Shared Parental Leave: Guardian missing an important factor?

[Artmumcreative]

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/dec/25/why-shared-parental-leave-monumental-dud-policy

Although I did consider Shared Parental Leave for our first baby, this Guardian article seems to miss the fact that some mothers breastfeed for longer than the first 4-6 months of a baby's life. I just thought it seemed like an oversight. I know that some women don't breastfeed and some breastfeed for a shorter period, but I just read the article feeling unrecognised and wanted a rant!

It's great for those it suits. I suspect that many families choose to let the baby decide who will be it's primary carer for most of the leave.

One of DHs colleagues has just used SPL. The mother had a great job opportunity that would lead to even bigger job opportunities when baby was 6 months old. It made a lot of sense for them as a family.

The only "issue" was DHs work couldn't cover for just 3 months, so his work had to be restributed, which led to 2 other people having to do 50% overnight trips, covering a bigger geographical area, plus all their own work. But that was not the fault of the couple.

The common thing i see however is that women don't want to give up their leave. They want more paternity leave, but not less maternity leave.

Yeah I do think it's a big factor. My baby would only breastfeed and refused a bottle point blank. It would have been extremely difficult to have just stopped at 6 months.
I guess it's tricky for a newspaper to suggest that women feel more biologically 'tied' to their babies as it could be construed as sexist... But it also feels wrong to ignore something as fundamental as breastfeeding as a consideration 🤷🏻‍♀️

By 6 months (when solid food starts), only 1% of babies are exclusively breastfeed. So it's not really a major factor for most people, just on a numbers basis.

Waves madly from the corner… of course it’s possible to do SPL with breastfed babies, I went back to work with all of mine at about seven months, with husband off for the next 3-5 in various schemes (it’s now called SPL, but it wasn’t always).

it might not be easy, but my babies were all bf for 1-3 years. The first has some formula in his first two months as we struggled to start bfing, but that was the only formula I used. By seven months, they had some expressed, occasional visits to my office during the day, whilst I worked 4-5 days a week, and I had expressed a freezer store by then so they generally got two bottles - or sippy cups, for the bottle refusers - of my milk a day whilst I was out. On days I was around, they had more.

We did SPL for DS2. I went back to work for 3months when DS was 6months old and then had a final 3 months off.
I expressed twice at work which DH used for the next day's bottles and fed before I left and as soon as I got in.
Fortunately DS would take a bottle and also got the hang of food so also had small amounts of finger food during the workday and various mushed goo.
I was gutted to miss time off but DS is also DHs son and it's noticeable that DS2 goes to us equally when upset but DS1 usually seems me out. Might be SPL. Might just be child related

I have assumed that most employers offer much shorter, lower paid contractual leave to the father or mother who didn’t give birth (if a same sex couple) than they offer to mothers. But might be wrong on that!

There is another hurdle and that is the balance of supporting a family during parental leave on a single part time wage.

I knew a number of families, when I had my first child, who were great dads, shared leave and then both mum and dad went part time, often 3-4 days each. However, on planning a second child this went out the window as it would have meant the second 6 months only having SMP and the mum's 3day a week wage. All three families had him go back to full time and mum take the full leave second time around.

Most of these plans are based on the theory of mum and dad, similar jobs pre kids, both full time and first baby. The complexity of a second baby and flexible working requests in parallel is a big oversight.

I dont like the concept of taking the leave from the mother. And some women more need time to recover from pregnancy and childbirth.

I'm really surprised to read this article. My DC are older so it wasn't an option for me, but I know several colleagues (both DH's and mine) who have taken shared parental leave. I didn't realise it was so unusual.

I think this is actually the reason.

Maternity leave is seen as for the Mother, not something for the baby.

I think it depends on the industry. If there is a generous paternity leave policy, actually using the SPL option isn't needed. And if there isn't, then you are stuck with statutory pay for the SPL part, which is often not financially viable.

We used some at the end of my mat leave with DS to spend time in DH's home country together, using my accrued A/L to extend the time a d it was very important for us, but only really viable because we had no nursery fees to pay for an older child.

I can't even begin to imagine how my old workplace would have responded if if wanted to come back at 4 months and express milk. They didn't even have enough room for everyone to have a desk or to store related things properly. I know there is legislation but in reality it seems like workplaces do a poor job here.

I completely agree. SPL wouldn't have worked for us due breastfeeding. I think we should move away from the "shared" aspect of parental leave and just have parental leave. In the Nordic countries fathers have a completely separate leave allowance from mothers (so women are not required to "give up" some of their leave to enable the father to take his leave), the mother's allowance is at least a year to enable those who choose to do so to continue breastfeeding for at least 12 months (80% of babies are breastfed at 12 months) and the father's allowance is granted on a "use it or lose it basis" which means that take up is extremely high which is good for families and for society in general.

Interesting take. For teachers, SPL is great. Say your baby is due 5th January, so mat starts then although they would finish work on the last day of term. (19th December this year). A teacher could do SPL for 2 weeks over the Easter holidays, 1 week at June half term then 6 weeks over the summer holidays. Because of the way teacher contracts work, they cannot be given tasks to do during those periods unless all the other teachers in school are also given those tasks otherwise they’d be being treated less favourably and it would be maternity discrimination. The teacher can then return to work on the first day of the Christmas holidays (21st Dec 2026) but only actually be in school from the first day of the spring term. (4th Jan 2027). That could give the teacher a total of 54 week off of which 13 weeks would be fully paid on top of their maternity pay.

This.

The company I work for gives both men and women six months full pay. And then men can have another 6 months unpaid if they want. (Women have 3 months statutory and 3 months unpaid.)

I know couples where both mum and dad took the year, where both took 9 months and where dad took 6 months and mum a year.

Well, to be fair, the mother has carried the baby for nine months and birthed the baby, and often does the vast majority of night feeding. The paternal part comes at the expense of the mother’s full legal entitlement.

I think conceptually, SPL makes a more equal starting point so the mother is not seen as the default parent, but there is no getting around that fact that for most babies the first six months are the hardest, most sleep deprived period (I say most as mine never slept long at all for a couple of years) and if the father comes in after that, he has it comparatively easier, so I still think it hands women a raw deal.

Yes schools are building this cost into their budgets as it’s an accepted option.

I agree OP - this wouldn't have worked for us because of breastfeeding. I could never express much anyway, so that wouldn't have been a realistic option.

And agree with other posters - it would really be better if both parents could take an extended period of leave together. Mums have gone through a major medical procedure and, if you add sleep deprivation into the mix, those first six months can be so tough. A lot of new parents no longer live close to extended family who can support them, so mums can feel really isolated and alone. Dads should be the ones there supporting them and establishing a role for themselves in raising their child - not stuck in an office, away from their baby.

I agree with OP's point. For families who want to breastfeed SPL should be spread over something like 2 years, not just one. Otherwise it's mostly going to be taken up by mums, regardless of other factors.

It's one of those policies which is touted as being progressive but isn't effective because it doesn't take into account biological realities. An example of thinking all we need to do to achieve equality between the sexes is pretend men and women are the same.

I breast fed till I had to go back to work then pumped for a few months after.
So they were all fully breastfed for a year
but
after they moved onto solids
4months for our eldest and at 6months for the twins they don’t take as much milk
So theoretically had there been shared leave I think I’d have used that.

However I agree OP there is little recognition in the article that some mums breastfeed and can’t share the care.
It isn’t compulsory though and women aren’t having their maternity leave reduced so no one will be negatively affected by the policy

Where I am, we can both use the leave to go part time flexibly without changing contracts. It's a much better system, so that must (at least middle class) families have one daddy day per week until they start school. I was really ready to go back to work at 6 months, but am not yet ready for full time and the nightmare of pumping for 5 days a week. 3 is plenty. If it had been all or nothing, I'd have stayed home for a year which would have been DH's loss. It's really good for him having one day a week especially because he sleeps nearly as little as me, but pumping too often leaves me sore and stressed.

We did shared leave for both of ours, and I extended breast fed both. Mostly just fed loads in the morning and evening and then pumped 2x a day at work with a Medela hand pump. I think things are evening up pay wise for shared parental leave. For example my work offers six months pay to women or men taking shared parental leave. My partner had five months full pay with our first and three months full pay with our second (different companies). Its in a different section to paternity leave in the contracts and I think a lot of people don’t realise always

Obviously only a tiny number will exclusively breastfeed at this point because almost everyone has started giving solid food. But many babies will still be dependent on breast milk and it can be really hard for mum to leave them for a whole day. Many women can’t or don’t want to express and many babies don’t take a bottle.

We would have liked to have used shared parental leave, but I suffered serious birth injuries so wasn't physically capable of returning to work much before 12 months and I couldn't have realistically expressed milk more than once a day at work, and even that would have been challenging in my workplace. I think father's should be getting 3 months leave to use at some point in the first year in addition to the mother's keeping all their maternity leave. As a higher rate tax payer it's something I'd be happy to pay more tax to cover, even though I didn't get to use it, and to be honest a lot of higher rate tax payers I know would feel the same way - even those without children or any plans to have them. Obviously there are many who wouldn't agree, but I think the government underestimates how many people do want to support families in this way.

From a purely cold financial perspective based on benefits payments and crime rates it may well pay for itself by increasing health and reducing stress in mothers and babies, reducing the number of family break ups and strengthening the role of fathers in their children's lives. Of course some fathers are a lazy waste of space (certainly based on AIBU here), but the majority are good people who want to support their partners and children.