Maternity pay has gone too far

[EasterIssland]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c781m9v4255o

apologies if there is another thread about it.
havent seen one.

im lucky enough to have a good salary that would allow me saving beforehand . Statutory maternity pay would mean around 20-30% of my salary. Is this too far? It’s one of the many reasons why we decided to only have one. I felt really vulnerable when I was on maternity leave and didn’t feel I kept having spare cash every month. I do understand what she means tho , the sooner we’re back the less we get from the government and more taxes we pay. Coming from a woman hurts even more not being recognised the sacrifices we do whilst we are on maternity leave

Ahhh. So your baby took a bottle. Well done. Good for you.

I went back at 7 months with DD1 (full pay for 6 months) and 5 months (SMP only) for DD2. Exclusively breastfed DD1 until 22 months and DD2 is going strong at almost 1. Both times had a flexible employer so despite working full time didn’t need full time childcare which helped. I don’t understand why she’s saying it’s taking from one tax paying group - I’ve paid more tax in 6 months than I received in SMP for both pregnancies.

I don’t think anyone claimed she said the amount was excessive, she seems to think the length is excessive and I don’t understand her point that somehow businesses are going bust due to statutory maternity regulations considering the business claims it back and doesn’t end up paying it!
Considering the only other real statutory protection is that your job needs to be kept open for you in some capacity for 12 months, then no, I don’t think people are outraged enough about her comments!

Not necessarily. My DC1 was exclusively breastfed and I returned to work when he was 6 months, having spent the previous few weeks teaching him to take expressed milk from a cup. He finally weaned at 2.5 so it clearly didn't harm our breastfeeding journey.

Nevertheless, Kemi Badenoch is ridiculous and maternity leave/shared parental leave should be much better supported.

Can you not see how she means employers could choose which benefits to offer?

So people who are high earners in a competitive market will choose companies with good parental leave packages. Many people at the other end of the scale with little choice regarding their employment, who just need work, will have nothing - zero hours contract, no sick pay, no maternity pay

Thus, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

There is absolutely no way to package what she said and make it palatable.

A patriarchy pick me "woman". She's vile.

Don't you know we should all just make better choices and marry an investment banker to fund our lifestyles.

Socioeconomic cleansing at its finest.

I do hope she wins the leadership election.

She'll be the final nail in the Tory coffin.

There was a time woman couldn't have a bank account ......

It's a slippery slope.

I honestly thought Kemi couldn’t be more hateful but off she goes. At a time when mums are struggling to feed themselves on the frankly piss poor excuse for maternity pay that SMP is. Disgraceful. She was also spouting nonsense. I owned a business and claimed SMP back from HMRC when my employee went on maternity leave.

I think that's what she was saying. She might know what a woman is but she doesn't care about poor ones.

Regarding questions of breastfeeding I went back to work at 7 months(shared parental leave) . , mixed fed my son for a few months until he was 12 and then carried our journey of bf until he was nearly 5years so myself being at work didn’t affect (I still remember those days trying to pump some milk in the disable toilet at my office for it then to fall on my journey back home). I know how lucky I was to be able to carry on bf despite being back at work

im Spanish. In Spain laws have changed. Now it’s 4months full pay for the mum and 4 full pay for the partner. Friends complain that the British is longer , but when I point out it’s not full pay then they think about it twice

My DD did the same from when her baby was 4.5 months old and fed him until he was 20 months

Oh and he refused a bottle so had expressed milk in a tommee tipped cup and a breastfeed at lunchtime ( or whatever break she had - shift work)

She seems to live in a bubble. She’s the one that thought a couple of shifts at McDonalds made her working class. I’ve no problem with assertive women but I think she’s a bully

She’s a dangerous, vile, evil, misogynistic, entitled nightmare of a woman.

Please don’t belittle educated women who know how to research their sources.

That’s all very well and good to a point, but I had to start my mat leave 6 weeks early due to awful hip problems. I started work again just after my baby turned 8 months and I was very ready to, so I don’t necessarily disagree with you that 6 months with baby is ok. However if I’d had 6 months may leave in my situation id have returned to work with a 4 month old - neither of us would have been remotely ready for that

we already have terrible mat leave compared to lots of other countries, why make it worse

Let's hope she doesn't win the race for Tory party leader ......

She's the child of immigrants and wants to up the drawbridge behind her as well; completely lacking in empathy for others.

It's pretty typical to go on maternity leave at 38 weeks and give birth at 41 weeks, meaning that after six months' leave most women will have a baby who isn't even 5.5 months.

That means the baby can't have solids or water and so relies on breast milk or formula. If your baby won't take a bottle (and I wasted many hours and tears trying), then your baby needs your breasts.

Few jobs allow for women to return in a sufficiently flexible way to EBF a baby who isn't ready for solids.

Nine months pay just about allows the baby to wean well enough to be left (can take a while for some after all) and/or for the mother to finish work a little earlier should she need to.

Supporting pregnant women and new mothers is feminism 101 surely.

I ended up burning through savings during my maternity leave because statutory just wasn't enough to pay for expenses that don't stop. Like paying exorbitant amounts for mortgage, council tax, other taxes, bills, rapidly increasing food prices. If the country wants no immigration then they can't expect the fertility rate to maintain the population long-term because women can't afford to have babies until later life and and can't afford to give them the best start in life if maternity leave pay can't cover basic costs. South Korea doesn't support mothers and women in general and the fertility rate is considerably lower than the min it needs to maintain the population.
She's a pick me girl.

She’s talking crap, to put it frankly. I read up to the sentence “There was a time when there was no maternity pay and women were having more babies.”

Well yes, because a household could previously function on one persons wage. A completely pointless comparison.

1. She does seem to be saying maternity pay is going too far, which I think most of us disagree with
2. For my two cents, we need to make paternity leave much more significant if we want to rebalance the workplace at all - even with Shared Parental Leave, women are still disproportionately better off taking mat leave than SPL because employers don't tend to top up any shared leave.

It isn't just that. What if you have a difficult birth that takes a long time to recover from?

Agree with your post. My mother worked in the civil service in the early 70s. She said women were going into labour in the office because there was no maternity leave so they worked for as long as possible, then largely didn’t return after they’d had their babies.

more like big business and lobbyists behind it

Hmm, I completely disagree with Badenoch on this but not sure right wing, pro natalist Hungary run by Victor Orban is something to aim for either. His main aim with encouraging child bearing is to keep immigrants out.