To think the amount of SMP is entirely unreasonable?

[SMPWTF]

I knew the amount prior to TTC but only now at 6 months pregnant is it actually registering.

£184 a week, and it’s taxed. If it weren’t taxed the amount would be £736 for a 4 week month.

How is this even close to enough?

DH and I earn similarly, respected careers but we’ll never be millionaires. Our household bills for our small semi-detached home are just over one of our whole salaries.

I understand that in the ideal you’d save up for maternity leave, but in practice that’s difficult for most people. The start up costs for preparing for baby are very expensive. We have been lucky to have been gifted a lot of big ticket items but even so the costs still add up fast. I can’t imagine even trying to save anything for a second maternity leave if you’re paying childcare fees for your toddler - probably one of the reasons we’ll be one and done.

I don’t think working people should have to save for years per child they have. Nor do I think people should only have children if they can afford to live on one income, because then we create a society where only either end of the wealth spectrum find themselves in a position to start and grow families.

No wonder couples are having fewer or no children.

Why can’t women be paid at least 50% of their wage? So many companies offer 6-12 months full sick pay, so why are so many still reluctant to meet this offer for parental leave?

What an ignorant statement to make. Well small businesses are the backbone of our economy so we’d all be fucked if they went out of business.

I don’t think people realise how hard it is for businesses in this country to make a profit. I’m not a business owner but I appreciate how difficult it is. If they increase prices loads it fucks up the economy further through inflation.

The bottom line is we have a productivity problem in this country and we simply cannot afford to keep subsidising people to the extent we are. Our workforce needs to be more productive before we can afford to extend benefits further.

But why don’t small businesses just pack up shop and give up, if they can’t afford to fund unlimited maternity pay. Cause that would be great for the economy and jobs!

No, everybody does not benefit.
This country (in particular the SE of the UK) is over populated already.
The world is overpopulated.
The massive Ponzi scheme whereby young people pay for the pensions of the old needs to be reformed. Increasing the population is not the answer.

"Do we live in North Korea?! 🤣"

Anyone can do what they want. They just can't expect other people to pay for it.

"Surely it's easier for an employer to cover 3 years worth of maternity leave in one go, than 3 years of maternity leave 18 months apart".

How would this work in reality, You'd end up with the 'North Korea' situation you are keen to avoid, with an employer asking the woman how many babies she's planning up have, so they know how long to recruit a replacement for! And you can't reasonably expect an employer to pay a woman to stay home for an extended period having babies, when they also have to pay the cost of the new employee.

I also wouldn't fancy keeping someone roses seat warm for 3 years then having no job. If I was a younger woman, I'd be thinking about my mat leave. Will the boss be in the hook for a temp to cover the temp?

The whole thing is madness. I think 6 months, full pay with at least one year of full time work between claims and claims limited at 3, is more than fair.
Babies are important but so is the wellbeing of all employees too - no one gets paid time off to look after their dying parents - there are limits to what the state/employer should be responsible for.

It's double job seekers allowance.

Absolutely agree. The government needs to pay higher SMP. It should not be down to private companies. It is in the government's best interests to encourage women to have children and be able to return to work.

"Then I’m not sure you can afford to be in business."

Stupid thing to say. Should you pay twice at the supermarket and get half the groceries? Businesses are run on tight margins. But they keep people employed and paying all that tax which keeps the country afloat.

You can't be serious?

You want these small firms to close and make 20 people redundant?

My work offers 100% normal wage for the first six weeks, 50% after that. Used to just be SMP, but they found they were actually making a small profit for some reason on the SMP so changed the policy. I don't know if this is true for all small businesses/organisations, just saying what was true for us as a small charity.

And on finding a job with a better maternity package - I like my job, it's genuinely flexible and the wage was higher for less hours than comparable jobs. They did increase maternity pay as outlined above before I became pregnant.

I am very torn about this being in a business that moved from SMP to 6 months 90% of pay and return to work bonuses - then found that customer demand has dropped and has had to make 3% of the work force redundant.

A lot of small employers might not offer enhanced maternity pay because they can't afford it.

No, I don't expect women to be asked - they have to tell their employer when they get to a certain stage in pregnancy, so in your example of a colleague going off after being back 3 months then employer would have known she was leaving again before she was back, so the cover employee could have been asked to stay on. This would be much harder if she came back for 9 months, they wouldn't have known she would be pregnant again so soon and would have to recruit separately (yes the cover may not always be able to stay on, but in most of my experiences of this type they do).

And no, I'm not expecting an employer to pay for a woman to "sit at home" (this use of language indicates to be you've never been on maternity leave - it is not a holiday?!) I'm expecting the government to. As previously stated it is in the government's best interests for women to have babies and return to work.

I'm not talking about increasing population, rather maintaining it. A decreasing population is good for no one except the environment, and the environment can be helped in other ways (yes, more needs to be done but killing all humans can't really be the answer).

No but if you can’t afford an employee off surely that calls into question the sustainability of the business

but I do believe that small business should be subsidised in offering a more enhanced maternity and sick pay. I’d gladly pay more tax for that

Right.

I pay more tax for the NHS, elderly people and those with disabilities. I don't want to pay more tax for maternity.

Probably best if small firms avoid employing young women.

You wouldn't have to pay more tax. If more women have more babies, those babies will end up working and paying more tax. It pays for itself. And in the shorter term more childcare is needed which is paid for and tax is paid on this. People are too short sighted to see the benefit of paying more for maternity.

@YOYOK

It's not silly to compare sick leave to maternity leave. My point in the example I gave is that the blokes at work incurred silly injuries playing footie in the office football team - and then had full paid sick leave for 13 weeks to "recover" and yet as a woman at my work you weren't entitled to any full paid maternity leave even though there is certainly a period of recovery time you need post birth.

Nobody plans to get injured even if they were larking around. Maternity leave is important and extremely undervalued so comparing it to sick leave isn’t helpful. It’s apples and oranges. It should be better funded but it’s not necessary to bring sick pay into it.

Oh and to add if women are forced (under your scheme) to go back to work full time after 6 months, to have had maternity pay, most would just not do it. Meaning either they won't have children at all this a declining population and the economic disaster this would bring, or they would all quit their jobs and claim benefits.

Do you think this really an effective answer?

Or instead should women not be supported to maintain the population, thus maintaining the economy? Should they not be supported to return to jobs and therefore pay tax? Should they not be able to progress with careers
and continue to increase the tax they are paying? Should they not be supported to use a level of childcare which will then have tax paid on the payments (whilst enabling them to earn a living) to be able to support themselves to not live on benefits, and pay tax on those earnings for many many years afterwards?

Don't be short sighted.

Or maybe people who go to work instead to keep more of their pay to spend on their own personal lifestyle choices instead of handing over more and more to pay for other peoples lifestyle choices. There has to be a cut off point otherwise as we can see people just stop working or work less...what was today's figures 10m people who aren't working...

The more we get taxed in every direction it's becoming less attractive to work we already see people.sayimg why bother working x hours when I get more on benefits because working full.time only earns me £100 more...I don't blame them for thinking that way

That’s literally the welfare state though.

maybe you wouldn’t have to, it should be high earners and on an individual level it’s a small amount. I’m not a particularly high earner by
MN standard, but I’d gladly pay more tax for a fairer and kinder society, because it’s for the greater good and individually it’s a small amount that I wouldn’t notice

I’m also not a huge 6 figure earner and I’d happily pay more tax for a more equal society. I don’t see SMP in the scope though, given there are many other much more pressing issues. It’s way down on the list. It’s on the list but we cannot fund everything even with a tax increase.
There is UC for low income families who cannot be sustained on SMP, which is fair and reasonable to ensure women and children are not in poverty.

TBH OP I tried not to have coffees out too often on maternity leave ( maybe once a week) I went to free church groups or the library loads, ate at home whenever possible, oh and went back after six months. That was 21 & 17 years ago.

I know someone who was back for less than 3 months.

I can only repeat what I have already said.

If women were given more generous payments' there would be threads on here in 2 years asking for more.

The deal now on leave and money is not too bad. Subjective I know but that's my opinion.

I don't want to pay any more tax to allow anybody to have longer off work.

I'm not interested in anybody claiming they are doing the nation some sort of service by having children. People have children because they want them. Fair enough. But don't claim that you're doing this to provide the next generation of workers and tax payers.

If you can't afford children, then don't have them. It's not a right that I have to pay for.

I’ve already seen in mentioned here several times that mothers shouldn’t be ‘forced’ to work when they have young children.

I think some feel like they should be paid to be SAHM’s - I’ve seen that a few times on here too.