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!

I returned to work as a teacher when my baby was one and still breastfeeding. No way would I have been able to express/find the time to express at work so she had to feed before and after. She finally stopped bf'ing at around 3.5 years.
When I returned my husband took one of my work days off work himself to look after our daughter. Did it for a year and loved every minute of it! Would have done it for longer had we been able to afford to.

I went back to work at about 6 months with both of mine and still breastfed them till they were each nearly 2. I found expressing very hard and not helpful, so they had formula during the day at the childminders, and I BF for the rest of the time. Though I did express to get them used to bottles coming up to 6 months. One took the bottle very easily and the other was a nightmare, but he was never going to starve himself and after the first day at the childminders he was taking a bottle fine. Preferred it if it wasn’t me giving the bottle to start with though.

I really don’t think BF is likely to be a big factor here. And although SPL came in too late for us, I think it’s brilliant for the mother as it trains the dad early on to also have to be default parent. Sets up better parity from the start. At my work we now pretty much expect the dads will be out for a couple of months at least at some point when their partner has had a baby. We are so much more used to working around paternity leave as well as maternity.

Exactly

Agree. I returned to work at 3 months (which was the length of maternity leave when I had my babies) but I bf them until they were well over a year. So I don’t think bf is the main reason so few mothers transfer some shared leave to the father. Particularly as we’re talking children of 6 or 9 months when they’re on solids as well as milk.

There’s a far greater correlation between social class/ level of education and breastfeeding than there is between mum having a job and breastfeeding. Among people I knew having babies when I did (1980s/early 90s) all my friends in professional roles who like me returned to work with 3 month old babies, continued bf.

Yes, I agree with @TheNightingalesStarling- and I’ve read it many times on MN too. The main reason seems to be mothers not wanting to transfer the leave to the baby’s father. It’s a Shame, I wish SPL had been around when I had babies. I think it’s brilliant for the child to have that special period of time with each parent and I’m sure it establishes good patterns in terms of sharing parenting tasks

I did SPL with both my breastfed babies. I went back to work when each was about 7 months, having spent some time before that teaching them to drink from a cup so they could have expressed milk while I was at work. Eventually stopped breastfeeding DC1 at 26 months and still feeding DC2 at 19 months so haven't found it detrimental to that.

I think it really helped us avoid the 'mum is default parent' thing. However there were a number of factors that made it more feasible for us than it would be for many, including the fact that I'm the higher earner. So I'd still support a better and less complicated system than the current one!

I'm certainly not advocating for US style maternity leave but I believe their breastfeeding rates are much higher than ours despite much shorter leave so I take from that that there are much stronger factors that separately influence breastfeeding and maternity leave choices.

The US does seem to have a better culture of enabling mums to express milk at work than the UK. In my working life I've never worked with a colleague that expressed at work.

As I said in my earlier post I can't even begin to imagine how my workplace at that hypothetical time would have accommodated it, at least not in a realistic way. I suspect I'd have been allocated a room in the bowels of the hospital a significant walk away from my workplace and given breaks that the staffing levels didn't account for. It would have been awkward at best.

Perhaps with more people WFH combining breastfeeding and work is more practical.

I still don’t really see why expressing matters at all beyond eg 6 or 9 months. You can still BF loads outside of the working day, it doesn’t disrupt supply in the same way that it would do if I had tried to pause feeding during the daytime for a couple of days at 2 months in.

By 6 months plus, the baby is having all sorts of other external food as well as breast milk. So formula is perfectly reasonable as a nutritional source, alongside those other foods, surely for even “hardline breast feeders”?

It’s no trouble at all to have formula milk during the time you’re not there with the baby, and BF for the rest of the time. No need to express at all.

edited to add - I don’t mean this to criticise how other women do things at all, I’m very much “fed is fed” - I just genuinely don’t quite understand about why people express with older babies. Maybe it’s more disruptive to their supply even at that stage? Maybe there’s some worry that formula isn’t allowed?

I breastfed until DS was past 3, that didn’t stop DP taking SPL at nine months. I pumped at work (only until DS turned 1) and yes DP used formula to top up if required. Breastfeeding older babies should not be a barrier to establishing healthy participation by fathers.