To think maternity leave should be capped at 6 months to protect small businesses?

[YourOpalLeader]

Hear me out before throwing things! I work for a small business, and every time someone goes on maternity leave, it causes massive disruption. Hiring temps who don’t know the role, training them, juggling workloads - it can’t always be absorbed. I completely understand that maternity leave is a right but should it really be up to 12 months? For SMEs, it’s almost impossible. AIBU to think six months should be the limit, with the rest unpaid or taken as shared parental leave?

Hiring temps who don’t know the role, training them, juggling workloads - it can’t always be absorbed.

Surely if a temp has been hired and don’t know the role, they then learn that in the first few weeks and after 6 months should know the role so why can’t they continue for another 6 months to cover 12 months? The most disruptive part would be the first few weeks and not in the last 6-12 months

Having a system in place /SOPs/ handbooks is essential for every role imo. Get that experience into documentation so no one is relying on memories to know what to do. Cross training can make work more varied and enjoyable and reduce the reliance on one person.

And how do you propose we breast feed baby when we are at work? By one most are weaned but if they aren’t (mine weren’t) they fed in the evenings and at night.
At 6 months mine were still being fed regularly and I could not pump at all.
A small business is not an excuse to rid a child of their mother for hours a day when they are so tiny and when a lot of them, still rely on them for their food!

Thanks for laying that out and you’re right about the refund mechanism, which definitely helps from a financial point of view.

But the issue I’m raising isn’t just about the money. It’s about the wider impact on small businesses when a key team member is out for up to a year - including recruitment, training, knowledge gaps, lost momentum, and the toll it takes on a stretched team. £191 in direct savings isn’t the point - it’s the structural disruption that can be hard to absorb when you’re working with a small, tight-knit team and limited capacity.

It’s not about cutting people off - it’s about questioning whether the current model is sustainable for every kind of business and whether there’s space to improve it for both employees and employers.

I heard of a small business owner who hired a 50+ person so they wouldn't be taking maternity leave...they needed 4 months off for surgery.

We need to be improving maternity leave in this country not making it even worse. It’s already atrocious compared to other European countries. So no, I think your suggestion is absolutely rotten.

I have had a challenging pregnancy and had to start my maternity leave early, so do lots of women. Your way would leave me with approximately 5 months with my baby. And I’m only taking 9 months because I can’t afford the 12 months unpaid.

Your AIBU was, "AIBU to think six months should be the limit, with the rest unpaid or taken as shared parental leave?"

How does your suggested solution a solution to "questioning whether the current model is sustainable for every kind of business and whether there’s space to improve it for both employees and employers"?

Only one thing for it OP, go back to the 1950's and keep the laws that meant women lost their jobs if they got married.

I hear you. I’m not trying to make life harder for parents (especially mums) and I completely agree that we need to have babies for society to function long-term. I’m also well aware of how tough returning to work can be and I have nothing but respect for people juggling babies and jobs.

I work for a small business and while I don’t own it, I’m close enough to see how stretched things can get. This isn’t about saying ‘maternity leave is too easy’ or ‘people shouldn’t have kids’ - it’s about asking whether the structure we have works for all sides. Because when a business can’t cope with long absences, the pressure doesn’t just disappear - it lands on colleagues, clients, and often creates resentment what helps no one.

I’m not advocating slashing leave - just opening the door to discuss how we support both parents and small businesses more effectively.

I'm childfree, so no skin in the game, but I couldn't care less about anyone's small (or large!) business.
If they're incapable of providing basic legal entitlements to staff they aren't a viable business.

And how is employing a temp on an even shorter contract going to help?

I agree. When I had my children you only got 18 weeks. SMP is pathetic and personally I think it would be better to drop back down to 6 months but pay more. I had major surgery and was back in a physical job 12 weeks later. It is unfair on business and frankly I needed to get back to work for MH reasons.

The business needs structures in place to be able to cope with employees taking leave for whatever reason.

Yes, I think male employees should have access to meaningful parental leave too and I’d support that. Shared parental leave should be normalised - not just to make things fairer at home but also to reduce the automatic assumption that women will always be the ones out for long periods.

But you’ve actually hit the point I was trying to raise: it’s not about gender, it’s about business strain. Whether it’s a man or a woman, when a key member is gone for 6-12 months, it’s disruptive - especially for small businesses with limited backup.

That’s why I think we need more creative, flexible models that protect both parental rights and business sustainability - instead of treating it like an either/or.

Is your objection the pay or the time off? Cos you seem to be saying it should be 6 months paid then people can take unpaid, but your argument is about the disruption. So wouldn't that be just as disruptive - or are you saying people will take less if it's unpaid?

If the remaining 6 months can be taken as unpaid leave then what difference does it make? Companies reclaim SMP anyway.

Did a man write this.

So the small business can figure out creative, flexible models to ensure their business is viable. It's a them-problem.

Came here to say exactly this. If it can’t meet workers’ rights it’s not actually a business at all, it’s a fancy hobby.

YABU.

The idea of watering down legal protections at smaller businesses gets mooted regularly as something to help them. But what would happen is once staff had got trained up and attractive, they'd take their skills to jobs that offer them more legal protections.

You're also still talking about people potentially taking 12 months off anyway, just with different payment. The lowest income ones would be able to take the full time off, they'd just get top up benefits earlier in proceedings. And anyone with a sufficiently well paid spouse or enough savings could still do it.

You’re changing what your issue is- no, maternity leave should be improving, not mandating women go back to work when their baby is 6 months old.

YABVU and even more so that you don't even own a small business so quite frankly come across as talking out of your arse.

My DS didn't sleep for more than 3 hours at a time until he was 11 months old. Even if I'd WANTED to come back after 6 months I'd have been of absolutely no use to anyone. Probably a hinderance, actually, given how affected I was by the sleep deprivation.

HTH.

@YourOpalLeader it certainly is no use for my dh's business! there are hundreds of different forms which we have to complete, all different with sometimes only a couple of sentences different. anyone goes off sick for a length of time, I have to go in to cover. it would take at least 9 months to learn all the forms!!

I completely respect that lived experience shapes how people view maternity leave and I don’t pretend to speak for all mothers. But I don’t think you have to have gone through birth or breastfeeding to raise questions about how the current system affects everyone it touches - not just parents, but small teams, employers, and colleagues too.

This isn’t about telling people how long they should take to recover or care for a baby - it’s about recognising that long-term absences, while completely valid, have real knock-on effects in small workplaces. We should be able to talk about that without it being framed as an attack on parents.

We can hold space for both: the reality of early parenthood and the reality of trying to run a sustainable business or team during long absences.

It's easier to get decent maternity cover if you can offer a 12 month contract. Not many people want a 6 month contract - you limit your pool. Also, do you really want a mum of a small baby to be back at work... I'm a valuable employee with in-demand skills but would have been fairly useless at that stage, with the sleep deprivation. And also very sad to have been forced back prematurely - so frankly I'd be looking for another job, somewhere they can handle the fact that women have babies.