Years after the introduction of paid parental leave, the uptake among fathers is very low. Ros Bragg, director of Maternity Action, argues that Shared Parental Leave is inherently flawed and outlines Maternity Action's suggestion of a 'use it or lose it' model that would support fathers and second parents to take leave and lead to more equal parenting.
"It’s been six years since the policy was introduced, and the most recent data shows that take-up amongst eligible fathers is only around 3-4%. That’s far short of the 25% that the government had hoped for by now, and pretty conclusive evidence that Shared Parental Leave (SPL) isn’t fit for purpose.
But significantly, it’s not failing due to any lack of demand on the part of parents: there is ample evidence that fathers would like more time off work after the birth of a child.
Our advice lines regularly take calls from exasperated parents who desperately want to try and use the scheme, but are held back by its sheer complexity.
These are parents like Amy and John. They contacted Maternity Action after their request to take shared leave and pay at the same time was turned down, even though it is allowed under the policy. John’s employer was adamant that to pay both parents would be fraud – and by the time the query was raised with HMRC, Amy was already on maternity leave and John had to take unpaid leave.
Instead of enjoying those first few weeks and months with the baby together, both Amy and John were hugely stressed about whether or not they were going to get paid, and the situation put a huge strain on John’s relationship with his employer.
This is typical of the problems with Shared Parental Leave – parents who do want to take it are faced with a system with inherent design flaws and complexity, and a ludicrously low rate of pay: just £152 per week, equivalent to less than half of the national minimum wage.
‘Mothers need time to recover from birth’
Even the name is faulty: shared parental leave is really ‘transferable maternity leave’, as the scheme created no additional parental leave entitlement for fathers, but simply ‘enabled’ mothers to give away all but two weeks of their leave.
This means that, if a mother (not unreasonably) wants to use most or all of her maternity leave entitlement, there is little or no SPL available to the father. And the designers of the scheme knew that the average length of statutory maternity leave taken by mothers is 39 weeks – that is, the full entitlement of paid leave. And 45% of new mothers take more than 39 weeks.
This is hardly surprising, as – contrary to the impression often given by ministers – the duration of paid leave available to new mothers in the UK is short by international standards. And new mothers are not just ‘caring for’ or ‘bonding with’ their baby. They are recovering from the often severe physical and mental impacts of pregnancy and birth. Plus, they may be breastfeeding.
‘Use it or lose it’
So what’s the solution? Well, the good news is that six years’ experience of SPL confirms the lessons we could and should have learnt from parental leave policies in other countries. In short, the most successful approaches – such as those in Sweden, Iceland, Norway and Finland – are based on individual, non-transferable (‘use it or lose it’) rights to leave for each parent, and on that leave being moderately well paid.
We at Maternity Action suggest that Shared Parental Leave is scrapped altogether, and replaced with new rights to six months of paid maternity leave reserved for the mother, and six months of paid parental leave for each parent.
This would give mothers a combined paid leave entitlement of up to 52 weeks – 13 weeks more than now. And it would give fathers and other second parents a total paid leave entitlement of up to 28 weeks – that is, 26 weeks more than now.
This would mean that there is no question of the mother ‘giving up’ her recovery time after childbirth, and would mean that both parents had a right to individual paid leave to bond and care for their child.
The ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ approach would incentivise fathers and second parents to take leave when previously they would not have considered it, because of financial or other constraints.
Achieving more equal parenting is a process that will take many years and will require, in addition to more equitable rights to better paid maternity and parental leave, robust governmental action to increase the supply of affordable childcare, and a major effort by political and business leaders to drive a change in parenting culture in the workplace.
But we need to make a start. And the time to do so is now.
You can support us by writing to your local MP - just click on this link, enter your postcode, and we do the rest.
You can follow Maternity Action on twitter @MaternityAction and Ros Bragg @rosbragg.