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?

They means that women should go back to the kitchen and let men do the work. Or they should quit whining and go back to work after two weeks if they want to keep their jobs because they are subhuman weaklings for not just putting small businesses first.

How very dare they not submit to making all the money for someone else.

God wasn't it awful for businesses when child labour was banned and children were no longer allowed down the mines or in fabric mills.

That would solve all the child care related problems.

In regards to feeling disconnected there are things in place to help with that. Many companies offer mums a phased return, I know when I had my first I had the option of ‘keeping in touch days’ so for a few weeks before the return I could go in 1 shift a week. I didn’t do that, yes I’d been off for 12 months but I wanted to spend as much time with baby as possible before returning.

How will a discussion about long term absence help? People are entitled to have baby’s and entitled to maternity leave. Sitting everyone down for a discussion is not going to make someone think “I won’t have the baby I’ve always longed for because it will cause disruption me being off” and no expectant parent should be told they’re causing disruption. It’s part of being a business owner, unless your only going to hire males or women who can no longer reproduce there’s nothing to stop it, you just get cover and get on with it

My immediate reaction: your business is not more important than me and my child.

With a pinch of: How dare you suggest I cut maternity leave short because it’s “not fair”?

This attitude is exactly the problem, so, I stand by my first reaction.

If supporting parents isn’t built into how you run your business, you’re doing it wrong.

it’s that I think we need to more open discussion around the strain long-term absences place on small teams and how to support everyone better through it.

So is your next thread going to be about long-term sickness absence? I'll give that one a miss...

Or why not just expect managers to manage, instead of wanting "open discussion" moaning sessions where people throw around unevidenced assertions and short-sighted solutions, and wail and gnash their teeth.

Funnily enough my child who just turned 18 on 2nd April, was born on their due date and was one of the first babies to qualify for a year's leave. It started for babies with a due date of April 1st 2007 or after. So it is literally only this generation of children now where parents got a year of leave.

In fact I only took 9 months as I couldn't afford to be unpaid for the last 3 months.

Anyone with a child aged over 18 today managed to return to work at 6 months or less, or had to stop work. Yes it was worse, and yes we managed it. But this thread with people saying "how on earth would that be possible with a breast fed baby or one who doesn't sleep?" - just be aware, my generation of women did it and we survived. I wouldn't advocate for going back, but just be aware of the privilege you have there.

Maternity leave is mirrored in adoption leave in that most, if not all companies, have the same leave for both. Reducing entitlement to maternity leave would result in a similar reduction in adoption leave which would be disastrous for adoptive parents who, if anything, need more time to adjust to parenting, and to settle traumatised children into family life. Parental leave should be protected, not reduced.

But as you say yourself you wouldn’t advocate for going back.

I think it’s unhelpful to describe it as a “privilege”, it’s a recognition at a societal level at what is best for mother & baby.

Well yes, I stopped work. That's how I managed

Yes, surely the point is how many women did not and could not in fact 'do it'.

Parenting is damn hard work. A year's leave is a great step forward. Let's keep it.

@Ciaroscuro as you'll see upthread, I live abroad and only had 6 months mat leave, I've just done my first week back. My employer is getting a very slow and tired version of myself. 3 women resigned right before coming back (out of a team of 15, that's significant) because they couldn't make it work. Our main competitor has just announced they are improving their mat leave allowance to 9 months in an effort to keep women on (unpaid, but at least you keep your job).

Yes, women (myself included) manage. But it really isn't a race to the bottom. And frankly, more women nowadays need to work. Governments keep saying they want women to work. But if they also want us to make babies, they need to make allowances in these early years.

Hardly any women would return after mat leave if you halved it. And small businesses with short mat leave policies would be boycotted by parents of young families, as you might scrap things like emergency leave to care for dependents (even NHS provides 10 days within 12 months to parents or gaurdians) so recruiting would be even harder.

Mat leave isn't a holiday, it's a year to bond with the new human you've birthed and recover from pregnancy and birth. It puts a huge strain on the body. Some birth injuries and pregnancy illnesses take over a year to recover from.

Since covid I don't think the problem is mat leave, which is only used about twice and only by a small percentage of staff. It's covering sick leave when people take 6 months or a year off for stress or other vague reasons.

If you are getting the impression that I think women should go back after 6 months you are mistaken. All I was doing was pointing out that it's been that way before, because some posters didn't seem to realize that to return to work with a breastfed baby or a baby that didn't sleep through was what a lot of us had to do in the past, and it is lucky and good that things are better now.

I think the problem with describing it as ‘lucky’ and a ‘privilege’ is that it implies it’s just a nice to have, and not something we should continue to expect. I don’t consider it ‘lucky’ that I have indoor plumbing, or that children are no longer forced into the workforce at 14. Society improves over time, and so should our expectations.

On the contrary, most women returned when it was 6 months.
That doesn't mean it was better that way.

I think modern women are lucky and privileged compared with my generation to get a year's maternity leave. And that is a good thing. On the other hand I think my generation was lucky and privileged in terms of relative housing costs and student loans. I think counting your blessings is ok to do. You don't have to agree of course.

Children and mothers matter more than your business.

I’m an oldie who actually went back to work with a 3 months old because that’s how long paid mat leave was. I breast fed too and it was damn hard returning to work - not that I regret it though, I wanted to keep up with my career.

However, we can’t move backwards, it’s good that mat leave is more reasonable now. That said; the two big advantages of returning to work earlier were that separation anxiety was non existent, whereas I see quite a few mums now who have a real struggle settling one year olds in childcare for the first time. Also, I didn’t feel at all out of the loop with work - it felt more like an extended break whereas a year out of it might have felt harder to settle back into.

so all in all, I don’t think mat leave should be shortened, I think although many of us years ago just got on with it, we didn’t know any different whereas to shorten it now would feel like a very backwards step for many.

What I really do wish (and which I and many of my friends back in the day would have given our right arm for) is that transferable leave would be more widely used. I think it’s brilliant that now, mums have the option of transferring some leave to the dad. So good for the child and dad.

Who looked after these 3-6 month old babies? Were there nurseries full of babies who barely got their needs met, or did grandparents step in?

You are being unreasonable. I think statutory maternity pay should be paid for the full year and all employers should be offering enhanced maternity pay (and sick pay but that's a different argument). The needs of the Mum and baby come before work.

As a society we need to encourage people to have babies.

Nurseries generally took babies from 3 months. Mine took them from 12 weeks.

My children's grandparents live 200 miles away (I stayed in my uni city).

Agree. I think it’s a troll and thus I can’t be bothered to engage further with the OP.

Only on very few occasions does it take a year!