"The Politics of Paternity Leave"

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

Interesting article on the BBC here - particularly caught my eye that "only 29%" of people think that childcare is the mother's primary responsibility. But I thought the whole thing might be worth a look, as we've been talking about parental leave etc recently.

Thoughts?

The statistics in the linked webpage appear to come from the 2009 "Working Better" report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which can be read in full at www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/working_better_final_pdf_250309.pdf.

That report states "Childcare is no longer seen as largely women?s responsibility. Only 29 percent of parents agree that childcare is the mother?s primary responsibility, while 42 percent disagree."

I read the first sentence as meaning "primarily the mother's (as opposed to the father's) responsibility". I read the second sentence as meaning "women have many responsibilities and childcare is no longer top of their list". So I am a little confused and unsure at this stage.

I read it as the former - the mother's rather than the father's responsibility. It is a bit ambivalent though isn't it. going to have a read of the whole thing at some point...

Not read the full article yet but I didn't realise that:

"from April 2011, new mothers will be able to transfer the second half of their year-long maternity leave to the father. But this too will be unpaid, thus, again, of little help to those without the necessary savings."

However presumably of those second 6 months - 3 are payable at SPP ~ £123 per week and the remaining 3 unpaid?

Calling it "unpaid" is wrong. I know it is not a full salary but I feel that if I am right that is very shoddy journalism. We are streets ahead of the US on this even though we are streets behind Scandanavia.

I saw that and got really excited

My company offers very good enhanced maternity pay (six months on full pay) and I'm so hoping that it will have to offer the same to men, equality and all that. Loving the idea of managers getting panicky because the men in their team may go off on six months paternity leave

My husband was fairly lucky despite his crappy last job, they allowed him to take his two weeks leave separately, so that he took the first week off, then when everyone had stopped visiting and DD and I had got past the really shit bit he had another week off that we could really enjoy.

I also think not enough appreciation is given to fathers returning from paternity leave. They are inevitably going to be sleep deprived, worried about their wife and child, but while we can ponce off to baby groups and just work around our own schedule they have to go back to work and be completely human and normal, when they might not feel so.

Teresa May has announced that they are revieweing those new rules, so I suspect that they won't come into force in April. Again, shoddy journalism.

On the six months Happy, this has been looked at. It wouldn't apply unless the maternity pay would be for same period the paternity leave would cover. The man can't take the first six months, so they wouldn't need to replicate it for men. Only if the enhanced pay stretches beyond the six month mark is there an issue. Few do.

oh poo. I did get my hopes up there.

I think it's a good article even if it's not entirely up to date (suspect it may have been prepared a while back and kept on the back burner till DC's paternity leave...).

I'm pleased about the proposals (although that they keep getting delayed) as a step in the right direction.

However, I am not sure why the proposals still insist that the mother takes the first 6 months off. I would prefer to see couples able to choose which of them takes all of the leave (barring maybe the first 6 weeks which are needed by the mother for recovery after birth), not just the latter 6 months.

There will be plenty of couples who would be financially better off if the father took all the leave. There will also be plenty of couples who cannot afford to take a whole year's leave and so would rather take (say) 6 months in total, but would still like to split that 50/50 between them. Allocating the first 6 months automatically to the mother means that employers will still expect women, not men, to take leave when having children, and women will still end up as the primary carer.

My husband quit his job when I had our child so he could stay at home with us. He had 4 months off before he got a new job which was nice so we did all the feeds together and all the get ups.

For some reason we never took it in turns we just used to get up together and then watch the other person feeding her and talk to each other! I have no idea why we did this looking back, maybe it was just for moral support!

I wouldnt want my husband to be home all the time though because childcare is my patch and I dont want to swap! I wouldnt mind being off with him but I dont know if I would want him to stay at home if I wasnt allowed to.