Who is for equal parenthood?

[Himalaya]

(this comes off the other equality thread but wanted to start it as a Q in it's own right).

So much of the inequality between men and women in society comes down to the structures and assumptions that push us in such different direction when we become parents together, and it starts with maternity leave.

Sooooo.... Here is my manifesto.

1. 1 months maternity leave for women giving birth.
2. 6 months parental leave for new parents to be taken anytime in first 3 years (with some flexibility for both employer and employee) . An individual employment benefit/right - non transferable.
3. Redesign school hours and terms and wrap around childcare to fit modern lifestyles rather than harvestime and mothers as main carers.
4. build/retrofit cities so that affordable housing, good schools and commercial centres are close together.
5. free chocolate

Does anyone go for that? Is there any county like that?

Would you support a cut in female maternity leave and an equalisation of parental leave?

Himalaya, did you breastfeed?

I'm thinking of situations where my (male) cousin looked after my niece every day after school for a year because he was off work due to an accident. This was really helpful to my SIL and my niece, and my cousin really enjoyed it.

Now I'm not against nursery. DD went to one. And I'm not talking about mothers here, who generally live with the child and see them when they are not at the nursery. But for a non-resident family member or close friend caring for a child then forms a bond with that child that can last a life time, which would not have formed to the same extent if they had not done that childcare. It builds a genuine support network in that family or friendship unit. A nursery does not do that - a nursery worker is paid and usually, when that child goes to school that relationship is over.

And I'd like to see friends and family who provide childcare being seen as a really positive thing for society, and I think a way should be found to reflect that in the taxation system and rights at work and to take time off work.

I am being very emotional about all this because I am not long back at work and I miss my dcs terribly. But this emotional bond with children is what parenting is. This slight craziness is what makes us do the very very best for our children, all the time, no matter what. This is what is being supported when we say we support families: we support the people who are slightly deranged by an intense emotional attachment, to nurture that derangement to the benefit of their children, whose parents would walk through fire for them. We need more time with children, not less; more derangement, more indulgence of the insane passion that means nothing is ever ever ever too much trouble and we will never get too tired and leave them behind.

We need more. We need fathers to be with our children, grandparents, uncles, cousins and neighbours to love our children; but we do NOT need to offer ANYTHING back

This is how you build the next generation.

so if employees (M&F) get more and more rights to time off, how does this work for female employers?

or male employers? how do you run a business, where everyone else has flexibility?

How do you keep clients happy & keep the money coming in to pay peoples wages?

So you want to cut women's entitlement to maternity leave from 12 months (9 months SMP) to 7 but convert six of those months to 'parental leave'. This would, rightly or wrongly allow employers to put pressure on new mothers to return to work sooner than they are ready and take their 'entitlement' at a later date.

You want to cut maternity leave to 1 month, and if extra time is required due to medical conditions, this is to be taken as sick leave even though:

Employers are not required to pay sick pay (many smaller employers make people take the first three days without pay and then pay SSP only).
It reduces the current 90% pay for six weeks to one calendar month
Sick leave does not have anywhere near the same job protection rights as maternity leave.

I think you have underestimated just how powerful (although by no means perfect) current maternity rights actually are.

Yes, there should be more equality in men being able to have time off in order to care for their child and first steps are being taken here by allowing the transfer of some of the maternity leave - even if there is still a long way to go.

However, as a mother, I have a biological imperative to care for my child and I do not want my rights eroded in order to meet a political agenda / ideology.

Make things more equal by all means, but do it by adding to father's rights, without reducing those of the mother.

I do agree however that the school year needs to be looked at - more evenly spaced holidays would be better.

I also agree about the chocolate (as long as it is Dairy Milk )

Parental leave I would definitely support, but not a set amount for each which is non transferable. Parents in a couple should be able to divide it up between them as they see fit - and the amount should be the same per family for single parents, not half of it because they're missing an extra adult.

More flexible working, proper part time positions (not just cramming 5 days' work into 3 and only being paid for 3), job shares etc. Some jobs can easily be done from home.

zezzie -

The reason why i am thinking about the first year is because that is what current maternity leave covers.

The first year sets the pattern for future years (particularly when you take 2 or 3 of them).

By splitting the baby years so completely into one on maternity leave vs one at work mothers become so much more skilled and confident at childcare than fathers.

Being home to look after the baby also means being home to do the cooking and cleaning and to look after the other children. So at the end of 2-3 rounds of maternity leave it is the mother who knows about what the children like to eat, which shop to buy it from, who their friends are, who their friends mothers are, all the best parks and playgrounds etc...and the father who has internalised the idea that nothing much is going to change in his working life through having children.

You say it is terrible that men can only have parental leave if women give up some of theirs. But that is exactly the current system.

The current system doesn't take into account if you are a physical wreck after pregnancy and nightfeeding - or if you bounce back - you get the same ammount of leave and unless you go back to work, your child's father isn't entitled to any time off (beyond the first two weeks) to look after his child. This seems to be to be an institutionalisation of the idea that fathers are 'baby sitting' their children on behalf of the mother rather than playing a full and equal role.

I guess I don't see 6 months as unreasonable, as that is what it was when I had mine. I did breastfeed extendedly and I did go back to work. I wonder why we didn't add 6 months for men on at that point and make it equal, rather than another 6 months for women.

I am now self-employed so I am employee and employer and I do see quite starkly that you don't get something for nothing. I can take as much time off as i like, but I'm not earning any money in that time. I have no one to bargain with but myself

Wasabi - anything is possible. Business moans about all new laws that hamper their greed, but they find a way. I mean do we want child labour in factories? Do we want married women to lose their jobs automatically? These things only stopped because laws were passed against them. People were arguing against those laws, of course, because of damage to profitability. People argued against abolition too.

I get all that, Himalaya, but I really don't believe that the pressures that make society look to women when they need something cleaned, mended, found, cooked or tidied up will go away because men get awarded half of their partner's maternity leave. I think you're starting in the wrong place.

Without taking anything at all away from women, I think we would change more if you made it the LAW that every time a man asks a woman, "darling, where is the x?" it is ILLEGAL for her to move a muscle other than the ones needed to say, "I don't know sweetie, try the changing bag. Otherwise, just have a look"

Vezzie, I think we need to offer something back because at the moment many people who would love to spend more time with children are unable to because of the way work and taxation are structured.

My children are about to spend half term with my parents, and in fact my children spend about eight weeks of every year with my parents, but that is only because my parents are now retired. They really felt they missed out on the children's early years because of their working arrangements.

So I do think we have to give something back, especially for people who care for children with disabilities.

Vezzie - you are talking about profits. i am talking about flexibility for women business owners.

there is a recession. many companies make little profit. practically how do women BO, give greater freedom and choice to everyone else, while continuing to service clients?

the answer is: close down thier business, make people redundant or take up the slack personally.

ClaireDeTamble

What do you mean by pressure on new mothers to return to work sooner than they are ready?

• do you mean physically ready after childbirth
• or do you mean ready to leave their child with someone else for most of the day?

The first is a female only issue, the second applies (or ought to apply) equally to both sexes. I don't think it is a biological imperative that the mother has to be the prime carer.

Currently no one asks if men are being pushed back into work too early, before they are ready to leave their child.

I think you should get a reasonable amount of maternity pay and leave to recover from birth and establish breast feeding - I've said a month, but maybe it is more. Some people may need longer for medical reasons, but then that is a medical issue not about leaving your child.

After that we should get an equal amount of time per parent.

You could say 3 months for mothers only then 6 month each for each parent. That would be equal, you would still get 9 months SMP but there would be a big financial incentive for dads to take time off when mums are ready to go back to work, rather than it being a zero-sum-game that the dad can only take time off if the mum gives up some of her SMP.

vezzie - that's an unenforceable law

I don't see that it necessarily involves more freedom and flexibility. It perhaps involves employing more people who each work less hours. We could then perhaps have people rewarded for their contribution to the 'big society' by reflecting in the tax system the hours of unpaid work they have done, much of which will not be looking after children, but will be spent on other tasks which currently have no economic value.

Vezzie "men get awarded half of their partner's maternity leave" ....that's what I mean. Why should the leave that you get to look after your child (rather than the leave that you get to recover from giving birth) belong to one partner? ...other than if you accept that the ability to bath, feed, change nappies and clean up around a family belongs to one sex.

How are you going to compensate the women who don't have a parter or whose partner doesn't want to do it?

And how is it financially beneficial for a man to take 6 months off work,even if they are paid, if it damages his career prospects?

Vezzie and Vashti speak much sense. Why on earth would you want to, as a feminist, take away women's rights? We have to work around a world set up for men so much as it is.

Wasabi, why women business owners in particular? Are they under more pressure than male business owners? I don't support any business owners just because they are women. If the factory owners putting children at the looms were women, I wouldn't support them either. Even if they were pregnant.

I don't know, you hear all this rhetoric all the time about self sufficiency and getting on with it and pulling up by the boot straps by self styled entrepreneurs - "make it work!", they demand of everyone else, "like me!" and then when they need to adapt to a new set of circumstances and make them work, they start whining. Maybe the framework is wrong? It doesn't work for you now, doesn't it? Maybe it just doesn't work?

I don't really care about business, on an emotional level, to tell the truth. At the company I work for (in its previous incarnation) the board awarded themselves obscene bonuses for "performance" when the share price was under 1p and it was just about to go under. I mean I care about my friends who run businesses, they work hard and I wish them all the best, and I wish you all well too. Like me, and everyone else, you're all just doing your best in a capitalist world. but business is a bit doomed really. It's ruining the planet, infinite growth is a logical impossibility (this is what the rules of business demand - not just doing ok year on year, but growth year on year), most business are just money making opportunities spotted by someone in a vanishingly tenuous space - fake pheasants are for sale in pet shops, for example. Fake pheasants for your dog. We are really at the fag end of this capitalism business, aren't we, if there are people starving and other people spending money on fake pheasants for their companion animals.

I mean I just don't get all stirred by words like Business and Entrepreneur and Market in the way that you are supposed to, you are supposed to sort of straighten up and look solemn (I don't feel that way about the National Anthem either). These words are hollow to me, they just sound selfish and greedy.
Again, I am not saying people in business are selfish and greedy. Some of my best friends are in business and they are not selfish and greedy. I just don't get why we are supposed to think Business is Noble, like people doing up their houses expect to be applauded ("oh I am so TAAHRED the builder delivered the wrong heated towel rail AGAIN")

I have only read the OP, not the whole thread, but I think we should think of what is best for the child and not what suits us as adults. I just know when I was little , I was TIRED after school and I wanted my MUM, and I wanted to be at home where I could relax in my own 'space', feeling safe with my MUM there. I was used to Dad being at work, but Mum was the soft one who I wanted. Maybe if I was used to it being Dad at home I would have wanted him - I don;t know. I HATED it when my Mum didn;t pick me up from school and I had to go home with someone else. I would have HATED an after school club.

I am incredibly lucky and grateful to work for a company who have treated me very well since having kids. DH's work are also pretty flexible and we have both managed to mould our working hours around the kids since tey were born. Mostly me staying at home or working part time. I now work almost full time hours again DS1 is nearly 9, but still pick the kids up from school 3 times a week. DH does mornings. (But the DSs don;t like it that I don;t see them muc in the early mornings.)

I realise we are very lucky.

Himalaya, because right now the mother can take it all if she and her partner want. If fathers want better parental leave, non transferably, let them campaign for their own, and I will support them, and make them sandwiches and flasks of tea to take on the march. Wearing a pinny.

I don't see how taking choice away can help. If you force men home against their will, you won't find them washing sheets and sorting outgrown clothes into little boxes for the loft and cutting tiny toe nails and mushing up delightful little meals for the freezer. Some woman will have to come home and do all that.

Note - I am not saying men don't do that, my partner does, but we chose this way together so it's not been foisted on him

I would have no desire to work and domestically service the Home Operation, while someone else gets to snuggle the baby's head

Unless you pass my law. Then it might be workable

I don't want it to be called "Vezzie's law" though, because that construction is only used for sad things

Abigailadams - because I think the way these sexist employment rights are set up damage women.

As Vashti (almost) said how is it financially beneficial for a woman to take 12 months off work,even if they are paid, if it damages her career prospects?

Shouldn't both sexes have equal rights to damage their career prospects, rather than one sex getting priority over those rights?

Generally rights should be equal.

Where there are sex specific rights they should be linked to well bounded sex specific needs - like giving birth, or needing a man to play Hamlet or whatever.

Being at home to look after a baby in its first 12 months and beyond is not a sex specific need, it is one that can be fulfilled equally by either parent. If employers have to give parents time off to do this it should be equal.

I think this would be better for women as it would enable a more equal split from the outset, and more flexibility to use parental leave beyond the first year.

Himalaya, yes, I do think taking time off work does damage career prospects. But that is mainly due to discriminatory attitudes from employers. Plenty of people make career changes and do really well in a totally different career. But for some reason, women who go into a career after years out caring for children are not viewed in the same way.