To ask for your experiences of shared parental leave?

[Beaujangle]

DH and I are thinking of this but have a couple of reservations/confusions.

The first is around pay. Both our employers pay 6 months at full pay for parental leave. Does this mean I can take 6 months and my full salary and then DH take 6 months at his? Thus effectively being on a full salary?

Secondly - if anyone has done this, how did you find it? Did you feel you missed out by only taking 6 months? In some ways I feel 12 months off work is a reward for being pregnant.

The idea of needing a whole year seems a bit self indulgent
Some women have terrible pregnancies and/or births and need the year to recover. I wouldn't call them self indulgent.

Some babies are still mainly breastfed at 6/9m. DS1 was ebf and then had a bunch of allergies when started weaning. He'd have been hungry and grumpy all day if I'd gone back earlier than a year.

I took 48 weeks of my leave and DP had remaining 4 weeks with both DC. Added to paternal leave and a/l DP was off 8 weeks when DC1 was born and 10 weeks with DC2. I had emcs both births so it worked out well for us. We really enjoyed learning to be parents together and I'm so glad I shared the leave to get the extra time off at the same time, especially as only 18m between DCs. DP and DC1 in particular have a lovely bond as a result.

@Girasoli

And some women sail through both and bottle feed

I had what others would consider a terrible birth and ebf

Was still ready to go back at 6 months.

I don't want to take rights away from women but def think we need to do more to move towards a more equal split of childcare

@Botw1 I also have nothing against the idea of shared parental leave, I just wasn't a fan of the phrasing "a bit self-indulgent", I don't think it's self-indulgent if some women need more time off than others.

Can't speak to pay as I was only entitled to maternity allowance anyway, but we did an 8:4 months split and it was great. We had a 2 week overlap where we were both off and then I used my accrued annual leave to go back 3 days a week to begin with, then to 4 days etc. I didn't feel like I missed out but DH really got to experience both the joys and challenges of solo parenting, which has been great for us as a family.

It was also really beneficial for me emotionally to be able to go back to work in the knowledge that DS was receiving the best possible care from his Dad, so I could get to grips with it without having the parallel challenge of settling DS into paid childcare.

Just to add, I breastfed DS until he was over 2 and going back to work when he was 7 months did not hinder that!

@Girasoli

Because I was pregnant seems self indulgent to me.

needing the whole year because of physical recovery/pnd isn't the same thing

DH is on ShPL now. I asked for my pay to be averaged over the 7 months I was off (occupational and statutory) and his employer is paying a little occupational pay then he will be on statutory and then nil pay. I bf and then pumped but made sure to introduce a bottle early. It’s definitely made it so I’m not the “default parent” this time. I enjoy my job and m the higher earner so it made sense to do it this way.

I’m doing this with DH at the moment! My full pay ends at 4 months, and tbh we couldn’t really afford another 8 months on SMP for me so DH will start at 6 months with a month overlap for us to be as a three. As he gets 6 months full pay (but as others have said, only for the months I haven’t had out of the “paid” 9 months), it made a lot more financial sense. There is a planner on gov.uk you can use to see your entitlement.

Beyond this I feel much happier going back to work and being able to hand over to DH and not worry about nursery/childminder etc. It is a shame that I feel I’m only just getting into my stride now about 3/4 months or so, but honestly a year off would have felt too much for me. My baby is obviously wonderful but I find it really hard work and don’t really see it as “leave” in a holiday sense or recovery time! That is hugely down to personal experience of course and I know others love it. Sad to miss the summer and more interactive bits but equally those are more challenging in other ways. And I plan to go back 4 days so I keep a bit of time at home. The default parent argument was also a big one for me.

it is much more common these days. I’d say a third of my antenatal class is doing it and I do encounter dads on the baby class circuit on extended Pat leave.

@Botw1 so I'm self indulgent? I went back full time after DC1. I mostly became a SAHP after DC2 because covid hit as I went back. We both had / have big jobs (though he still got paid more than me) and trying to do that full time from home with no childcare was just horrific.

And as I said, DH is an equal parent. More so in fact than many of the dads I know who did take SPL. There's one I know in particular who thinks his job is done now he's had his 3 months off.

We (hopefully) have our children for a lot longer than just the first year.

@CherLloydbyCherLloyd what I meant was that if a couple want to do SPL then the woman must give some of her leave to the man. He doesn't have his own leave allowance to spend.

If men got their own years off id be thrilled.

I can’t answer the pay question, we aren’t uk. My babies don’t sleep so I would not have been ready to go back at 6 months. I went back at 11 months and Dh then took 4 months. So he is not having my experience at all as he has a baby that eats meals and sleeps at night, but he is doing a fab job doing the school run and childcare (we have a 4yo and one school age) and dinner etc and the washing and some diy. He’s doing more than I did but he gets sleep at night so he should be 😁 I hope he’s finding it a bit eye opening too; I can hear the morning frustration which he’s never usually around for.

We did 6 months/6 months with DS1 and 9/4 with DS2. 6/6 sounded like a good idea at the time as equal but actually I felt I missed out because the first few weeks DH was home as well and it's all a bit crazy so I only got 4/5 months of solo time to his 6.

We are genuinely equal parents as a result (not saying you can't achieve this without shared parental leave but it definitely helps) and I really enjoyed being able to focus on going back to work rather than settling the kids into nursery.

I wouldn't worry too much about breastfeeding - the stats suggest very few women are still exclusively BF at 6 months. I was with DS2 and going back to work at 9 months was fine, he didn't take a bottle but filled up on solids when I was working and then had milk when I was home. He's 3.5 and still breastfeeding...

The main issue I had was all kinds of people feeling the need to explain to me why they couldn't possibly have done it themselves because they/their DH was too well paid/busy/important, they breastfed, they were attachment parents blah blah, I just don't care why other people don't want to, I never asked but everyone seemed to want to tell me endlessly

We're splitting 6/3 this time after I took a year off with DC1. I couldn't handle being on mat leave a whole year again but I'm sure there will be other difficulties (breastfeeding and moving to bottle being one of them).

If it was available back when mine were babies I think it would have done my ex partner a lot of good to see the realities of it. I took 12 months with DS and it was too long, I didn’t know many people locally which didn’t help and I felt isolated. DD I took 9 months which was better settling her into nursery too as DS struggled at 12 months old and had only been with me 24/7. My ex could have taken 3 months with DD and that would have made it far easier going back to work. He wouldn’t have done it even if available probably due to the financial cost. Even though he had plenty of savings.

I did around about seven months with my husband four to five months three times. And they were all breastfed. The first was fine with expressed milk, the other two were bottle refuseniks but made up for it during the night, with occasional visits to my work from Dad for a feed.
it suited us, I was a better person for being back at work, he got to understand what it was like to have full time care of a baby.

money wise we didn’t lose out although if I’d worked at his work, we would have - my employer gave enhanced maternity pay for 6 months, but his gave (a less generous package) it for the mum only til 10 months.

the first time we did it was under the system before Shared Parental Leave - don’t let the Tories take all the credit for all of this, as Gordon Brown brought in its predecessor (which wasn’t as flexible).

It was absolutely amazing for us! DH and DC have a really close bond and it's set us up so well for equality in parenting. we did six months each. I could get back to work without worrying about a little baby in nursery and my career has flourished ever since. Same for DH.

I found mat leave really hard, loved DC but it was a very boring and isolated time. Struggled with being responsible for DC all day long. I enjoyed it so much more once I was working again and didn't have to do it 24/7.

Oh, re: feeding, if you introduce a bottle once a day, given by the dad, from a few weeks old, you'll never have those issues of trying to get them to take a bottle. This is genius advice and I have no idea why anyone wouldn't do this given how many have difficulty getting DC to take a bottle at 6-12 months.

"It meant that DH understood the reality of being at home with a baby, and has been a much more involved parent than most dads I know. "

Forgot to mention this! We're several years down the line now and still reaping the benefits of DH having been the default parent for six months. I'm shocked by how little involvement some of our friends have with their DC or how the mums never feel they can go away without them etc.

We we did it with our first but we had some crossover time. I was off for 8.5 months total, DH had his 2 weeks leave then an extra 2 weeks so 4 weeks together when she was first born then at the end we crossed over by 3 weeks, went away on holiday before I went back to work. DH had the final months off on his own. It meant we were both back at work when she was just over 10 months but we had some lovely family time and DH is an amazing, hands on dad. Fate handed us covid 3 months later so we had load more time together as it turned out.

With my second I did the standard 12 months because DH is now self-employed but we would have done it again if not.

Do your research though, HR departments aren’t always that up to speed with it, DH’s were telling him we couldn’t have the time together so we had to send them the government website.

I would 100% recommend it though!

This wasn't an option when I had my babies, thank goodness because my ex husband would have taken as much of my leave as he could. I'd have been back at work after sleepless nights whilst he pottered about in his shed and Ex MIL would have done the childcare for him, disappearing conveniently before I got home to cook and clear up their collective mess.

The picture I describe is exactly what did happen when I went back to work.

Might work for some but I'm glad he didn't have that option.

My husband is currently on shared parental leave. You can't double up on each others allowance @Beaujangle .

Each pregnancy (whether you deliver single or multiples) is entitled to 52 weeks maternity . Per your policy the first 24weeks/6 months is 💯 paid. The subsequent 13 weeks is SMP and the final 13 weeks is unpaid.

Regardless of who takes the final 26 (13 +13 weeks ) you will be paid as above.

What you could do is take your accrued annual leave in the unpaid months so that you have a family wage when your husband is on SPL.

This is good advice but sadly doesn't always work.

My eldest was combi fed but my youngest EBF. I introduced a bottle to her in this way same as with my eldest. She wasn't having any of it.

She did use a cup after 6 months fine but bottles and dummies were a no go as far as she was concerned.

Not a huge issue for me though.

My baby had a bottle each night at 2 months. By the time she was 6 months wouldn’t touch it and it wasn’t until she was nearly one that we managed to get her to take a bottle again.