Scrapping Shared Parental Leave

[EasterIssland]

It's in the news that it's been requested for it to be scrapped because it's not being used as needed and to get a new system in place.

I'm in between two minds about this, we took Shared Parental Leave with my son, our salaries were similar (I actually earned few ££ more than him), so we took 50/50 time . And I think it was good for my son to have 121 time with myself as well as 121 time with my DH and at the same time spending time together as a family. I'm spanish and right now in spain mum and dad can have 4 months off (which can be at the same time) when a baby is born, however, many dad's decide to delay a few months the shared bit so the baby doesnt go to nursery that early and many of them end up not using their bit as too busy at work (I've seen it a few times now)

I also take the new leave wouldn't be full salary, specially for the partner, as it'd be unfair for a mum to be circa £150/week salary whilst dad/other mum's are on full salary

So im unsure what needs changing so that the system works better.
Would 52 weeks for the mum at the current ML allowance + x amount of weeks at same salary really work? Unless the allowance is really increased to nearly match the salary I can't really see how this would work and how partners would decide to take more leave as it'd impact their home income

Would your partner have really taken chase of it if the allowance was higher ?

www.theguardian.com/money/2021/apr/26/shared-parental-leave-scrap-deeply-flawed-policy-say-campaigners

AIBU : A new system is needed and xyz should be done so it gets better
AINBU : I think the current system is good and a new one would not make partners taking more time off anyway

We didn't use shared parental leave but one thing I will add to the discussion is that my partner has always worked from home and because of this he still got to spend a lot of time bonding with our son. No long commute, able to hold baby and chill on the sofa at lunch while I had a shower etc

I know its not the same but I see it as another benefit of more flexible working being offered to all.

Not sure how this scheme can ever be ‘fair’. Someone has said they got 39 weeks full pay when many receive the basic 6 weeks (can’t remember the full package but it’s certainly much less!). Maternity leave is also about recovery and breast feeding which takes a toll physically and has to be done by one partner. I can’t work out a fair way. My worry is that it will mean maternity leave is reduced which wouldn’t be positive. Maternity/paternity leave is already incredibly difficult to accommodate for employers, particularly smaller ones. Increased eligibility may mean that they look at reducing the additional occupational pay

@bunglebee

And, again, most countries have shorter leaves than we do and in many of them breastfeeding rates are much higher. The massive drop-off in breastfeeding in the UK happens between birth and 6 weeks.

Again you seem to think we should be happy with our lot just because:other countries.

We've used it twice - once in 2013 when it was pretty recent and once in 2016. Both times I was off for 7 months-ish and then DP off for the rest of the time. I'm the higher earner but we would have done it even if I wasn't.

(I also breastfed both children well into toddlerhood, so no impact there, including regular work travel. BF after about 10 months is not like BF a newborn; youngest was a bottle refuser and was fine).

But- the system sucks. The paperwork, especially the first time, was EPIC, and the acronyms incredibly confusing. We know from the scandinavian countries the 'use it or lose it' approach works- and no amount of 'nudging' before they implemented that worked at all.

IMO it needs three things:

• A cultural shift- normalise it for men. At my current workplace most new dads take a very significant chunk. Partly because they're paid for it, but partly because it's now become an internal cultural norm.

• Use it or lose it weeks for fathers

• Equalisation of pay benefits from employers and government. The plus side of this is it will have equal pay benefits in the longer term- if you don't know who will be taking parental leave you're less likely to discriminate against women in their 30s on promotion and pay rises.

I would HIGHLY recommend it for helping to cement equal parenting. It removes default parenting by the mother. Breastfeeding isn't an issue as mentioned above- it's not incompatible at all. Talking about BF like it ties you to the child 24/7 for an indefinite period of time is one of the things that puts people off BF.

Just because ... Other countries.
Stupid face

Well as long as it works for you

What’s this sassy reply for @Horehound? You seem sure that women should be entitled to a full year’s pay off for this breastfeeding issue but in reality that isn’t practical in many circumstances

I say again, I do not understand why people are happy to accept a measly 6 months per parent? It's breadcrumbs.

OK then, what about if both parents are given the current statutory minimum of 39 weeks each?

@JassyRadlett

I'm not overly in favour of it as I feel it can be used to pressurise breastfeeding mothers to return to work and stop breastfeeding earlier than they might have planned.

Like others, I’m not that sure that it does. We did SPL with both my kids, one under the old and one under the new scheme. I went back to work at 7 months with my first (taking accrued leave after ending mat leave at 6 months and going back to work for a token day before taking leave as the system then required...) and at 8 months with my second.

I breastfed both until they were 19/21 months respectively and it was fine. I expressed at work once or twice during the day. Eldest had one formula feed during the day from around 9 months, younger remained resolutely anti-formula (and had been a bottle refuser until I went back to work). And even when I stopped expressing they still had morning and night feeds and when they were ill, in hospital was able to BF them throughout.

There seems to be this idea that if you’re not always there, you have to stop BFing which I think is just as problematic as the idea that women might feel pressured into stopping before they’re ready.

Not everyone can express, not every baby will switch between bottle/breast/cup, not every baby will drink formula or water. It worked for you which is great.

It would not have worked for me as both my child and I would have been utterly miserable, them from being dehydrated, me from full boobs and leaking every time I thought of them while knowing they were refusing to drink.

I know other countries have shorter leaves, but honestly it seems barbaric to separate a mother and infant before they're ready. They need support not to be separated.

@ThorosBeta

I suspect there are two issues:

1. The take up for shared parental leave has been really low.

1. The system is complicated - I appreciate it’s not if you sit down and actually read it but it’s something you instantly “get”. I suspect this, along with the pay issue, also affects take up.

No you are right it's fucking ridiculously complex for no good reason (except probably that they didn't want to simplify Statutory Maternity which is also fucking ridiculously over complicated).

Ive got a question, if your partners would have had the chance of having 4-5-12 months off fully paid ... would you as a couple have gone for it? Without impacting the mum's leave at all.
Howmany of your partners would have happily given up x months of their carrier for being at home. And would you have been happy to share the responsibility you've had whilst being the main carer ?

@NoSquirrels

I say again, I do not understand why people are happy to accept a measly 6 months per parent? It's breadcrumbs.

OK then, what about if both parents are given the current statutory minimum of 39 weeks each?

I'd think that's not bad

@EasterIssland

Ive got a question, if your partners would have had the chance of having 4-5-12 months off fully paid ... would you as a couple have gone for it? Without impacting the mum's leave at all. Howmany of your partners would have happily given up x months of their carrier for being at home. And would you have been happy to share the responsibility you've had whilst being the main carer ?

My partner wants children, he would jump at the chance. He knows that time with them is what he would regret losing out on rather than time at a desk.

For us, with our first, the reality was that we couldn’t afford for me to be off for a full year anyway. I’m the higher earner by a significant amount, so we were so lucky SPL was available so my husband was able to take the time.

For the second - we could have afforded it, but actually I saw the benefits for our family. So no, I didn’t feel like it was being ‘taken away from me’. I felt I was sharing out something in a way that was best for my family overall, taking a long term view. The ability to take time out to care for our baby was ours, not just mine.

Our marriage and parenting is certainly more equal for DH knowing first hand what being the primary parent for extended periods is like. Neither of us is the ‘primary’ parent now, both of us knows that being at home with the kids every single day can be just as wearying and onerous as being at work, and everything that comes with that knowledge.

We used shared parental leave and will do again. There's a set number of paid weeks and the couple can decide who takes the paid weeks. DH and I both had occupational maternity/SPL pay so we arranged it according to our entitlements.

My concern is that with Brexit, and elements of the right wanting to erode workers' rights, the aim is not to improve SPL to bring about greater sharing of the domestic load, but make it such that it pushes women back to work ASAP and is a trajan horse for going after maternity provision.

@EasterIssland

Ive got a question, if your partners would have had the chance of having 4-5-12 months off fully paid ... would you as a couple have gone for it? Without impacting the mum's leave at all. Howmany of your partners would have happily given up x months of their carrier for being at home. And would you have been happy to share the responsibility you've had whilst being the main carer ?

Why would you have a baby with someone who wouldn’t be happy to be an equal parent?

Why would you want to make yourself ‘main carer’ if you could have two equally committed carers?

It's great in theory but the whole system is too complicated so people don't use it. For that reason it's not fit for purpose and needs to be reviewed/changed.

@NoSquirrels

I say again, I do not understand why people are happy to accept a measly 6 months per parent? It's breadcrumbs.

OK then, what about if both parents are given the current statutory minimum of 39 weeks each?

people would still not take it, cuz many of them would have had a big salary cut, Statutory pay meant when I was on leave 25% of my salary(right now it'd not even reach 20%) , if my partner had had statutory pay then our house income would have been reduced to 20% income home, no way would we've been able to pay all the bills so we'd have gone back to work sooner

It definitely needs a shake up. I would have loved my husband to take SPL but he knew that his employer would reject the request because it's not mandatory so he didn't bother applying. Other men I know haven't applied because it would 'look bad' for their careers!

We are never going to bridge the gender divide until childcare isn't 'woman's work'. Having fathers looking after their children when they are babies is the best way to accomplish this. My husband hasn't spend an entire day alone with our son since he was 4 months old (he's 2.5 now).

You can also breastfeed without being completely at your child's beck and call 24/7, perhaps this attitude is what puts a lot of people off breastfeeding (I know it did for me). I know plenty of women who have successfully fed to a routine rather than demand.

I don't understand the people who claim "it wouldn't work for me" and use that as a reason why shared leave is terrible and other parents shouldn't have the choice.
Firstly you don't have to take 6 months off each with shared leave, you make the choice together that suits your family, whether that is the mother taking longer, or the father taking longer, or splitting it back and forth or simultaneously for a while.

No one is forcing you specifically to 'lose out'.

@ShirleyPhallus

Well as long as it works for you

What’s this sassy reply for @Horehound? You seem sure that women should be entitled to a full year’s pay off for this breastfeeding issue but in reality that isn’t practical in many circumstances

Because of your ignorant post basically saying what worked for you should be fine for others. It's not. But my focus isn't actually just on BF really even though I've been sucked into it on this thread. I generally feel like 6 months per parent is not long enough and don't agree with the shared element. I'm yet to see a post when the people who have actually used SPL talk about the baby, nurturing etc etc. No, it's all about who was gona lose out more financially.

But, Easter, by normalising that every parent in every job or industry or career is entitled to equal (generous) time off, companies will actually be forced to improve parental leave pay entitlements overall, for everyone, which will knock on to women getting paid more in general, closing the pay gap.

You can’t think individually on this. It’s a societal change that needs to happen.

I honestly think the biggest issue is the fact it’s shared - I think we need to switch to a Scandinavian style “use it or lose it” model for paternity, as right now the default option will remain that women will take the vast majority of the leave with even more progressive fathers taking a month or two (with very rare exceptions). Whereas if we had a system where all men got e.g. 2 months separately from their female partners, and if they didn’t take it, it just disappeared, I think there would be a lot more pressure on them to actually take it - plus it would save two months childcare so more of a financial incentive too.

I actually think the UKs maternity policy is so generous it’s bad for equality - the government is never going to be willing to increase the amount of leave available beyond the year we already get which is world leading. It kind of shoots us in the foot that women get a year, there’s no way I can see that they’ll ever give men a year too, so it will never be more equal.

I think in addition to the above there should still be the option to share the other 12 months, but think men need a dedicated period of leave otherwise very few will use it.

And the existing system is very complicated if you don’t have a good HR team to help you navigate it. One issue I found personally is most companies make you add your accrued annual leave to your shared leave, but that is when I’d want DH to take a month of shared leave, so we’d both be off at the same time which wasn’t what we wanted. There was no way around this with the 11 months/1 month split we wanted to do, so he’ll probably take unpaid leave instead as it’s more flexible.

@Lostatsea1988 exactly but I think there still needs to be reflection on the sectors where women are working versus men and the salaries associated with those industries. I didn’t catch that ‘use it or lose it’ would necessarily see an increase in parental leave pay from the article, I understood it would be at whatever rate you company decides to give. Apologies if I missed it.

Not everyone can express, not every baby will switch between bottle/breast/cup, not every baby will drink formula or water. It worked for you which is great.

You’ll note that I didn’t say it would be the right decision for everyone. I’m just challenging the idea that going back to work = stopping breastfeeding.

Interestingly I was really worried and thought we’d have to switch to daytime formula for my first as when I tried to express at home it was invariably a disaster. Managed to get a small stash in the freezer before I went back but it was a struggle. But when back at work expressing somehow became much easier and more effective and ultimately I was able to continue with only breast milk until I was ready to stop.

But at the same time - daytime formula isn’t the end of breastfeeding either. And ‘not every baby will drink formula’ is frankly almost never true - otherwise babies who lose their mothers, whose supply dries up, who have to go into hospital, etc etc would be in very serious trouble.

Similarly, my second was a total bottle refuser. We tried a lot of strategies and DH had a plan to bring him into my work if it got desperate. But once I wasn’t there for a fair while he was willing to try a cup, and was on bottles in a couple of days.

Some mothers won’t be up for that approach - which is fine as long as their partners agree, because being cut out of that experience when you want to do it must be really hard.

We are planning to use it when our baby is born. We couldn't first time as dh was on a temporary contract.
I am the main wage earner in our house and my take home wage is twice that of dh so we can't afford for me to take any longer than the 18weeks enhanced maternity leave but dh can take some of the leave on statutory shared pay (still a drop in earnings but less than a full time nursery place)
Dh is Scandinavian though and our system and pay is shockingly bad compared to theirs especially where dad's are given much more paid paternity