Maternity leave needs to be redesigned

[PlumPudd]

Did you enjoy your maternity leave? Because I’m finding mine a challenge (50% exhaustion and terror, 30% boredom, 20% joy) and I can’t help but feel it’s something to do with the way it’s set up.

No idea what the alternative should be but surely entirely dropping entirely out of society and work for a year and having solo care of a tiny helpless lovely being who is attached to you like an oyster on a rock all the time - then doing a 180 and going back to full on work and life but still caring for your kids is not how it’s supposed to be?

Feel that in some ways (not health, sexism, life expectancy etc) things must have been better in the past, when there would be a bevy of aunties, neighbours, siblings and friends around you in your village, and you’d look after your baby but still spend a bit of your time working / cooking and share a bit of the baby care with the others there would be a bit more of a balance between babies and the rest of life.

Not articulating this very well, but somehow feel this lurching between extremes - a year of nothing but baby then back to normal - is not how it’s meant to be and not really good for anyone.

What would a better alternative look like? Is one even possible now modern society has changed so much and we live and work in different ways?

Definitely agree that returns to work and childcare costs should be better, but most of the problem comes with the idea now that once the baby is born it should just be “our little family”. You see it on here a thousand times a day - parents or in-laws want to see the baby too much, are treating it like an object to be passed around, siblings or colleagues intruding into life when it should “just be” some idealised wife-husband-baby situation.

Also, in the Western world we often see moving away from family as progress, that we’ve “achieved” enough that we can move away from our home towns. We’re seeing more and more how bad that is for these kind of situations when extended family are now 4+ hours away and can’t be present regularly.

On top of that, there’s this modern idea that (often) we don’t open our front doors unless it’s a pre-booked visitor, we don’t answer phone calls, we don’t talk to people in local shops and cafes, we don’t have churches or other organisations where we know a wide range of local people. We choose to isolate ourselves the wonder why we’re lonely.

All of this can be changed, but it’s a modern social trend you have to choose to do differently.

I think they should scrap the terms maternity and paternity leave and just replace it with parental leave. And then whoever decides to look after the baby is the one who gets the pay etc.

Do you realise you haven’t invented parental leave and shared leave already exists where either parent can be the one to take time out to look after the baby?

Make sure you share some of your leave with DH. It is important that he also experiences sole care all day for a period

but What if the mat leave pay is good but the paternity pay is satutory? Doesn’t it not just go by the lowest one?

Maternity leave can be a completely different experience depending on who you are and where you are at that point in your life. Some people genuinely enjoy their job and would find it hard to stay away from it for a year. That definitely wasn’t me! I found i enjoyed it so much, almost mainly because I wasn’t at my work. It would also be very different if you didn’t know anyone who was pregnant at the same time but luckily I was pregnant when people I was already friends with were pregnant so it meant I didn’t even have to make an effort to make ‘mum friends’ (which I think I would have struggled with). I ended up starting a work from home business up while I was off and didn’t return to the job I hated. It was (and still is) the perfect balance between looking after a baby and also having some sort of drive and focus. I found it really baffling as the year came to an end that lots of my friends who had been off full time with their baby were now putting them into a nursery or childminder full time and returning to work 5 days per week. It seems odd that an 11 month old warrants a parent being at home with them all the time, yet a 12 month old doesn’t 🤔 Lots of my friend’s jobs involve long hours too so they must only see them for an hour before bed, if that, and then at the weekend. It’s a really odd set up to me the way it goes from one extreme to the other. Also the money, especially for the first 6 months, is absolutely shocking!

In my opinion the very first year with a new baby is the best and easiest part of parenthood. I love the baby stage and would never have wanted to work when my children were so young.

So much of your post resonates with me!

I think our maternity rights are very good in this country with payment for a good chunk of it, opportunities for shared parental leave, KIT days and getting the opportunity to have a full year off is great, especially if you compare us to the US.

BUT it's society's expectations that are too much, that I take a year off, enjoy it and then suddenly manage to slot baby in around a job and keeping a house clean. Then they get older and there are various clubs and birthday parties, and you are still trying to work, keep them alive and a clean house.

I have gone to stay with my parents as my partner left me while pregnant. Despite the heartbreak etc, It's been great having them as my village they are much more helpful that he would have been especially as they are retired. I love going to baby groups and pushing the buggy around in the sunshine and bonding with my boy. He is a good sleeper now so maybe I am luckier than most.

If you're having a hard time I recommend going to stay with family if they are nice, leave DH if you have one behind for a couple of weeks if he can't come with you.

You found it baffling? Most people have little choice and simply need two incomes to pay their bills.

As you've already said, some people enjoy their careers so wouldn't give it up even if they could.

@Babybabybabyy I found it really baffling as the year came to an end that lots of my friends who had been off full time with their baby were now putting them into a nursery or childminder full time and returning to work 5 days per week. It seems odd that an 11 month old warrants a parent being at home with them all the time, yet a 12 month old doesn’t 🤔

The only thing baffling is how judgemental you are to your ‘friends’. No one says one parent has to stay home with an 11 month old but not a 12 month old, where are you even getting that?? Most women don’t even take the full entitlement of maternity leave, the majority return at 9 months your your friends off at 11 months have made a choice.
Just because you chose not to return to your job doesn’t make their decision “baffling”.
Jesus with friends like you!

I found I really enjoyed my second mater it's leave better. I returned to work part time and I knew what the baby stage consisted of so I was much more prepared.

I didn't take maternity leave, I ran my own business so had zero choice, I'm actually so grateful I was able to juggle, keep working and still carve out time for the babies.

No lurching from one normal to another, taking a year off isn't the law, I wonder is the middle ground is staying working 2-3 days a week?

I do wish they would change paternity laws, that needs a massive overhaul.

where is your partner in all of this - split the parental leave

So what the hell do you want?? You have a whole year off work,paid,others doing your work but it's not enough because you're bored?it's the the system that needs to change.you should be grateful you have time to enjoy your child.

It's not usually a whole year off work paid is it? Companies can provide enhanced mat pay, I got three months full pay and then statutory for a bit, then nothing. Even statutory was a tiny fraction of full salary, and I was the main earner. We could just about afford a full year with DD1 but only 8 or 9 months with DD2. I only got statutory in that job.

The amount that is paid is 9 months. The pay rate is not much more than unemployment benefit, and is about what could be earned working a minimum wage job for 16 hours a week which is a pittance if your household expenses are based on a reasonable professional salary for full time work (the first 6 weeks are 90% of normal pay, and some employers choose to offer more than this)

The most important thing about maternity leave isn't the pay though. The important thing is that if you go back after 9 months or less your employer has to give you your exact same job back and isn't allowed to decide they like the maternity cover better, or can do without you actually. If you return after 9-12 months they have to take you back but are allowed to shuffle you into a different but equivalent role if they have found a better way to run things in your absence. These are really important rights, meaning that mothers don't have to spend their time with a new baby desperately job-hunting - the job is there for them if they can organise childcare cover for their normal office hours.

There's no obligation to take a full year if you don't need it, and no obligation to sit at home bored if you are taking it.

I do think it would be good to allow some flexibility to let mothers who can't make ends meet for rent and bills on £172 per week to do a little bit of work and not lose all their SMP. You can currently work for 10 KIT days (which your employer has to pay you at full rate for) without losing any SMP. I used that between week 30-39 of my 39 week leave and that boosted my weekly income for those 10 weeks by another £150 ish - still not enough to live on, but it helped. It would be good to expand that so that you could still do up to 10 days without any loss, and could do between 11 and 50 KIT days (with no more than 2 such days in any one week) with some sacrifice of a proportion of the SMP (someone working 50 days across a year is working 20% of the available working days in the year so the maximum deduction if the full 50 days are used should be 20%).

But the important thing would be to make sure the legislation was watertight to make sure there's no expectation or requirement for women to use any such flexibility. It could easily be twisted for employers to railroad women into taking less leave than they need for full recovery.

Absolutely agree

Currently on mat leave with number 2 and can’t wait to get back to work…so bored it’s mind numbing. Sick of asking for pocket money off my OH when I want to buy myself anything, filling the days is terrible, lack of adult human interaction is terrible.

Tbf I did go back to work after my first child working 9-3 so not quite as extreme as working full time and handling two kids. Just wanted to moan about how much I dislike mat leave :)

If it helps, NCT sent me an email about an early days course they run for mums and babies. I'm not sure how early "early days" are but may be worth enquiring if you're keen to meet more mums on mat leave 😀

I am heading off on mat leave for the first time in December and already a bit worried about boredom/exhaustion/feeling cut off from work then diving straight back in. I can't afford a full year off work (even with a VERY generous maternity package) so I'm already planning how best to use KIT days and annual leave so that it feels more like a phased return to work so that I'm not going from one extreme to the other.
Are you in the sort of job where you might have a flexible working request considered on your return so that it's not a full time dive back in?

I didn't feel like you at all. I enjoyed mine and returned to work party time. All good.

I did NCT classes and I think it helps a lot with this, as it meant I had a group to meet up with. Some people found other groups too so we had a bit more structure.

I remember as a child listening to old aunts talking about childcare in the 1920s, bluntly, there wasn't any. Older children would bring babies to the factory gate at lunchtime and mother's would breastfeed their children and then go back to work.

I'm sorry you didn't enjoy your maternity leave but it's never going to be perfect. There are always going to be rubbish employers no matter how much legislation there is. I hope things are better for you now.

1 year is to cover premies and birth injuries. I was lucky in that we have remote working so I could return to work before 6 months without the risk of colleagues knowing I had zero bowel control. Other women aren’t as fortunate.

There is no obligation for KIT days to be paid in full by your employer. However, even if you only go in and get paid for a half day (or less), that counts as a whole day towards your KIT allowance.