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.)

But women aren't forced to mate with the shit men, @ColleenDonaghy

They freely choose to. The predictable results are their problem, not ours.

First of all - it's a hypothetical question. Second of all, sabbaticals are rare in my place of work (public sector, obviously!). Almost unheard of, so it's not a case of just negotiating it if you can afford to.

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.

To answer this question, I absolutely would. I'd love a year off in my 30s or 40s to travel, see the world, work on myself (physically and mentally), spend time with my parents who are getting older. Even assuming retirement is still a thing when I hit my 70s, I am not guaranteed to make it to that age, and if you do who can predict you'd be healthy enough to enjoy early retirement?

How has even this thread descended into an argument that mums have it worst? 😂 Ffs

Their enebaling and tolerating this behaviour is not my fault and problem, no matter how brutal it sounds🤷

How has even this thread descended into an argument that mums have it worst?

That should be MN's tagline to be fair. "By parents, for parents (but mostly mums, as they have it the worst)".

I don't know. It feels impossible to even post here anymore, as if we're posting about being happy with not having kids we're horrible child-hating mum-hating misogynists but if we post about things that parents have that we don't we're also mum-hating misogynists.

Meanwhile, parents can come onto literally any thread here and start having a go at us, spout generalistic nonsense about us, or insist that we're not using the board in a respectful way to those it isn't even for.

I wish there were any other forum we could have a board on, I really do.

How has even this thread descended into an argument that mums have it worst?

Because it always does.

Because we are obviously not as important as them.

Because they begrudge us a tiny corner of this site.

God, I feel sorry for their husbands sometimes.

Oooh love this post! I've taken maternity leave in the past and planned some activities, forgetting that actually I would have a human to care for and also no money 😂 so I have already considered this in deluded optimism!

I'd like to believe I could sustain productivity for a whole year and:

• Write a book
• Finish properly learning the language I know to a medium degree

I'd also like to spend a significant period wandering around South America and East/North Africa

I'd also like to give back to the community; I was able to do a little of this in mat leave and it was really rewarding. Things like looking after a neighbours child a day or two a week so they don't have to pay childcare, or visiting elderly relatives on a consistent basis and spending true quality time with them, being able to make and deliver food for people who are ill or just had kids, and participating in community boards or volunteer organisations.

They'd be my big goals I think! Also if I came into money (obviously going to happen through the power of manifesting) I'd become one of those irritating people utterly obsessed with their renovations.

Btw @NeonSoda you haven't said what you'll spend your year on???!

Also I've changed my mind- despite all my high minded intentions as above I think the Eat Pray Love movie (ending of course with Javier Bardem in Bali) is my dream year sabbatical!

The real question is… why are you making it about men when this is a hypothetical fantasy world?

I don’t know what I’d do.

if I took it now I’d probably learn to plaster and do my house. Should take me about a year. 😂

buying a house on your own that needs work is a pain in the ass and it’s taken me a year really to even start thinking about any substantial diy!

@NeonSoda and yet Instagram would have us believe each task takes 3-6 minutes with a cool soundtrack!! I sympathise!! 😂

But if childfree people were given this too it would give them a massive advantage over mother's.. who are already quite a vulnerable group in terms of a workforce..
Because new mothers can't do an OU course or travel the world or whatever you might do on a sabbatical. Women have fought for these rights in order to avoid women who fall pregnant being left behind in the career world, or exploited, or forced into having abortions they don't really want just because they cannot afford to keep the baby. It's not a holiday.
And there's often less choice in it than you are suggesting.
For example my own situation... I fell pregnant at 28 whilst using contraception. I was on a zero hours contract working 12 hour shifts in a mental healthcare setting via an agency. I lost all my hours because no one wanted a pregnant woman on mental health wards due to the risk of violence. And as I was on zero hours they weren't obligated to give me work.. yet I was still classified as employed so not eligible for benefits etc.. can you imagine if statutory maternity leave and pay did not exist? What sort of position I would have been in. And then I was so physically and psychologically ill after the birth. I couldn't even sit up in a chair because I had torn so badly.. I couldn't even manage to walk to the end of my own street for months. And I developed pnd.
Can you imagine if I'd faced going immediately back to work or else I might lose my home?
I think this thread isn't that funny or useful to be honest. It sounds like you haven't really thought about why maternity laws in the workplace exist and just view it as something women who have babies ate getting over on you or something. When in reality it's addressing vulnerability and inequality. It would not be equivalent to give people without children 'mat leave' it would put them in a privileged position. The entire point of it was to protect women and children, not some jolly jaunt.

@haribosmarties Literally nobody is suggesting getting rid of maternity protection.

There’s something about your suggestion that childless women shouldn’t be given time off to pursue their passion in case it gives them an advantage over mums that I find a bit… uncomfortable. It reminds me of one of my colleagues who says that it’s discrimination to give childless women promotions over mums.

OP proposed a system whereby everyone gets some paid time off to do what they’d like to do. If a one women preferred to use hers to add to her qualifications and make herself a more attractive employee, then why shouldn’t she see the benefits of that?

I don’t know. It just rubbed me up the wrong way - childless women are often seen as the people who get leaned on to do the crap shifts, the overtime, covering holiday etc. and parents are fine with it, but the moment they get rewarded for doing that then it becomes unfair and it should be a level playing field. If it’s to be a level playing field then they should be required to do their fair share of the work, but of course that’s unfair on them as well.

I’ll shut up now but yeah - maybe I’m just as annoyed by your comment as you were by the thread.

It's an interesting idea, but are you proposing that anyone who has more than two children can't have more maternity leave? (Or, for that matter, anyone who's used their leave periods, maybe thinking they'll never meet Mr Right or whatever, then isn't allowed any more.)

And that's why it won't work.

It's a fantasy. Like the threads I see on here all the time about opening a fantasy coffee shop or on an ideal world what he help would you like or if you Rin the country what law would you create first etc, which never descend into arguments and the thread being dragged off topic while the op is berated for having such a thought. Maybe people shouldn't daydream about what they'd sell in their fantasy coffee shops because it would be so lovely real coffee shops would go out of business 🙄

Well considering I got 14 weeks of may leave and extended it with 4 weeks unpaid, I'd actually quite like 52 weeks to focus on crafts and self care and actually recovering my personal fitness before I hit older age.

(I've worked FT since 3 days after my last Uni exam, and almost FT in my final year, went back o work when dad was 4 months old, and have been manically busy in ever increasing pressure roles ever since).

@fitzwilliamdarcy - maybe I’m just as annoyed by your comment as you were by the thread

Hear hear. Anyone who doesn't find the thread 'funny or useful' is free to close the browser tab and leave

It would be wonderful, but to do all the things I’d want, I’d have to get a part time job. £170 a week wouldn’t even cover the mortgage, let alone bills etc.!

@fitzwilliamdarcy it's not 'time off' it's maternity leave. This is the issue. It shouldn't be compared to a holiday or a sabbatical. I get what you are trying to say about childfree women.. but there's ways to do that without shitting on women's rights by comparing maternity leave to a holiday.

I mean why not just say 'what would you do if everyone was offered a years sabbatical by law at work?' Why drag maternity leave into it? The implication is then that maternity leave is some kind of advantage some women have over others when in fact it was made law to address a disadvantage.

Yes this is exactly what I envisioned 😍😍

This board really is becoming pointless now. The conversation rarely stays on topic and on some threads users of this board are being purposefully upset by parents. If you can't even carry on a conversation without horrible\negative\derailong replies then people won't bother posting and we won't be able to have any conversations at all that center childfree and childless user's which is what this board is for.

The implication is then that maternity leave is some kind of advantage some women have over others when in fact it was made law to address a disadvantage.

Nope. As I said earlier on the thread, it’s a factual statement to say that pregnant women are able to take paid time away from the workplace to pursue something they want, whereas childless women aren’t. It’s not offensive.

The only person who brought up unfair advantage was you, when you said that allowing childless women time to pursue something that makes them more attractive employees shouldn’t be allowed as it’d give them an unfair advantage over other women.

And I didn’t compare mat leave to a holiday. I called it time off - time off paid employment, time away from the workplace. I never said it was time off from doing anything.

Couldn’t have put it better myself. I feel like I spend all my time here fighting now.

It's a thought experiment. Have you never wondered what you'd do if you won the lottery?

You do realise this is the child free board right?