Would you and your partner take time off work if companies offered 6 months paid parental leave for all?

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Having a new baby is an exciting time regardless of whether you’re a mum or a dad, and spending time with them in those first few months is a precious experience. A year ago Aviva introduced its equal paid parental leave policy, where all employees can take up to 12 months off, with no need for mums to share their maternity allowance. With this in mind, Aviva would like to hear your thoughts on giving all parents the same amount of time off.

Here’s what Caroline Prendergast, Interim Chief People Officer at Aviva has to say: “We decided to make all parents at Aviva eligible for the same amount of paid and unpaid time off, regardless of gender, sexual orientation or how they became a parent. We thought that dads would want to spend time with their new arrivals, just as mums do. One year on, our experience shows that with financial barriers removed, they do just that.”

You can find out more about Aviva as an employer here.

If all companies offered 6 months paid parental leave, do you think your spouse or partner would be prepared take the time off work to share childcare duties? If not, why not?

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We would love to have this option, as a family it would be such an invaluable experience to have both parents for the first precious moments of our childs milestones. Although some families might not consider this beneficial for their circumstances, i feel that to have the option of taking leave would be a relief to many.

Would be great def be nice for both parents to care for the kids

Sounds good, but whether it'd work in reality is another thing. I like the idea though.

I am not sure if DH would want to take 6 months off, just because he runs projects as part of his role and it may be difficult to cover that long term. However anything would be better than the 2 weeks he got in his current role and felt he missed out on so much. I think an ideal for us would have been if DH could have had 6 weeks off and then maybe done 3 day weeks for a little while, rather than it be all or nothing.

Well done to Aviva for recognising this inequality and giving both parents an option.

We did it, dh took a year's career break after my maternity leave ended.

Yes definitely, if it was full pay as he is the higher earner in our family. It would have been especially useful with our second snd third as one person just doesnt have enough hands! He had 6 weeks with our 3rd and it made such a difference to just having 2 weeks

Thinking about it practically- it would maybe better to have the flexibility to take 6 months worth of paid leave in the first year for the higher earner as then there wouldn't be a massive career break, and it could be spread out across the whole years development stages.

Yes absolutely!

Great in principle, but I wonder how smaller companies could survive in practice if this became the norm? A good thing for large companies, though, more choice for employees has to be good.

This is a fantastic idea! My husband would definitely take it if he had the opportunity at his current workplace. Unfortunately he's only entitled to the statutory two weeks and as far as he knows, it's unpaid too :-(

Yes, would be lovely. But probably won't happen across the board.

My husband would definitely take a significant part of that - probably all if it was full pay! He took two months off when our first was born and was a little worried about the effect on his work/career, but is now an advocate for shared parental leave at work.

Agree that more dads taking the time off and assuming more childcare responsibilities would improve career prospects for women with children.

6 months on full pay would have been amazing. 3 months would have been pretty fab too. DH was self employed when we had our two so worked flexibly to be around more but couldn't afford to take much time off.

This is fantastic, I know that my husband would love this opportunity, there were times in the first year that he felt like he wasn’t enough helpwith the baby (and I could certainly have done with a hand!). Mainitaining my career and identity after babies was difficult and this is an important step towards true equality

Yes, absolutely. Our first was born when my dp was unemployed, he got a job about 2 months later, and with subsequent DC we both missed the time he spent with the baby. Would have been even more useful with older DC around to entertain! Would love there to be more scope for both parent to experience mat/pat leave, and realise the impact it has, both positive (family life) and negative (potentially in work life, though hopefully less so now)

It’s a great idea but it wouldn’t be affordable for some... also, how would it work with breastfeeding?

In an ideal world yes it would be lovely but practically it would never happen.

My husband would've killed to be able to stay at home longer with our daughter but in our case we weren't even eligible for shared parental leave.

I think this is very impressive and forward thinking. When I had my baby last year, my employer gave me some enhanced pay but this dropped to smp after 3 months. Luckily my husband works for a good company that offer good maternity packages so we then did shared parental leave when our baby was 3 months old. It was lovely for both of us to be off work together, parenting through the 4 month sleep regression, allowing me some breathing space and more chance of sleep. It also allowed a strong father son bond to form right from the start. In total my husband took 2 weeks paternity leave at the start, then 1 month when the baby was 3 months old. I had to give up some of my leave, so returned to work at 9 months, just after my paid entitlement ran out. If we have another baby, I know my husband would jump at the chance to be home more, get really involved with parenting and build a deep bond with his child. I wish more companies did this.

I can't do paid work, but I'm sure DH would jump at the chance to have 6 months' paid leave. He's certainly earned it, having had plenty of caring responsibilities over the years, but as our youngest is in his GCSE year, I have my doubts whether he'd qualify.

I wouldn't because I haven't worked anywhere was it made financial sense.

When I worked for a company the maternity pay was pretty poor and only a bit better than statutory and now I'm self employed it would be a disaster.

If there was a practical way I could do it without using all our emergency funds I would,

My husband has just started shared parental leave, and I'm heading back to work after 6 months off. We've chosen this set-up, as we both wanted to be able to spend time with our child in these very important early months, and also because this makes the most financial sense for us (I am the higher earner).

Throughout my pregnancy and my maternity leave - through all the classes I've attended, Nct group I joined, mums on public transport I chatted to, parents I've met out and about - I haven't met anybody else doing shared parental leave. In fact, everyone is pretty surprised when I say that we are. Everyone says what an amazing idea it is but then explains that it wouldn't work for them - either financially, or because they aren't prepared to give up their year of maternity.

It seems pretty obvious, therefore, that the best way to increase uptake and have more dads take extended leave is to remove these two barriers - so well done to Aviva.

I hope more businesses follow suit. It is so important for both parents to be able to
bond with their children during the early months. And making it more 'normal' for men to have extended time away from work too will absolutely help women achieve equality in the workplace. (And selfishly, I'd love my husband to have some more male company during his leave)!

This would be incredible. My partner and I plan to take shared parental leave when we have a baby. I'd love to do a full 50:50 split but I get 4 months full pay so would use that and then after that we'd likely split the remaining 8 months between us.

Absolutely. We were lucky enough that ds was born 3 weeks before the start of summer holidays (DH is a teacher) which meant that we had 2 weeks paternity then only a week until we had the whole summer off together, which was fantastic for finding it feet as a family if three and really being able to share parenting.