Maternity Leave Equivalent (Wild Speculation)

[NeonSoda]

So I was wildly speculating with a friend last night, and I said that I thought it would be wonderful if child-free people could have the same 52 week x £172 benefit given as maternity leave, but without having to have a child.

If that was something you could opt to receive, as a childfree person, what would you do with your 52 weeks of subsidised break from full-time employment?

(NB - the condition here is that you cannot do your job for those 52 weeks and also receive the money, just like a person on maternity leave can't.)

You wouldn't do anything with your paid sabbatical?

Men, in my fantasy land, could always choose not to put their penis in people if they don't want to have to spend their paid sabbatical looking after their children. ;-)

Why not?

It would equalise job market if everyone took 1 year off before 40 lets say. No "lost out because I went on maternity". Ultimate equality where everyone loses out which means it beclmes so normal for companies that actually no one would be losing out😁

Travel around cheaply, do some course, spend time with family abroad withput time restrictions

If we could do it together, we would untie the boat and cruise the bits we haven’t yet done so, before finally selling up.

I'm surprised so many people here could live off £650 a month for 39/52 weeks!

Many people have savings that they could use to cover it, and people later in their careers may have paid off mortgages etc so reduced expenses.

In my fantasy world people would manage. ;-)

You know about it, you can save up. Like people do for maternity

@Zamzamzamdeedah Yes, but I don't know anyone on mat leave who could afford things like cruises or degrees! Our even gym membership.

Surely you can understand that people live in different circumstances.

For example I only earn £200 a week by choice but can also still afford a very nice life, including paying £3k a year for my part-time OU course.

This is partly due to my DH, my family money, inheritance, and money earned from previously owning property.

I know people who have been regulars at the gym during maternity leave.

Can't think of any who self- funded degrees (I know some people who were pregnant on their degrees but that was different, they didn't have maternity pay), or any who went on extended holidays but that's because they had a baby which obviously a child-free person wouldn't have.

Well the saved money go somewhere innit. Knowing that DH and I will get a year off once a decade for example, I make sure to save properly and plan. So yes, we could afford to rent or by a campervan or something or go on a cruise and so on. Same way like we save for things now. No difference.

Meanwhile person on maternity spends the money on other things related to the maternity.

@Zamzamzamdeedah I guess my point is that if you're in a position to save up enough to fund a nice lifestyle for most of a year, most people actually could make a 6-month sabbatical for themselves - either by negotiating it with employers or finishing their job and finding another (totally acknowledge that not everyone has skills in areas that new jobs come easily), without a government top-up. But I don't know anyone who has actually done this, so I'd be interested to know if many people decided it was worth long-term saving if a non-mat leave was actually an option vs saving up to retire earlier for example.

@Hiddenawaytoday Yeah, you need an employer that permits it (and I've never worked for one that allows you to have a sabbatical to do whatever you want, it has to be relevant or useful to the company) and you need the protection of being able to return to work at the end of it. And then if I took 6 months off between jobs I'd spend maybe half of the time making sure that I had a new one lined up, which defeats the purpose of it really.

If I had both the complete freedom to take a sabbatical for whatever I wanted and the right to return, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I don't know anyone who's been able to do it but only because those two things weren't available to them.

As @fitzwilliamdarcy says. I also never worked for anyone or in position whre I could just take sabbatical. The security of a job is crutial.
If I had sabbatical, I would happily postpone retirement by a year for each year leave. Why wait when I could do the thimgs now!

@fitzwilliamdarcy @Hiddenawaytoday

we did it for a short three months break. I was recovering from major surgery and my partner quit work to look after me. We went narrowboating for three months and did 1/3rd of the system. Lived totally from savings. Was 20 years ago.

Sounds amazing!

Why instead of maternity leave? In a true fantasy world, everyone should be able to take a year off at some point in their career separate to the decision to have kids or not! Maternity/shared parental leave serve a specific purpose (personal and societal) including recovering from childbirth, but parents should also be entitled to this to pursue their dreams in the fantasy world. Maybe that is a truly unpopular opinion though!

My work offer 3 month unpaid sabbaticals every 5 years so kind of do the equivalent, although not many people take them so could be seen as a little stigmatised to take one depending on your boss. We see directors take career breaks more often, I guess because they have more savings. I would definitely use it to travel, maybe move to Italy for a year to learn Italian, and plan to take one in the future.

Like others, time off to study rather than juggling full time work and reading/writing sounds amazing!

It would also be great to take the time to get in routines with things e.g. gym, nutrition, visiting friends/family.

Like many others, I feel pulled in many directions on a daily basis and being able to drop the biggest one (work) and maybe focus on one of the others (family, friends, hobbies, health) entirely for a while would be so so useful.

I also volunteer and never feel like I have enough headspace to truly "give" while I'm there and not just go through the motions so it'd help with that too!

I'd be much more refreshed on return!

I figured out mine fully.
Dh would start month early and go to his family. I would join him later for few weeks. Then chill home, travel, chill home, meanwhile do a course, then go to my family with DH for few weeks, he goes back and I stay a month. 😁

parents should also be entitled to this to pursue their dreams in the fantasy world. Maybe that is a truly unpopular opinion though!

Can’t imagine why you’d think this was unpopular.

I’ve only seen the OP’s idea suggested once on a main board and it was the parents saying only they should get it. We’re talking specifically about childless/free people here because this is the MNetters without kids board. Not because we don’t think parents should have the right to the same thing.

It’s also only parents (well, mums) that have this sort of thing in the real world! Why would the fantasy world version be unpopular?!

Because it was pitted as a childfree vs parents thing ie parents get a year off and childfree people don't, childfree people should get the same. Probably why it raises backs sometimes because parental leave is not really a break from work (not in the sense it's pitted here to do what you want), but a different type of work. But everyone should get the option to spend time away from work to do other things and it's why some companies offer sabbaticals. Maybe that's not actually an unpopular opinion and happy to be corrected, was just responding to the way it was phrased it was "if you take maternity leave you don't get this year off because you've had the equivalent".

With shared parental leave it isn't only mums who get this option now also, although I will say it is set up unfairly as mum's have to "give up" their leave to give to the father and a lot of them don't want to for understandable reasons. But that's a whole other thing.

In theory, the point of government supported maternity leave is because it's beneficial for society so- the question is, what would you do for a year to contribute to society?

No.

Having a child is a voluntary personal lifestyle choice.

It's not involuntary misfortune like accident or illness.

We all should get paid time off for lifestyle purposes, but currently only one lifestyle choice is allotted that. It's unfair.

Because it was pitted as a childfree vs parents thing ie parents get a year off and childfree people don't, childfree people should get the same.

Parents do get time away from the workplace to pursue something they wish to do, when childless people don’t. That’s not a dig - it’s a factual statement.

Nowhere has OP said that parents shouldn’t get it.

Probably why it raises backs sometimes because parental leave is not really a break from work (not in the sense it's pitted here to do what you want), but a different type of work

Fine but it is nonetheless something they chose to do.

was just responding to the way it was phrased it was "if you take maternity leave you don't get this year off because you've had the equivalent".

It wasn’t remotely phrased in this way.

I’m not discussing the point around the inadequacies of SPL - it doesn’t interest me and it’s not relevant to the thread in any case.