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?

Sharing worked very well for us. I had some surprise reactions but generally positive. I suspect those saying it's odd have partners who they don't trust to do the childcare, unfortunately it's still so incredibly common for fathers to be seen as incapable of equal parenting.

I did 10 months, DH 2. This time with currently 3m old baby I'm doing 9 and him 3.
I thought it was brilliant settling back into work with DH at home doing the bedtimes so I didn't have to rush to nursery. My days at work mean getting back for pick up is tricky (am also a doctor). Leaving him was easier knowing he was with daddy not at nursery. It meant that right from day 1 he knew he would be looking after DS alone so was prepared to be fully involved.
Breastfeeding this time around whereas I was expressing and bottle feeding last time, so I am a little concerned how it'll go as DD feeds to sleep and sometimes only boob will calm her.
You might want to join the FB group Breastfeeding for Doctors (GMC number needed) , it has lots of support and info on things like return to work and establishing BF.

This is an excellent point about the one with boobs not doing nursery settles, thank you, this is coming up in the months ahead for us. I'm slightly worried about how DH will settle my breastfed baby so that's good to hear it all went ok for you.

Also a doctor! DH isn’t. With DC1 I took 10 months and he took the final 2 months plus some leave (paid and unpaid). We crossed over 3 weeks then he had about 2 more months solo. It was born through necessity but actually it worked really well. I took the full year with DC2 and I much preferred the SPL. A year was a long time to be out.

We did it. My partner had 8 weeks off towards the end while I was using accrued annual leave and we used it to go back to NZ for 7 weeks to see my family and friends with our new baby.

Even if we hadn’t been going anywhere I would have done it. And tbh I would have had him take longer off but he felt like he couldn’t manage it with work. I think that’s a potential challenge in that if you’re off for 8 months maternity leave your work is probably going to recruit cover, whereas for 3 months, probably not.

Thanks - will have a look at the facebook group! I’m lucky that I’m in a non-on call specialty within a half an hour walk from our house and very supportive consultants, would be a lot more stressed if I was juggling this alongside a commute/on call rota! Although DH has pointed out that an on call rota may have it’s perks once we hit the every bug going from school/nursery stage as the odds of him being off in the week and thus able to go pick up and look after a sick child are potentially higher than my Monday-Friday specialty.

I really want to do shared parental leave but I never felt ready before the 12 month mark to go back to work. Mainly due to breastfeeding and lack of sleep, but it also took me 12 months to get back to me.

I wish men could take it alongside women instead of as I think that would make it more sought after.

I wish it was affordable. I’d love to take 9 months and have DH take the other 3. But it’s just not possible. So I’m taking 9 months and then DD will be in nursery/with my mum and dad.

If you’re in a position to do it, absolutely do it!

Men get a shit deal, they should be entitled to a much better paternity package.

I was also still breastfeeding when I went back to work when my babies were 11 months (and left expressed milk) but there was a considerable difference in how much they fed at 11 months to 8 months. Neither of mine started eating a decent number of solids til 10 months. I know I could have continued feeding them and worked, but I couldn't have kept feeding them throughout the day which is what they ideally wanted and what I preferred to do. It would have been a definite reduction in feeds for the sake of work, rather than a natural decrease with age. That was just my experience. For my sister who formula fed, this just wasn't even something she had to consider.

We're planning to share the leave (DH will take 6-8 weeks when i go back to work after about 9 months), I've only had positive comments so I'm surprised. I wonder if they are jealous. I don't think of it as 'giving up' my leave, yes it's been fought for, but we should be fighting for both parents to get more paid leave. Most parents I know have done some element of sharing the parental leave. I bet the people being negative will be the ones moaning their partners don't do enough with the kids or do things 'wrong' with the kids - because they don't trust them and have never 'let' them. Everyone is learning, I've seen too many dads get excluded from parenting and then lack confidence / skills in doing so.

i agree but that's not the case unfortunately. I don't see that as a reason not to make the most of what is available.

Hi OP, we did SPL in a pattern very similar to what you suggested with DC1. It was a fair few years ago when SPL hadn't been around very long. I got very similar negative comments, all from women. At the time I dismissed it in my head as them being a bit jealous because the option wasn't available for them. Sad that the conversation doesn't seem to have moved on though.

The reality was that I thought it was great and was well up for doing it again with DC2. DH point blank refused! He said all the mums at baby groups (he was the only dad) were really unfriendly and refused to speak to him, and also DC1 started crawling the week he took over, so he ended up having to sort all the baby-proofing the house and making it safe which he found really anxiety-inducing.

Gosh @ViveLaOeuf I only went to one baby club and I hated it so never went back! I also didn’t baby proof the house apart from a stair gate at the top of the stairs as ours are so steep. That’s sad those things affected him so much.

I found taking the leave in chunks with some time off together was great. We went on some great holidays and I got to do both the early and later bits. I would definitely insist on doing it again if we have another, as would my husband.

@Peonies12 I'm critiquing the current system. Of course individuals should choose from the current available options and do what works best for them as a family. No one needs to be making negative comments about the OPs individual choice.

Uptake of SPL is tiny, there are obvious flaws in the implementation that makes the impact on the stated aims a lot less than it could be. But this version of SPL is a first step on, hopefully, a much longer journey. Get rid of the "shared" aspect, or make the amount of time that can be shared much longer so that the mat leave that women should be entitled to isn't eroded.

It's pure sexism - I'm in a same-sex relationship and am the non-birth mother and have done SPL twice. No-one has made any of these comments to either of us, and I suspect it's because we're both women so they expect us to be equally up for all the traditional mum things. DS1 is 3 now and our bond with him is pretty much equal - as DP breastfed to 14 months, I think that would have way harder to achieve if I hadn't been primary carer for a chunk of that first year.

Breastfeeding wasn't a problem btw - when I had DS1, he was happy to take a bottle of expressed milk for his daytime feeds, and by the time he was at nursery, he only really needed a breastfeed in the morning and at bedtime, and was eating solid food the rest of the day.

I do agree with a PP who says the current system isn't fit for purpose though. It's just kind of tacked on to existing mat leave legislation, meaning that the enhanced element of mat pay is only available over the first months of the period and not at the end. This is when the birth mother most needs to recover, so she obviously is more likely to take the first part of the leave. If the father takes leave at the end, depending on what his employer offers, it's likely to be unpaid. In many heterosexual couples, the man is still the higher earner, so it's a big financial sacrifice for those families. Alternatively, you could both take leave together at the beginning and whoever is the higher earner could take the Shared Parental Pay. But if your leave overlaps in that way you both have to go back to work before the full year is up. I think the scheme only really works for couples like me (or I think OP & her DH) where you have enough savings to cover the shortfall in family income, and where you have pretty similar jobs so it doesn't matter financially who takes the unpaid bit.

I think it's great if you want to do it!

I don't think I would want to share it myself though. I definitely didn't feel ready to stop being my baby's full time carer and go back to work at the end of my maternity leave, and if I knew I was giving up my leave to let my DH go on leave I think I'd have begged him to reconsider and let me do the rest of the leave (which he'd have been fine with).

So while in principle I agree with you that this is a great idea: it's good for women, good for men and good for families, if everyone wants to do it; I know in practice it would make me sad as I would want the time with the baby myself.

After pouring 9 months of pregnancy and all the time since breastfeeding my baby from my own body, it would make me really sad to swap with someone else (even my DH/our baby's dad!) who didn't have to do any of that but got to have months off instead of me.

I work from home so I was able to keep breastfeeding my baby on demand after mat leave, but if I didn't I think I'd also resent having to pump or give up my baby breastfeeding in the interests of sharing the leave or equality. It just wouldn't feel equal at all to me.

If you want to do it I think it's a great thing to do if it makes you happy. I just know it's not what would make me most happy.

A lot of new dads at where I work do this. My kids are a bit too old for it to have been a thing for us, but I love that it is an option for families now. My boss is (dad) is currently on his part of shared parental leave.

I've always felt that maternity leave arrangements were a bit unfair on dads. They also have this life changing event, then wham bam, 2 weeks later they are back at work like nothing's happened. Mums on the other hand, obviously have a much harder time physically and probably emotionally,*, but also have several weeks/months to get used to it, spend time with their baby and build their new normal.

As for being selfless of the mother, I'm not so sure. I think it's good strategic planning. Shared parental leave will expose the other parent to all the organising doctors/childcare/birthdays/groceries/clothes/shoes stuff that mums tend to pick up on mat leave and stick with. Also, much as I live my children, I would have been more than happy to go back to work after 6 months the first time. Equality is not just about women having it all, becoming engineers etc, it's about men in caring roles too.

*i'n not saying mums don't have a hard time emotionally, but I have no direct experience of being a new dad of course.

It's not maternity leave that's unfair on fathers, it's quite clearly the inadequate paternity leave that is the statutory minimum. It shouldn't be about pitting mat leave against pat leave or needing mat leave to be given up to enable men to take time off with their babies. Paternity leave should be significantly longer.

I don't think there anything wrong - the only reservation, I would have how my child would respond to change in carer and adapting to change. I think it is a big enough transition from going to my full time to a childcare provider - I don't think I would like to add another transition in the midst of that. That said it may be a non-issue.

This wasn’t really an issue for us, both of us felt like equal carers throughout all our baby’s life. My husband was off for the first 3 weeks and we did pretty much everything as equally as we could. I think our child benefitted from our shared leave as they have two very present parents and not just one primary care giver. It’s worked out so well for us, it may have even helped when it came to going to nursery as they absolutely loved it from day 1.

We did this in 2016 when it was pretty new, definitely glad we did it. I had 9m off, DH 3m. I used leave to reduce from 5 days to 3 days whilst he was off. We both had the experience of being the parent at home every day and of being the sole working parent. DH is much better than me at domestic tasks and having less time off was good for my career (I got promoted on mat leave and it definitely helped I was due back 3 months after the interview, not 6m.) We are genuinely equals with parenting and domestic tasks.

Some people do say it is the 'fun' bit of maternity leave when they (fingers crossed!) sleep more and are more interactive, but by that point I was ready to return to work. Plus it was much easier leaving DD with DH, rather than having to settle her into childcare. I reckon it would be a disaster if you had a lazy DP looking for a break from work, but assuming he is doing it for positive reasons, then it should be good!

@BendingSpoons

Absolutely agree with all of this. I also got promoted when I came back, and my work have been so good about child illnesses and work flexibility. I often have Friday’s off (paid) to spend time with my child, no issues with having to leave early or get in late due to nursery (same with my husband as we share this). I got a pay rise and am able to put more into my pension, pay a bit more off the mortgage, get a cleaner, so the weekends are pure fun. Neither of us have to do any chores, we feel like we get proper quality time together. We all love holidays and this flexibility and increased pay has meant we have had so much fun quality time together.

This!! It's jealousy and lazy husbands.

We did it a DH is a much more hands on dad that many other husbands I see and I am a lot more relaxed than a lot of other mums when they've gone back to work juggling being the default parent AND working.

My career isn't suffering any more than my DH and it is the best way of dealing with the motherhood penalty and your own sanity!

Fair comment

How weird that you are getting such negativity! We did something similar and it was a hugely positive and beneficial decision.

I went back to work when dc was 9 months, but used annual leave and a WFH 1 day/wk so that I was only in the office 2 or 3 days a week for the remaining 3 months till dc started nursery at 12 months old, while DH took three months parental leave.

The benefits were huge - DH felt much more empowered as an equal parent rather than me being "in charge". DH's bond with dc seemed to get stronger and DH developed stronger intuition about ideas for what to do in the difficult parenting moments where there isn't an instruction manual. I think these benefits have resonated for years (DC is now taller than me).

Sharing parental leave makes huge sense for couples who want their parenting to be a real partnership rather than one parent being the leader.

I think it’s fantastic, your child will grow up knowing that their dad is an equal parent. I found the first year extremely hard and would have happily gone back to work at 8 months (the country we are in didn’t have paternal leave but DH saved all his annual leave for a year and took 6 weeks off and then when he went back he did 4 days weeks, again using annual leave).

DH is extremely close to DD, anything I do for Dd he also does for DD, he’s always done his fair share and I think it’s part of the reason they have such a strong bond.

I think it would be better for society as a whole if more men took parental leave to look after their babies.