Shared Mat Leave

[siring1]

A friend.of my wants to see a change.

She would like the mum and dad to have up to 1 year each. That means both parents off for 1 year at the same time. She wants men to have the same rights as women without women losing anything.

I think she's BU. I see her point but babiez just don't need two parents all day every day for a year.

Who's going to fund all that?

Babiez?

There’s a similar thread on this on the feminism board, can I suggest you look there? Parity of parental leave and pay can only be a good thing for the rights of women.

Assume they would not expect it to be paid? Many companies have career break schemes which might be used for those with a variety of responsibilities or could use Parental Leave.

That was one of my commets

She didn't have an answer.

Babiez was a typo! I missed the s on my phone.

Dh and I shared parental leave. We had a year off in total. I took 8 months and dh took the rest. Its expensive enough, we couldn't have afforded another year, SMP is nothing. The thing I would lobby for is more subsidy for childcare. Dd2's nursery is £880 a month. It feels unfair that I dont get any help until shes 3, but my cousins, who do not work, get subsidised places from 2.

Whats

That seems a much better point.

There is very little uptake of shared parental leave as it is most men don't want it.

I had an issue as a manager in my previous company with a man who asked for 10 months of parental leave (company offered full pay for 6 months and 6 months on 50%), he was separated from the baby's mother, who was a colleague and also wanted all the 12 months of leave to herself.
The company decided to give leave and pay to both rather than face a court action over sex discrimination. Until now I don't know how situations like this are usually resolved, and HR were absolutely useless on this topic.

@TabbyMumz

Most men don't want it?

Where have you dragged that up from?

@siring1 Not a chance will the father AND the mother of a baby both get a year off. As a pp said, who is going to fund this? And what if they have 3 babies over 4-5 years??? Neither one will spend any time at work hardly, for the 5 years!!!

The take up of shared leave is very low, a few percent.

It's a nice idea but funding it would be hard. Parents can already take unpaid leave til the child is 18 but I doubt many fathers do this outside extreme cases (eg illness).

I think there are other things that can be done to improve equality (eg if women earned more then it wouldn't make as much sense for the woman to be off work, companies could do more to promote shared leave and flexible working for new father etc)

I’ve known women who want the whole year off themself rather than transferring some to the child’s father. So it’s not necessarily as simple as ‘men not wanting to.’

We had our babies way before this legislation came in unfortunately. I know my dh would have loved 3 or 4 months off work having 1:1 care of our child. I think it would have benefited all of us actually: him, our daughter (lovely for her to have that 1:1 time) and it would have been easier for me to get used to the work routine knowing I could leave the house in the morning without having to get the baby fed, up and off to childcare. Seems to me the perfect transition.

I’m an oldie though, so when we had our daughter, dh was back in work the day after the birth, and I was back after 12 weeks, breast feeding and getting dd up to drop at childcare.

The legislation around maternity, paternity and parental leave is a thousand times better now, and imo is actually quite generous as it is. The idea of both parents staying off for a year is barking mad

I mean, I think shared leave is an absolutely great idea and think it's a massive shame that there's only been a small percentage of parents that have taken it up. Hopefully that will change in the future.

I can see her point too OP although I'm not a mother myself. Sounds like a suggestion that would ideal but not realistic. I think I read somewhere that Sweden allows around 8 months leave for each parent, with 3 months each as a "use it or lose it". Maybe if we had a similar "user it or lose it" system here it would encourage more dad's to take it too.

I think the reason there is so little uptake of shared parental leave is financial. Women often have maternity leave enhancements in their contracts which men don't get and which women who choose shared parental leave instead of maternity leave also don't get.

We plan for my husband to take 3 months leave but couldn't afford more because it will cost us thousands compared to even just my taking it. As per the national average, my husband earns more than I do.

The thing I would lobby for is more subsidy for childcare.

Don’t you get help via tax free childcare?

Onno1 And sugar: for me the ideal would be something like 6 - 9 months for the mother, with an additional 3-4 months which has to be taken by the father (or just not taken.) I also agree with onno1 that ideally there shouldn’t be a financial disincentive for the dad taking leave.

There are so many aspects which aren’t quantifiable financially... the benefit to the child of having 1:1 care from dad. The societal changes that would be the knock on from this becoming the norm.

As a teacher I’m so aware of the impact of absent dads, kids growing up without positive Male role models, boys feeling uneasy about entering caring professions.

If shared parental leave became the norm, I think there would be huge knock on benefits. Each parent would have a greater understanding of the other... looking after a child all day can be tough, and equally being the one going to work can be tough. It’s also harder for a father to walk away and not take responsibility for his family once he’s had several months as the SAHP.

Maternity leave, paternity leave and shared parental leave all need to be paid better so that families have genuine choices about how long each parent takes off work. It is shameful that the UK has such low rates of pay. There are plenty of European countries which do this, so it is not that Governments can't afford this.

Increasing pay isn't enough to get fathers to take leave in any numbers. Even in countries where leave is well-paid, fathers are slow to take it. Its good for leave to be an affordable option for fathers, but it won't sort out gender equality at work.

I think 1 year each is too much. A year is unnecessary anyway to be honest- no medical reason. At the moment theres no reason why, if your friend wants it to be equal, she couldn't share leave with her partner half and half. Maybe the problem is we are still in the mindset that it's the woman's leave and woman's responsibility so the woman feels she is giving up hers and giving it to the man. Hopefully over time it will become more normal and thought of as a joint effort and joint entitlement to be split as suits the family.

Part of the problem at the moment is that people can't afford for men to take as much leave. Partly because men do tend on average to still earn more and partly because employers are still not offering the same sorts of benefits to men in terms of pay. I am self employed so have nothing but stat pay which is nothing compared to my usual earnings. I also earn more than my husband. It therefore makes perfect sense for me to take much shorter leave than alot of women do and also for him to take a good chunk of it. He will at least get some pay during that time above stat where I wouldnt and I have more chance to earn more overall while he is off. Me taking leave just for the short time I am is costing us alot of money in savings which is an added expense after paying for IVF

The funding for it alone would be hard to find. A lot of people couldn’t live on two reduced incomes and then the issue of falling pregnant again while on mat leave..

I do think with paternity leave being so short the pay should be higher, dp managed to take his pat leave as annual leave instead or he literally wouldn’t have been able to take it at all. The first few weeks are when we needed help the most, physical pain with stitches and adapting to running on no sleep would’ve been hellish alone but there’s no way we could’ve lost £600+ from one pay. That’s more than the mortgage, ironically if he was sick he’d have had full pay but their contracts only allow stat paternity leave n pay. Even half pay would’ve been much better.

I think one of the problems now is that it’s extremely difficult to make any changes which would be perceived as a backward step. So for example it would be nigh on impossible for legislation to say the mother can have 9 months and then the father 3 (or lose the last 3) because you’d have women complaining that they were ‘losing’ because they’ve previously had a right to a year.

On the other hand if, when it was normal for women to have 3 months, an additional 3 months just for dad had been the offer, I think we’d have seen a much higher take up. Or likewise I remember by the time I had dc2, maternity leave had increased to 6 months. If at that point an additional 3 months had been added for dads, again, I think the take up would have been higher. It’s the fact that women have got used to a whole year, and until the legislation a few years back it was only the woman who could take it, so it’s hard to shift attitudes, even where it could benefit everyone in the family in terms of family dynamics.

I agree though that while it’s a financial disincentive for dads, it’s harder to encourage people that it’s a good idea. Though it’s important to remember to not just look at the immediate financial hit, because while the dad takes some of the leave, you’re saving on childcare fees for that extra few months. Also, I strongly suspect another knock on might be that more women would stay in work. If a woman is teetering between going back after ML or becoming a SAHM, it could easily swing it in favour of work if she knows she’ll have 3 months of being able to get up and off to work without the added pressure of getting the child up and out too, because dad is at home. And then once she’s been back in the workplace for 3 months, she’s more likely to continue.. hence far better financially long term because she’s staying in the job market, getting pension contributions etc.

I really believe there would be a lot of long term benefits to shared leave that aren’t immediately obvious, as well as the short term benefits.

AccioCats That's what we have. With DD I took 6 months and then DP took 3 months and with DS we stretched it a bit so I took 8 months and DP took 4 months.

With DS it was absolutely perfect. DD I wish I'd had a bit more time because she was only just starting with solids and wouldn't take a bottle so a bit stressful.

You are absolutely correct about all the benefits. The time that DP had on paternity leave has been brilliant for our family dynamics in more ways than I could list.

And yep his leave was use it or lose it and ringfenced for him alone. This is the only way to socially engineer these changes on a meaningful level.

My DP took 5 months of with our DC of which 4 months was shared parental leave. Other male friends of mine and male colleagues have also taken time off.

They can do so because:

1. Their pay is either less than or equal to that of their female partner where they are both on statutory pay, or,
2. Their employer pays them better for being on shared parental leave than the mother,

and the female partner is aware of the benefits of having both parties share care of their child(ren).

Male friends who haven't taken it have vastly out earned their female partner with their companies only giving them statutory pay but the mother gets enhanced maternity pay from her employer or they are self-employed so get no shared parental pay, so it doesn't make financial sense for the couple. However most have still tried to reduce their workload for the first year if they can.

@ColaFreezePop that's exactly it. It's often those who match or earn less compared with their female partner or for whom the pay on leave is better. It makes sense as people make decisions as to what is best for their family which is often financial. I expect for a family to make a decision based upon it being better for the child to have time with both, over considerations that are financial in nature, the family would have to have a lot of savings or very good income with outgoings that are very easily manageable for them to have enough money to take such a hit without too much impact.

I guess the only way to ensure men are more likely to take the time is to bring the pay in line for leave so that men get more full time pay during the shared parental leave period.

They could make the last 3 months (ie months 9-12) paid at SMP rate if the father took it.

But then again, I get that would feel unfair for single mothers and other women whose partners didn't want to take the 3 months but who felt pushed back to work earlier than they'd like because they couldn't afford to stay off for 3 months unpaid.

Dh & I split the leave 50/50 as I was the higher earner so it made financial sense for me to go back after my occupational mat pay ended and for him to take the 6 months after that.

I don't think there's a need for both parents to be off together after the first month unless there's a health need (in which case I think definitely there should be more scope for partners to be off - either to support the mother if she has health issues, or to be with their baby if very prem/ill.)

DH took a month of shared parental leave. It was brilliant for two reasons:

1. I could go back to work without worrying about DD and whether she was settling into nursery ok.

1. After me being on maternity leave and breastfeeding, I was definitely Parent A and DH had rarely looked after DD by himself. It reset the balance a bit which was good once we were both working.

I think it's Sweden where there's 6 months leave allocated to the father, which men typically take when their partners are back at work. I think that's a great idea.