Should the father's employer contribute half of any maternity pay?

[AyeAmarok]

Would this work? ls it "fair" that it's the woman's employer who has to take all the financial hit, when it's both parents who chose to have the baby? (meaning they are more likely to be wary of hiring or promoting women).

Making the man's employer contribute as well, could that go some way towards making it equally as "risky" to hire men as women and then it would be less likely to mean that women of childbearing age are discriminated against.

The sharing of the maternity/paternity leave goes some way to address this, but the take-up is still really low, and the pay isn't actually equal so the financial consequences are still not equal on the man and women's employer.

I'm thinking this through in my head and thought I'd float it out on this board and see what you thought? I know there are loads of potential issues that I haven't thought of, probably some really obvious ones!

But could this be a way of stopping women being so unfairly treated when it comes to having a family?

(happy to be told it's a terrible idea!)

Good point, whisky, let's just all stop having kids. Um.

I didn't say stop having kids, just fund them yourself if you want them ;)

By "fund them yourself", you presumably mean the woman should fund them herself, since there is no impact on the man's wages when he decides to have a baby?

I'd be happy to fund my own retirement, lucky I am saving and have my own private pension fund that I put money into each month :) I am pretty sure there will be no state pension when I am at retirement age!

Public services are used by all and everyone. If you have been to school, hospital, used a road etc so I think fair enough paying taxes to that. I don't have kids and I don't mind paying for that.
But no idea why people expect child benefits/maternity pay and paternity pay just because they want a child. :s

I don't know why people expect money from the government to help them have a child. Why should they get tax credits, child benefit, free school meals?

AyeAmarok Tue 17-May-16 10:26:54
By "fund them yourself", you presumably mean the woman should fund them herself, since there is no impact on the man's wages when he decides to have a baby?

No, he should be liable to pay half.

We already have share parental leave and shared parental pay

We already have share parental leave and shared parental pay

We do, but it hasn't been anywhere near enough to make the impact, on careers and earnings, of having a family equal to both men and women.

So we need to do something else to encourage the 'burden' to be shared so it doesn't disproportionately affect women.

I employ x on 20 grand, she gets pregnant I pay four months at full pay (including smp) and then smp only and reclaim from the government the smp and 20 grand for the replacement of x.

Or I employ y on 20 grand and he gets his partner pregnant, she works a minimum wage/ poor benefits job. I now have to pay y 20 grand plus four months extra pay! I cannot claim this bit back.

Can you not see that companies will just strip back maternity to smp only for everyone?

Hardly progressive.

We can afford out fairly generous maternity pay simply because we know it's only possibly to have to pay it to about 45% of our childbearing age workforce. If that potentially becomes 100% (and potentially more than double the current number of parents as men can procreate for longer) we'd have to remove the benefit as it would bankrupt us.

Just want to clarify a couple of points on this.

Shared Parental Leave does exist. Take up has been incredibly low. One of the main reasons for this is that the law was watered down to make it more employer friendly. So an employer MUST offer shared parental leave. However, they are free to offered enhanced maternity pay to mothers BUT offer only SMP to the partner of the birth mother. Therefore in the vast majority of cases it still makes financial sense for the mother to take the enhanced pay and for the partner to continue working.

Shared Parental Leave is probably about a quarter of a step in the right direction.

How would this impact women who didn't knew who the father was or had artificial insemination?

Would they then be judged by their boss because they couldn't nam someone for the form?

Could potentially unmarried women be discriminated against? Employers needing to know that there would be a father to bear half the costs.

What about unemployed or SAHDs?

Excellent post Buffy.

Nanna, those are important points. Many proposed 'solutions' to gender inequality I read on here seem to be about how getting the father to do or experience something the mother usually currently does or experiences.

This means that the solutions often rely on an individual arrangement between a man and a woman, and the woman's ability to negotiate access to that man's time, support and money either through appealing to him directly or through the state.

They all seem to be heteronormative solutions that rely on a woman convincing the right man (wealthy, caring, good with kids) to impregnate her and then stick around. It assumes that the default family arrangement for women who choose to get or stay pregnant is involvement with the father (or sometimes an alternative romantic partner).

I think we should be looking for solutions for women that are not about depending upon or negotiating with an individual man for his contribution.

As the state can't even organise collecting child support contributions in this country, the likelihood of sorting out getting women's maternity pay off men's employers seems highly unlikely.

I don't know why people expect money from the government to help them have a child. Why should they get tax credits, child benefit, free school meals?

People pay tax as part of a social contract that the money will be used to fund things that society considers important and a community good. So things like universal education, universal healthcare, everything that enables the rule of law etc gets paid for from taxes with the aim of creating a relatively healthy society. If these things weren't provided the social contract would be broken and people would refuse to pay taxes (see American Declaration of Independence)

To enable that healthy society to continue beyond the 5-10 year horizon you need to ensure that you've got a future pipeline of workers who will pay taxes to provide the community goods - in other words you've got to ensure you have enough children to keep things balanced. Which means that having children cannot be a significant disadvantage to people otherwise you don't have enough people paying taxes to fund the community goods and, again, the social contract breaks. So it makes sense that the government gives peoples OWN MONEY back to them when they have children to encourage a community benefit.

Also, I love the idea in the OP but can't see a way in which it would be workable which is a shame.

This is a fair idea for women in general. We need to remove 'logical' reasons for employers to discriminate against women.

It wouldn't be great for single women sadly but it'd be good over all for women.

As an employer, though, i would rather be liable for half the cost and not have to hire maternity cover/ distribute more work amongst a smaller team for 6-12 months than be liable for half the cost and still have to sort cover. So I don't believe it levels the playing field in the way that incentivising a split in parental leave potentially does. I would like reimbursed SPP to be 90% of pay for six weeks also, or at the very least for two weeks, to ensure at least some leave is taken.

It also has the disadvantage that supplementary pay is voluntary and employers will just withdraw or reduce the benefit if the pool of employees drawing on it increases.

Here in Sweden parental leave is paid by the state not the employer. Like Norway parents can split it how they like. One thing that really helped DH to take his 50% was that he gets total control of when he takes his time.

So he took 6 weeks off when DS was born. Then took off 2 days a week until he was 6 months old. Then 1 day until a year. He still has lots days which he can use any time he chooses until DS is 8.

I agree, almondpudding, we need something less heteronormative ... but the only other way I see is if the state paid for everything, which would mean they'd have to introduce more taxes and then get employers to pay those taxes.
Not sure if it is easier to get employers to pay maternity pay than get them to pay their taxes, but tax evasion is a big problem ...

To enable that healthy society to continue beyond the 5-10 year horizon you need to ensure that you've got a future pipeline of workers who will pay taxes to provide the community goods

Also, you need young people to care for the elderly.

I somehow doubt that all those people who say that people who have children should pay for that "luxury" on their own, plan to commit suicide the moment they need help with daily life.

Interestingly my employer offers shared parental leave on exactly the same terms as maternity leave. A very generous 6 months full pay, then SMP/parental leave pay until it stops. Only thing is that they will only pay it for that first 6 months so for the man to get any paid time the woman would have to go back before 6 months. He can't start his paid 6 months the day she finishes hers, which seems reasonable. Take up has still been very low - I can only assume because many women want to take at least the first 6 months with their child.
I'm not sure you can expect employers to do much more than that.

In my post above, I shouldn't have said "as an employer, I..," - my point was general in that this adjustment in itself doesn't make men and women equally "risky" employees from a purely capitalist perspective.

Personally, as an employer, I make a point of encouraging as many women as possible at all ages and stages. Because the balance is so far the other way.

Here in Sweden parental leave is paid by the state not the employer

What do mean by this ? In UK the statutory rates are paid by employers but employers can recover most of it from the state.

Some employers by way of contract pay much more. Is the state paying the much higher proportion which some employers voluntary pay in the UK pay?

I'm having difficulty working out what the OP is actually proposing. If what she is suggesting that the employer whose employee isn't taking time off should pay half of whatever the person who is taking time off is due under contract it is unreasonable and unworkable.

I don't know but I do sometimes think that in the demands for what employers should pay in this situation the fact employers need employees actually to be at work gets overlooked.

So he took 6 weeks off when DS was born. Then took off 2 days a week until he was 6 months old. Then 1 day until a year. He still has lots days which he can use any time he chooses until DS is 8.

This is a really excellent and workable solution, I'd love to see this introduced here.

Even if it led to higher taxes, Aye?

Yes companies which only pay the minimum would be a problem, and those who withdraw the enhanced pay as a way to get round it.

One huge problem I have with companies and their mat pay provisions is that it's the companies who generally have a high number of women, and (therefore, generally) very low rates of pay who often have poor maternity pay too.

The companies with a high skilled workforce, with higher pay, (eg an engineering firm) tend to have much better maternity arrangements. I can't help but think that this is because they have 90% men in those higher paid positions, so the number of women who will actually need to take the mat leave and enhanced pay will be proportionately very low. So they look like Great Employers for Women. For all 3 of their female employees!

If they had to contribute towards the costs of starting a family for all the men they employ who also started a family, then we'd see.

So maybe a better solution would be that the SMP rate should be a lot higher, and the employers should contribute a lot more in their taxes for that.

But then that doesn't stop the discrimination... So I dunno.

I just think that the financial consequences need to fall evenly on the employers of both parents, not just the woman's.