6 months paternity leave??

[Thea45]

Just following on from another thread about an expectant mother whose partner is looking to use his paternity leave to improve his running PB. Why on earth would a couple need them both to be off for 6 months at the same time (twins/disability excepted!!) surely the whole family would benefit much more if he was just funded to e.g drop down to 3-4 days a week for the first 18 months. There wouldn’t be time for gaining PBs but 18 months of mum being able to actually get a shower, attention for the older children and precious bonding time and just help everyone in he family be a bit less stressed including dad. We have a 15 month old, she’s far more work than a 3 month old, I’m back at work and she’s now the age she extra loves time with daddy. Plus DH loves his job and wouldn’t have wanted to give it up completely for 6 months, although does appreciate his days off too and an extra one always a bonus

Honestly I think it must be absolutely amazing to be able to have 6 months off together with a new baby. I think a huge amount of the ongoing issues & bad habits lots if couples suffer with after having a child wouldn’t exist if both parents could have that time together rather than after 2 weeks everything baby related essentially becoming “mum’s job” while dad goes back to work.

I have one friend who’s husband got 6 months off and the balance and start they had to family life was absolutely amazing. I have another friend who is going off on maternity this week, her partner also gets 6 months fully paid, and they are both so excited. It must feel like you’re really in it together rather than sort of two sides of the same coin.

Yes I can see the idea of 6 months off compared to nothing seems amazing but in the practical sense of what is going to really help longer term then I can’t see it’s a great idea. Just seems to put parents in a position of one extreme to the other. I’ve heard plenty of mothers at baby group who have hated having their partners at home for so long and they’ve definitely not slotted into a role or equally doing the housework as their partner’s have just seen it we a holiday for themselves to ‘bond with baby’ My DH works flexibly and it’s fantastic us having a day or 2 a week when he can look after DC while I catch up on jobs or he can get through the list of the jobs he needs to do around the house, plus be an extra helping hand on days I’m working plus big saving on childcare for the older DC plus they enjoy the balance of having some time with me, some with DH and some in childcare

My husband had a month off after each baby. 2 weeks paternity, 2 weeks holiday. It would have been great if he could have then gone back 3 days a week on full pay for another few months.

I think if you have a new baby and a toddler at home, it’s quite good.

But yes I’d prefer to do my own six months, followed by them doing six months - for affordability / getting them to an age they can go to nursery.

My DH had 8weeks off. I loved it. He helped with the eldest and we could slowly learn how to juggle an older child and a baby. If he had 6 months off? Honestly? I’d have love it more! Then I love spending time with him and we could have done so much. It’s amazing if it happens like that.

My DH doesn’t have it all the time as he has to also work away quite a bit ( which why he gets the extra days off when he’s home) but it works really well, in an ideal world he’d just have a 3 day week with no having to work away 😅 I wouldn’t of found it helpful to have him home full time in the first 6 months as our DC just wanted to feed/ sleep/ be carried around in the carrier most of the time

My DH had 7 weeks off plus another 3 weeks when DD was 4 months old because I needed and operation.

I wish he had 6 months off!

Well the thing is if someone has a useless husband that doesn’t pull their weight then they have that person regardless of whether they have 6 days, 6 weeks or 6 months off.

My husband had 4 weeks off (2 paternity and then 2 holiday) when our daughter was born and I absolutely loved those 4 weeks together, I would have absolutely loved having him for a full 6 months.

Your way works for you and that’s great.

Would you prefer that over e.g 6 weeks full time off followed by 18 months of him doing a 3 day week? Obviously for those whose DH already only do a 3-4 day week then it skews the question

Hmm.. yeah okay - put it like that. I’ll take 18 months of 3 days weeks. 🤣🤣

In my job I've met several parents in this position as a local employer offers it.

They are all thrilled by it at the beginning.

Then after about 4-6 weeks, many of the mums find it tricky. If they have antenatal group friends, most of them don't have the same set up, and the mums are out and about with the dads not going along, and the mums getting irritated by them being in the way, especially if breastfeeding!. A couple of those I've met have ended up splitting it - a month off after the birth, then 5 months towards the end of the first year.

I don’t think can put men into such distinct camps, I’ve got a wonderful DH but like the OP in the other post I can well imagine once all the necessary was done for us to be happy he would spend times on his hobbies. That’s more the fault of the way the leave is structured, just doesn’t make any sense to me to have 6 months of spare time for him to do hobbies then the family is overwhelmed when the dad goes back full time. Like I said in previous post though, some father already have this level of flexibility for it to not make much difference, they are already able to combine their full time jobs with helping with the school run, bedtimes, giving their partner chance to catch up on sleep and get a shower etc but I’m talking about a dad in a demanding job out the house from e.g. 7.30-7 5 days a week while the mum struggles to get dinner cooked with crawling baby, 3 kids to bed on her own etc. a couple of days during the week of respite could be more useful

Definitely long term 3 day weeks over a solid 6 months off. I'd still want the month full time leave in the very beginning though. Maybe followed by 12 months of 3 day week working

I don’t think can put men into such distinct camps, I’ve got a wonderful DH but like the OP in the other post I can well imagine once all the necessary was done for us to be happy he would spend times on his hobbies. That’s more the fault of the way the leave is structured, just doesn’t make any sense to me to have 6 months of time for him to do extra hobbies (which is fine by itself) followed by a year of total overwhelm

The issue there is the husband, not the time off.

If you’ve had a child with someone unwilling to share the load then of course there’s no familial benefit to them having additional time off.

For those of us with genuine partners rather than man-children, the more time they have at home to bond, understand the difficulties of parenting, and share the load to allow mum to recover, the better.

I did have twins 🤣 and NICU stay aside I would have hated their dad having 6 months home. I was EBF so I really didn’t need him and TBH he’d have got in my way and got on my nerves and ruined my lovely newborn bubble

I also find it diminishes women’s roles in pregnancy and childbirth when a fathers “reward” if you like is 6 months time off which might be the same as the mothers leave when they haven’t gone through any of the physical and emotional side effects of pregnancy and birth.

See I don’t see it this way, and that’s fine everyone is different, but if we’d been able to have 6 months off altogether that could have all been genuine family time- the most we’d ever get realistically.

I don’t really understand the “once all the necessary was done for us”- we would all be off together, we’d all have that time together, there would be no “us” and “him”. Maybe we’d both have ended up with some time to do hobbies, or relax, take turns catching up on sleep, do some trips together that would otherwise have taken up too much annual leave.

It’s just a case of different people, different family set ups, and different things working for different people.

I agree 3-4 day working week might suit better over the long term. But I will also say that a 15 month old is not always harder work than a 3 month old. It depends on the baby's temperament. My baby was absolutely so difficult until about 4 or 4.5 months... he couldn't physically be left down for even a second. I had to hold him while I went to the toilet, my husband often stood outside the shower door holding the baby so I could have a shower etc. At 15 months at least they can be distracted to play or something.

From a business point of view, it is easier to recruit a 6 month post or not take on projects for 6 months than to work out which areas of a person’s role can be reallocated or stopped for 6 months or recruiting someone to work 1-2 days a week. If you have someone only working one day it’s probably going to take them 6 months to get up to speed on what they are doing.

From a maternity discrimination point, paternity leave being 6 months works because companies aren’t seeing women as a drain that is temporarily leaving the workforce, men will temporarily leave too. I think it also sets the standard that men will be caring for their children and they may need flexible working requests, which may mean a permanent 4 day week.

For most families, I think financially it makes sense to split it but the early bit absolutely needs to be longer. I think an initial 6 weeks and then an option to take the rest of the time at a later stage either with their partner or a separate point. That also works better for making sure both parents are equal and it’s not just mum doing everything.

In the situation where dad is out of the house 12 hours a day and mum has 3 kids to feed and a crawling baby - dad could batch cook at weekend. Or dad could take them out at the weekend to allow mum to batch cook for the week. They could have meals ready for the children and then dad cooks when he’s home while mum puts the kids to bed. They could get a meal delivery service. It doesn’t matter how much paternity leave you get, shit dads will always be shit dads but good dads shouldn’t be punished because shit dads see paternity leave as a chance to work on their PB.

Ha, yes I do agree, think I’d have 10 kids if I was a guy if going to get 6 months off each time with none of the pregnancy and birth to go through. Fab on you for coping with twins, I felt the same about the baby bubble in the first few months but I just imagined with twins it would be so overwhelming you’d need any help you could get. Now our little DD older I actually much more enjoy time together with DH as a family, watching her play etc than when she was a newborn and just wanted to be in that bubble with her and not have anyone try to ‘help’

My DH does help at the weekend but there still isn’t enough time to do everything with 3 small children and we can’t afford meal delivery services. No less the time to cook them. The odd days off he gets during the week make such a difference to us, if he were on 3 days a week all the time it would be amazing. We don’t have any family support at all and I’m back at work part time now too. Who the hell are these couples that have a children in the UK today and can afford to go travelling for 3 months. We both work in professional degree level jobs and we can’t even afford a week on a caravan. The ones saying how amazing this would be over it being stretched over a longer time I can only imagine already have very privileged lives e.g parents paid for their house deposit and MIL probably batch cooks for them anyway

I’m one of them who would love it to be longer and I wouldn’t say we have very privileged lives at all. We both have good jobs which we worked hard to get, we saved a good chunk of money before both pregnancies, my PIL couldn’t even tell you how old our daughter is or what colour eyes she has nevermind provide us with any meals/support/money, my own family are amazing people but have never provided us with any financial support whatsoever.

We worked hard, bought a house we could comfortably afford, have cars we can comfortably afford, and like to spend our money on experiences rather than “things”, we also don’t live in a particularly expensive part of the country so a 3 bed semi is more £250-300k than £650-700k for example. These are all choices we have made though.

I think that’s my point though, for those couples with privileged lives already then 6 months paternity leave at once to go on a jolly trumps reduced hours for dads over a longer period. Edit - I say privileged in the sense of the position you’re in, not how you got into that position. Now if you’ve turn round and tell me your DH work 6 days a week, out 12 hours a day in a super tiring job and yet you would still prefer to have had a 6 month block over him having an extra day off a week for longer then that would be interesting

I would have preferred my DH to have longer paternity leave and stretched over a longer period of time. I don’t have parents that paid for my house deposit. I don’t have a MIL batch cooking for me. I have no family support nearby.

My husband got statutory paternity leave so anything is better than that. However, 6 weeks would have allowed us to get breastfeeding established because he needed to take the bay and calm them, they were getting too worked up not being able to latch properly. I couldn’t calm the baby because I smelt like breast milk. Breastfeeding pretty much stopped the minute he went back to work. Had he been able to take a period of leave later in the year, that would have allowed me to go back to work when I was so unhappy and lonely on maternity leave but before I had childcare (because no family nearby). Had it worked financially that we share some of the leave at the same time, I would have really liked to spend some time as a family just finding our way, both getting sleep and both taking care of ourselves earlier. Instead we just went into survival mode and it took years for us to find a balance again.

Stop making broad sweeping judgments. The post about the dad doing the PB that “inspired” this post is still going to be a shit dad. There are clear business reasons why an extended period of time works rather than a shorter period of flexible working and once that shared care model is assumed, it’s easier for men to ask for flexible working. The extended leave is the precursor to the flexible working, the thing you most value and that works for your family. There are other things that would work for other families but the precursor is still extended paternity leave as the norm. People can use that time travelling because creating a bond as a family is important in that time, you don’t need to be at home for that. They might have more money to travel but that doesn’t stop the precursor to more flexible working for men as the norm being extended paternity leave.

All you’re doing is coming across as jealous and bitter. I couldn’t afford to travel on maternity leave either but I’m not pissed at anyone who did. It also doesn’t mean that men shouldn’t get more paternity leave as a starting point to a more level playing field just because some men will use it to get a PB or some families will travel with that time.

I would have loved if my husband could have had 6 months off.