Shared parental leave - lots of negative comments

[Salacia]

Currently in my third trimester and have started getting lots of questions about when I’ll be going on mat leave, how long I’m going to take etc. DH and I are planning on taking shared parental leave (probably 8 months ish for me with him doing the rest, plus using AL to have a month or so off together when we crossover).

I’ve had quite a few negative comments about this arrangement so just wanted to seek some wider opinions from those who might have been there and done that! My midwife made a comment about how it was very selfless of me and she wouldn’t want to make a sacrifice like that. There have been comments at antenatal class from the other parents about how women fought for maternity leave etc and I shouldn’t give it up to a man or that DH is selfish to want to be at home etc. DH has also had lots of comments about if he’s sure etc.

I understand (and we plan to be) that we might need to be a bit flexible and when it’s coming up to the notice period before I return we’ll double check if I feel like I need longer etc. I’m just really surprised at how few positive (or even neutral!) reactions we’ve had. Am I overlooking any massive downsides?

We each did 6 months (at the same time) with our first. It was great and we'd have done the same with our second but DH wasn't eligible at the time. We had no negative comments at all and quite a few positive ones. Ignore and do what works for you. 12 months is not some magical number that you must take off to fulfil your motherly duties.

I often suspect some a lot of men who do this just want time off work.

Lot of women on MN have stated that once they have kids, they will be SAHM for life, as they do not want to work. Does not mean they are not taking care of their children though.

I would understand peoples comments if you were taking a short maternity leave, like under 6 months, as i think the physical recovery shouldnt be underestimsted and i feel very strongly about that. Particularly if the mum has had to use some time before the birth due to health concerns.

but i went back to work at 8 months before shared parental leave existed. It would have been nice for DH to have been home whilst i got used to working again. I think a lot of men do the last 3 months now.

I wonder if the negative comments come from a place of their own insecurity? I think you have the perfect balance, you are taking the 8 months to recover and bond, which is so important, and then your dh is taking 3 months to bond and support your transition back into the workplace. Your marriage, baby and career will all benefit enormously.

Before having dc, I'd have been all for it. But I shocked myself once I had them, because I was bereft when I had to return to work and I think if there was the option to have had more time off (maternity) for myself or dh taking over with paternity leave, I would have bitten dh's hand off for it!

What I've learnt is, to be prepared for change once you've had dc. How you feel before them and after can be hugely different. Of course not always, but definitely some things. You won't know until the time comes,l whether you're still as for this arrangement as you are now. If you are then great, if not, then hopefully there is wiggle room and flexibility.

How odd! I’m about to do our 2nd round of shared parental leave and if anything I’ve had so many people saying what a great idea it is and they wish they did it for their leave.

I had one comment but they do EVERYTHING in their household and partner refuses to change nappies so I didn’t pay attention to that. Not someone’s lifestyle advice I want to take on board. I know of someone who had to go back to work after 6 weeks as both mum and dad were self employed - nowadays, people have to make decisions that we didn’t need or have access to decades ago.

Midwife shouldn’t be saying that either. I appreciate some people want longer off and their other halves don’t want or can’t take the time off but it works for us and gives my husband some time just him and the baby which he loved.

Ultimately, you both do what’s right for you. If you get comments in the future, remind them that we’re not in the 1940s, and both parents have more flexibility to explore other alternatives than the traditional ‘mother stays at home for a year’.

The idea that it’s feminist to divide the work between one partner earning money and the other doing the majority of the unpaid labour of child rearing (and all the other unpaid domestic work) seems crazy to me. But obviously how these tasks actually get divided up in practice are dependent on your relationship. I guess it’s so personal and dependent on your situation, job, relationship, baby, and how much time you need to recover after having the baby, adjusting to life as a mum, getting used to less sleep, etc. If you return to a job that feels fulfilling and enriches you, then it might feel really important to split the leave with your partner, to share the impact that being away from that job might have on you or your career. On the other hand, if your mind and body are still completely occupied and fulfilled by baby at 8 months, then it might feel unfair at that point to hand over the baby, after the work of carrying the baby and looking after them in those earlier stages. I’ve had friends who’ve done the shared parental leave and they do have male partners who seem to be a bit more hands on with the child and house stuff than others (but maybe it was always so). And some who found it painful to swap over before 12 months because they were still very bonded with baby. Any which way, it’s so personal. You should choose what feels right for you, and ignore advice that doesn’t seem to fit for you!

Thanks everyone! These comments are great.

I completely get that there may be physical reasons from the pregnancy/birth etc that means we need to readjust plans but we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it (DH is an obstetrician so feel in very good hands when it comes to making sure my health is prioritised!).

I guess I was taken by surprise by how many of these comments were from women my age, my parents, grandparents etc have been really supportive. We both work less than full time at the moment so we should both be at home one day a week regardless. I’ve only seen the bonuses so far (will mean I can time going back to work at a point where I’ll be back a full year before my next professional exam so I can get back into the swing of things before having to revise, I walk to work through multiple parks so DH is excited about meeting me for a coffee/ice cream etc with the baby, stops me being seen as the default parent etc) so it will as just a bit of a surprise how negative the response has been (but as a lot of you have said - welcome to motherhood!).

Really glad I’ve posted!

Just ignore the people who are negative. Do what's best for you. Shared parental leave wouldn't have worked for us so well as both my children were still breastfeeding quite a lot at 8 months (it started to tail off about 12/13 months). You just need to do what fits best with your family.

They do not want to work or they want to look after their kids/home? Big difference.

It's like on here when men are the sahp.... invariably the working wife comes home to an absolute mess and no dinner cooked or laundry done and their dh has been doing nothing all day.

Aah, I don't know what job you do, but if your dh is a doctor I suspect you are being treated to the "ooh, but he'd a big important doctor" mindset (weirdly doesn't happen to female doctors...). There's a batshit thread in this vein right now.

This is probably exacerbating the issue. Continue to ignore and feel confident you are doing the right thing.

I’m also a doctor! Just a different specialty. Actually his specialty is developing a real culture of shared parents leave at the moment (at least locally anyway) which is great. So far most of the comments have come socially rather than at work (although some of my colleagues have acted very surprised but not outright negative).

I think it is non-doctors who buy into this "big important male doctor" BS so that resonates.

Its v v irritating.

Inhave female doctor friends and we have talked about this a lot in contact of their relationships or the differences they see with this sort of thing towards their male colleagues.

Also things like the ridiculous bias. One still sends me a WhatsApp every time she attends an event or conference where the male doctors are referred to as Dr Smith and she gets called Mary (she now speaks up, every single time).

People are just weird and don't like change. I did 6 months and my dh did 6 months. People thought it was very strange but he's a parent too so I don't see why it's an issue

I’d question a father who didn’t want to take time off work to look after their child!!

We did this and it was great. I had 3m, we had a month off together, then I did another 3m, then we had 2m together (some was over Christmas), then he did 3m on his own.

It means we both know what it’s like to care for a child day in day out, including all the mental load, packing bags, weaning, general household tasks. We also both know what it’s like to go out to work whilst the other is at home and are able to support each other. Upshot is we are completely equal in terms of childcare, work, housework, mental load etc. we don’t resent each other and we don’t feel resentful or stressed.

I get what @Comedycook is saying. It's not common though (I hope!)

We didn't do SPL. But DH had one day a fortnight with our eldest. I had to pay everything out and write out what would be for lunch. I'd still sometimes come home to get in pjs ( "she didn't want to wear what you'd laid out") and they may have shared a packet of chocolate biscuits for lunch ("she didn't like the green bits on the pasta"). No housework would even be attempted. He did the nursery run on 2 other days and he never brushed her hair as they'd do it for him as a dad couldn't possibly manage! Sometimes he'd drop her in pjs for them to change as well. Honestly, no mum would get away with that!!!

If you have a hands on DH who wants to bond with his children, go for it! Even though my DH was a bit crap, he still formed a great bond with DD.

I’m also a doctor!

welcome to mothergood, where man's job is soooo important that he could not possibly be expected to do anything with kids or at home in general. He can't be expected to take time off, stay home with sick kids, drive them to clubs etc.

However, it's lucky that the woman has such a lovely flexible career allowing her to do all that. Oh, it's the same job?

(I read 2 simultaneously running threads on MN once stating exactly that. First thread: 'Well of course I do everything, I work as X,'. Second thread 'But DH works as X so he isn't able to help'.)

Start as you mean to go on! We did SPL twice - the first time, we split it 9 months for me/3 months for DH; the second time DH had a month off at the same time as me to coincide with school holidays for DC1. Except Covid happened so we won’t talk about that as we were all sick of the sight of each other by then 😬.

We also had stupid comments - the one that irritated me most was a midwife giggling at the thought of DH being at home for 3 months (this was very soon after SPL was introduced). Oh, and my friend told me very seriously that her mum thought we shouldn’t do it as men just can’t look after babies. (I’m not even making this up…). But welcome to the world of everyone sharing their opinions about how you do stuff….

Others are right in that it’s good to be prepared to flex nearer the time. In hindsight I would have liked more time at home with DC1 and DH would have been happy going back after six weeks or so. But that’s us! That’s also why we chose to do things differently second time round as I wanted as close to the full year as possible.

It’s great in terms of easing you into leaving baby, before you have to navigate leaving baby with nursery/childminder/nanny. And it’s also great in terms of getting your DH/DP to be confident managing your child alone and avoiding you becoming the default parent - for us, it set the tone.

But for building the bond with the baby, what helped most for us was having DH around before SPL. Because of Covid, he was working from home for most of DC2’s babyhood and having him there for meals, etc, made a massive difference in terms of how involved and familiar he was for baby. So I would encourage you to get DH to be home as much as is realistic around his work during the week, eg taking the baby first thing in the morning, getting home for bath time, etc. I think that does more to build bonds (and confidence in handling baby) than a straight 3 months SPL.

I did 8 months mat leave then DH did a month of SPL. The best aspect was that I could ease back into work without worrying about nursery runs or getting DS settled into nursery for a few weeks. I wouldn't have wanted to try and do both at once.

DH suffers from anxiety, isn't the most organised person and wasn't very confident with babies but we all survived. I think I was the first person taking SPL in our organisation but I don't regret it 8 years later. DH and DS have a great bond now.

Not the last time your parenting choices will be criticised by people who have no business doing so!

Some (most?) people have really ingrained feelings about parenting which are really sexist. Unfortunately it can be hard to ignore, but you have to start as you mean to go on, and get both struggling equally so that you can have more solidarity later.
The best way to be neutral about it is to ignore whose leave it is and say ok we have 54 weeks between us, how do we want to break it down. Then draw up a few options on different points of the spectrum and think about the pros and cons of each over the course of a week or two.
Then you will have a clearer idea and you can work out how to jump through all the hoops filling in forms.
We did about 5 months each for our first child and we both topped up to nearly a year each with annual leave and unpaid leave for our second child.
But it did sound strange when filling in the forms that the primary parent has to "give up" leave to create shared leave, rather than both having a sensible entitlement to start with.
Good luck and it sounds like you'll do well.

100% this. What you gain in the long term massively outweighs what you lose in the short term.