is balanced in parents favour more than any time in history. It was only 25- 30 years ago that mothers were returning to work with 12 week old babies and fathers either had to take annual leave or literally return to work the day after the birth if they were in a job where leave was restricted to certain times. I know- I was one of those mums.

Like i said, it’s about balancing everyone’s needs- not just what suits an individual at a certain point in their life. I can quite see that it might suit a woman who’s just given birth to have a whole year off and then know that her husband can have the whole of the following year off while she eases back into work... and no childcare costs for two years either- bonus! Then she can be pregnant again by the time she returns - perfectly within her rights- and the whole cycle begins again.

You might feel very differently if you’re a woman trying to run an efficient business and have women and men taking significant periods of time out of the workplace, and for the whole of that time, you can’t replace them with a permanent appointment. That’s likely to impact on the quality of candidates you get, and on the service you can offer.

And you might feel very differently if your child has a fantastic male teacher who spends 2 or 3 of the years they could be teaching your child, out of the workplace with a series of stand-in teachers instead.

It’s just not as simple as saying wouldn’t it be lovely if mums and dads could be home for a year each. (And why a year anyway? As I said upthread, if that were the case you’d no doubt have people wanting 2 years each so the child doesn’t need any childcare before starting school.)

There has to be a balance. It’s a pretty good one at the moment, better than in many countries and I personally think SPL was a massive step forward. Just a shame so few people use it.

“If a year of shared leave isn't enough, then what is?”

Well other countries have lots more. And actually I am prepared to pay more income tax to fund those sorts of things for other people. I am aware that many aren’t.

And this debate has been had many times before on MN and usually those countries have other things alongside that generous leave which people dont like quite so much... such as an expectation that both parents will return to full time work and use state subsidised nurseries.

@grinningcheshirecat if our wages were in line with the wages for the same job in Denmark I wouldn't mind about the higher taxation... Having taught in Denmark I earned a much higher wage than teaching here.. Yes I paid more tax and rent was higher (I live in ni would prob be about the same as London I think) but I still had a slightly higher take home wage. As a classroom assistant in the same equivalent in Denmark my dh earned significantly more there due to the job being valued and respected as it should be. So all in all yes I would pay the higher tax to get the extra benefits it provided. (But I much preferred living in ni on the whole and being near to family and being able to buy a house rather than apartment living in Copenhagen hence why we moved home again!)

Overlapping parental leave is basically pointless because you don't need two people to look after one baby, as previously pointed out. It's a waste of leave to overlap it. 2 weeks for the father at the beginning while you get the hang of things is fine and then the mother should absolutely be the one who is on leave first because of breastfeeding, recovering from pregnancy and childbirth, all those things.

But I actually think it's extremely beneficial if the father takes over once the mother goes back to work. We have a use it or lose it allowance of leave for both parents where I live, so almost all men take it. It isn't mandatory per se, but a father would be really stupid not to take it because the mother can't have it. They are home with their older babies for at least a few months after the mother is back at work. It translates to a society where both men and women are expected to take extended periods of leave following the birth of a child, meaning there is much less of the 'motherhood penalty' effect - when it's all parents taking leave sexism is undoubtedly reduced.

And you don't get men who feel (or pretend to be) completely helpless to look after their children by themselves as the primary caretaker or women forced into the role of default parent. Too many fathers in the UK seem to see themselves as assistants to the mother rather than parents who can actually take responsibility for the whole role. Fathers here really understand how hard it is to be at home with a young child because they've done it for months, not just a day or two here and there. In my experience, it sets up the family for a truly equal parenting model.

I believe the policies here are really making a huge difference at a societal level to fatherhood and the expectations for that role, in a way that is extremely positive for both men and women.

@Smurf123
I actually live in a country with a higher taxation (52% for us) and 4 months maternity leave. I don't mind the higher taxation and would like longer maternity leave (6+ months) but I doubt if the UK as a whole would choose to do so at the moment. I read too many threads in here of people on low wages who can't afford extra's. So that would concern me about higher taxation, even if it doesn't effect me personally. There are no gifts, everything needs to be paid for.

MagicMix I think it all depends on the birth though. I had an EMCS which while is an everyday operation it is emergency major abodomimal surgery. I was also unlucky enough to have complications and spesis. In this situation even if I didn’t have a new born I would have needed DH around to look after me

“2 weeks for the father at the beginning while you get the hang of things is fine”

People and babies and births are all different. I had a relatively easy birth and my h had three weeks (PL happened to start two weeks before half term) and then my mum came for a week. I found it very helpful. I must be quite pathetic

I agree that the bf point is a red herring - DS was bf (and is still going strong at 20 months). When I returned to work I expressed for him twice a day as he had tummy issues exacerbated by formula. DH had no problems, neither did DS.

One thing I think needs pushing is that if you want your baby to take a bottle it needs to be introduced in the first 6 weeks. After that it's significantly more difficult. I was lucky as my paediatrician DSis came to stay for a week when DS was a week old and explained that as soon as he could latch without fussing it was safe to introduce a bottle.