Most people think maternity leave should be abolished?

[PlomBear]

I am very pro parental leave but reading comments here www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7891605/amp/Sacked-having-baby-Scores-firms-pushing-female-staff-falling-pregnant.html I’m wondering if most people are anti pregnant women?

“It's a huge burden on small businesses, which is why I don't employ women who are young enough, but don't have children. My business couldn't stand paying someone to be off and employ someone else to take their place temporarily and then as we all know, the majority once you've paid them up, choose not to come back.”

“In my day when you were pregnant you gave up your job to bring up your child.”

“Its completly unfair to be made to hold a job open for a woman to have her baby. Its the womans chose so why should an employer be punished. The law is an ass.”

“Mothers should be with their children looking after them and teaching them to be future good adults, It's a choice children or career not both.”

“I think that companies should be able to put a clause in their contracts to say if they fall pregnant in the first 5 years then they forfeit the right to maternity pay and leave and are breaking their contract. Why should companies have to keep jobs open for them to may or may not return. I have never had children so never entitled to time off or maternity pay at the end of the day you choose to have children and this can be timed to not affect a job. Also they are taking a job and money from someone else.”

Reading the comments I feel like I’m back in the 1950s when teachers and nurses had to be unmarried!

Women can’t win. Don’t have children? Then you are unwoman, cold, unnatural, barren.

Have children and stay at home? Benefits scrounger! Lazy! Get a job.

Working mother? Useless at work and a bad mother! Takes too much time off work, should give up her job.

Maybe a woman can “win” if she owns a small business. The Daily Mail commenters have a hard on for small businesses for some reason.

'
Then who would work for a small business?'

People who are in a position where they can be exploited. Young people poor people old people desperate people. Note no recourse against exploitation in leadsoms comments.

Oh and women obv

Plenty of lazy old fuckers who contribute nothing reading the Daily Mail, I can assure you all.

Never mind year off.

The Daily Mail is awful, and hopefully not representative. Diverse organisations perform better, the research shows us.

Oddly, what would solve this is more generous paternity leave (as would also assist the pay gap).

I suspect that a lot of these people are going to get their wish once rules and regulations are torn up after Brexit.

In fact, if I was suspicious, I'd wonder if this was the start of a DM campaign to start dripping this poison in people's brains, so no one complains too much when it happens.

The Daily Mail has really high circulation rates. I may not like or agree with it but i'd say it is representative of a lot of peoples thoughts on things.

YABU to assume that Daily Mail commenters are representative of 'most people'!

@PettyContractor perhaps but these are still expenses and recruitment strategies a viable business should have in place anyway because it isn’t just maternity leave that throws a spanner in the works.

It will vary by industry but ultimately if your business can be sunk by one employee taking under a year out then you have to assess your model.

What it actually comes down to is employers buying into the frothing that deliberately seeks to undermine women in the work place.

Don't mothers have to repay some of the maternity benefit if they don't return to work???

Amazing how many commenters there don't know that SMP is reimbursed by HMRC - and at 103% for small businesses, even - but are also experts on what small businesses need to succeed.

How can you not tell the difference between 'most people' and 'the type of knuckledraggers who lurk in the Daily Fail comments'?

@BananaTaffy, I don’t actually agree that paternity pay changes would make that much of a difference tbh. There’s been a really low uptake of shared maternity/paternity.

What I think would work (and would never happen) is every employee qualifying for nine months Upside sabbatical (so no state payment) after a time period in service with the same conditions of a job to return to. I suspect the uptake of that wouldn’t actually be that high but it would throw the certainty that it’s only women who might up and leave at any point off.

It's the Daily Mail. They hate women of all kinds. Also foreigners, gay people, young people, liberal people - they are hateful.

If your business can't handle people going on mat leave, then it isn't viable. If skilled, educated women don't have children, businesses aren't going to have a next generation of staff.

Upside = unpaid

Don't mothers have to repay some of the maternity benefit if they don't return to work???

Not SMP, but if the employer offers you maternity pay over and above SMP then they can set conditions on that.

Not sure if the frothers over at the DM have ever wondered why employers do choose to offer enhanced maternity pay. If employees having babies is such a hellish thankless burden on employers, wouldn't they want to all offer the bare minimum and hope women are put off from even applying?

Those same people would be the same to moan to high heavens if women weren't "paying their way"

You can never please everyone, so it's just best to do as you think is best for your family.

@Cornettoninja Aviva now have the same policy for maternity and paternity leave. 6 months on full pay, then statutory (so the option for 6 more months unpaid for men). Quite different to shared parental leave.

I believe the majority of men at Aviva now take 6 months off when they have a child.

@EnjoyyourBrexit I had exactly the same thought! The lack of knowledge around SMP reimbursement is just part of the wider problem of people just believing what they read in the fail without question.

I think that parental leave should be a full year as long as both parents take 6 months or lose that time, iyswim. Then employers only have to cover 6 months. Maybe more small businesses would employ women, then.

Maybe parents should be responsible for their children, rather than it all falling to the woman.
I don't think legislation is the way forward though.
Couples should sort it out between them, both go pt and cover periods of illness with other childcare, not expecting businesses to lose staff.
The amount of times I've had appointments cancelled because the person had to go to a sick child. I find this ridiculous, whoever is taking the time off, usually the woman though.
I ask for males when I make appointments now, at least I'll get to see them.

society knows people want children but want all of the downside to be borne by the women.

There's no logical justification for any of the cost of having children to be carried by employers.

The proportion of the cost of having children that is currently offloaded onto employers via employee rights is absolutely tiny, so reducing it to zero is hardly likely to make a difference. In effect, abolishing maternity leave would just mean adding several months of childcare costs to the several years worth that people have to budget for anyway.

(I'm not advocating reducing to to zero, merely pointing out the we're not dependent on the existence of maternity leave for the production of future workers.)

YABU purely for paying any attention whatsoever to that rag and its online comments section

This is a problem because the womens employer gets hit with all the additional costs - the fathers employer should be made to contribute half, then we'd have true equality.

@Drabarni that wouldn't have worked for me. I was exclusively breastfeeding until 6 months, DD was still feeding several times at night and about 10 to 12 times in a 24 hour period. She wouldn't take a bottle and was slow to take to solids. There's no way I could have gone back at 6 months.