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!

I do think that some people want to return to the 1950s days but perhaps they are dying off now.

One of my grandmothers was a state registered nurse. She had to give up her job on marriage and would have been dismissed had she had a child without being married.

Other grandmother was a qualified teacher. She was engaged but got pregnant before marriage and left and got married before she was sacked! I think there was still a marriage ban on female teachers up until the 1960s?

No doubt some men (and women!) would rather we didn’t have the vote too.

I was out with a friend today who was moaning about employment rights and unfair it was to expect to expect small business owners like her to pay maternity pay and sick pay and minimum wage. She said she'll just refuse and sack anyone who tries to take maternity leave at her company .
I'm not surprised a lot of people want it abolished. I personally think if you can't afford to look after your staff properly then you can't afford to own a business but there's a lot of people out there who think differently.

I am very pro parental leave but reading comments here I’m wondering if most people are anti pregnant women?

Out of the 400+ comments, there were absolutely loads on the side of pregnant women.

Why have you chosen to copy and paste only the negative ones?

It would be good for small businesses to be able to pay into an insurance scheme to cover things like sick pay and maternity leave. It would be an extra cost to factor in but it would help to mitigate the risk.

Shit like this is why men need equal paternity. Would prevent discrimination and even the pay gap.

In my experience a lot of small businesses are not hiring young women. I've worked for loads of people who only hire menopausal plus women and young men and they are quite open about why.
Big businesses can take the hit but if you work in a small shop or something it's going to be tricky.
I don't know what the answer is.

JellyBabiesSaveLives ist right at the very beginning of the thread - make paternity leave compulsory (not at the expense of maternity leave but in addition) to level the playing field.

Where I live employers have to hold a mother's job open for three years. The UK is quite backwards, though nowhere in the developed world is as backwards as the USA.

I don't read the DM anymore but I remember any article on maternity leave ended like this.

Shocking that so many people think that businesses bear the cost of maternity leave though, and don’t realise that they claim it back from HMRC.

That is nonsense. Employers are refunded the cost of SMP, but that is only a fraction of the costs of mat leave. Recruiting and training maternity cover is expensive and often impossible. And most employers offer more than SMP.

I totally support mat leave and around 80% of my employees are women under 45, so we certainly do not discriminate against them, but it is frustrating repeatedly to see MNetters claim that mat leave is cost neutral. It isn't- every pregnancy costs our business thousands.

It's the daily mail. They loathe cyclists, BMW drivers, social workers, children, vegans, environmentalists, pregnant women, foreigners and most of all, women who breastfeed! And generally they just dislike most people and things.

It seems quite short sighted for some small businesses to only employ men or older women. Surely anybody can get cancer / be hit by a bus / resign at any time? But then all I read online is that young people can’t find jobs, women 18-40s can’t find jobs, people over the age of 40 can’t find jobs as they are too old. Yet 29 million people manage to be in employment.

But I wouldn’t choose to work for a small business, feel more at home being part of a larger organisation.

As a woman in her 30s I’ve certainly never had any issues finding employment within the public sector or financial services.

I'm on mat leave now and almost everyone I have spoken to since DS was about 8 weeks old has been surprised when I've said I'm off until he's 10 months old. There does seem to be an expectation that I should get straight back to work.

Did they say anything about paternity leave. Didn't think so. Good old misogyny for you

It can cause chaos and affect exam results in schools. For example, DH was desperate for a stable English dept last year. They advertised and only one person applied but she seemed good. They explained the situation they were in and how important it was that they had stability in the September. She was full of promises.

Come September she arrived and on the first day announced she was pregnant and would be going on maternity leave at Christmas for a full-year. She was then off at least a day and often more than one, every week from October until Christmas. Her classes never got to know her, had a run of supply teachers and their behaviour was really poor and the quality of the teachers was not good- the school had no idea when she was going to be off so just had to call in supply on the morning.

At Christmas a full-time teacher was appointed for a year who asked for extra money because of her experience so she cost them more. She asked for a full-time permanent contract at Easter but of course they could not offer her one because they did not have one to offer her. She then found another job from September. They found another teacher from September for a term - after several attempts- the original teacher having confirmed she was returning to her post In January.

In November she applied to work part-time from January, 3 days a week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. This means all of her classes are now split between two teachers as they have a lesson of English every day.

She has broken no rules but it is an example of the difficulties a school can face.

Mum of two here, I worked for others while I had kids and utilised maternity leave on both occasions due to circumstance didn't go back afterwards. Decisions I would still stick to 10 yrs later. I'm now a small business owner, a business we started when my second was 6 months old.
I can see both sides, when I hire I look at so eone who can fulfill my business needs and want long term commitment. I would not have met mmy own criteria!!!!!!

I can see it from a mums perspective and as a business owners. I will probably side more with a business owners as I know how resilient, adaptable and resourceful I became when our business was in its early days. My whole view on employment changed dramatically.

Yes there are benefits to it but work and young kids do conflict in relation to your priorities and you can't have it all so you compromise. Business needs don't compromise as easily as they are client led not parent led and I'm waffling now so will shut up......

Parental leave IS important but I think there are nuggets of truth in some of the comments

If it was actually shared parental leave (use it or lose it style) then not hiring women would not be an issue - as all your male employees might take parental leave too, and their fertile years are quite a lot longer..

It can cause chaos and affect exam results in schools.

DS is rapidy approaching his most important school exams, the ones which will determine his grades for Uni application. His teacher in the key subject he wants to study and get a good mark in has just announced her pregnancy and that she'll be leaving at Easter.

Delighted for her. But yeah. The timing sucks for her students.

Using the daily mail as a means to ascertain most peoples views isn’t exactly reliable ! Fake news inc

But teachers can’t plan their lives around their students, they have their own families. Otherwise they would never get pregnant and devote their entire lives to teaching.

I was thinking of being a teacher but don’t think I will now - I value my own family over other people.

I agree to an extent, maternity pay is an unfair burden on small businesses and the holding the job open for a year thing discourages promotion for women. Instead of forcing businesses to comply the government should have provided a substantial tax break for companies that pay out under this policy. That way employers would want to hire women of childbearing age.

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.
Having minimal paternity plus sharable parental leave is inadequate. Countries that have lengthy, use it or lose it, paternal leave have much higher uptakes. In Iceland its currently 3 months for each parent and 3 months shared (looks set to be improved shortly).

Nearly 90% of men take their 3 months. It's also leading to attitude changes with the vast majority of young, Icelandic men seeing paternal leave as an important part of masculinity.

Iceland also has a very narrow gender pay gap as a result.

The Daily Heil won’t allow women to be photographed in trousers for their shitrag. Tells you ever you need to know about the importance of anything in their pages.

Its the faily mail though.

They like the good old days where you could sack a woman for being pregnant. Problem is they don't like immigrants either so I'm not sure who they think is going to do the jobs.

If more men took paternity leave there wouldnt be so much stigma against women of child bearing age

People are going to be working over 45 years now. Having 2 year long breaks and welcoming them back means you will have very loyal employees

It's ALWAYS 'what is this, the 1950s???'

Why is this always the default setting? Many other decades before that treated women/mothers like shit too.

So predictable and cliched!

I think it's bad that women are treated this way (choose between children or career,) and that men don't have it the same, But tbh I can see both sides of this to a degree. A company doesn't want to employ a woman, and put all their time and money into training her, just to have her pop off and leave and never come back. (And even though some women do return, some do not.)

Also, when I see a thread on here, where a woman says 'Just about to start a new job, even though I am 2 months pregnant. AIBU to not tell them?' it makes me want to scream. These women are throwing women back a century with this attitude. And a bunch of women come on the thread praising her and saying you BET you should do it. You're entitled. Womens rights, the rights of the pregnant woman yada yada yada.........

Start a new job, and then leave 5-6 months later and demand maternity pay. No wonder women find it so hard to be taken seriously in business, and climb the career ladder, when some women have this attitude, and no wonder some businesses are reluctant to hire women of childbearing age.

Yeah of COURSE women should be helped and protected and so on, and should have good maternity leave, and with full pay for 6 months, then half pay for the next 6... But I agree with a pp that there should be no maternity leave straight away. Should have 3 years service first. Or even 5.

But when women start a job when they are pregnant (and they know it,) with a plan to get maternity leave a few months after, I think that's pretty disgusting.