Labour's manifesto on maternity leave

[Clarew201]

Hello, I thought I'd share part of a letter I wrote to Jeremy Corbyn (also my local MP) about the Labour manifesto on maternity leave in case it's of interest or anyone wants to share onwards. Thanks, Clare
'I feel compelled to write about the Labour proposal for a year's maternity leave for women. It seemsat once progressive and regressive.
Many women will be very happy to have a year of paid leave, and that is an important and wonderful step forward. At the same time it is firmly embedding the message that childcare is a woman's job, and surely will also further exacerbate the issuer that women do the bulk of domestic labour (even when both partners work). Given that something like 80% of stay at home mothers experiencedepression, and (I believe) we are trying to work for a world where men take a stronger role in domestic life and build closer relationships with their children, this feels very sad and counter-productive.
Please thinkaboutpaternity leave as an option alongside maternity. We should no longer be assuming it's the woman who will stay at home and should surely be moving towards offering men and women equal opportunities for childcare.

The manifesto mentions the leave can be shared between both parents, doesn't it?

Possibility of sharing is good. But it should be compulsory for part of the year to be taken by the father where both parents are working.

should be compulsory for part of the year to be taken by the father

How would this work in practice though? If the Father is the higher earner and they cannot afford for him to take 'compulsory' paternity leave?

In our household DH and I earn very similar and so it may work for us in theory, However, to be honest - by 9 months leave with the 1st I was ready to go back to work. I think the 9 months paid stat. leave is enough, but increase the payments rather than the time off.

What is there position on maternity leave?

Luckily I had my children before all this extended leave. Because I wanted to - and was able to - go back to work fairly quickly.

My problem with a years maternity leave is you end up with no nurseries prepared to take young babies making it harder to go back to work earlier if you want to.

“How would this work in practice though? If the Father is the higher earner and they cannot afford for him to take 'compulsory' paternity leave?”

Well for that, you’d have to have properly paid maternity and paternity leave. Like they do in Scandinavia.

And also higher taxation like in Scandinavia, which, by reading most comments even on MN, noone is prepared to have.

If the father is the higher earner, his paternity leave will be higher.
It should be paid by the company, but subsidised by the state. (Or the company can claim some of it back).

I agree with your letter, OP.

At 9 months I was breastfeeding an extremely frequent feeder who refused bottles and didn't eat very much. Not sure what we'd have done if I'd have been forced to go back to work so that DP could take his share of leave!

If the father is the higher earner, his paternity leave will be higher. not necessarily, all roles I and DH have ever worked in offer statutory only. Less than half our weekly incomes.

Having the option of 39 weeks at a higher rate or 52 weeks smp would be a good idea. Same total spend.

Whatever arrangements are made for paternity leave, they shouldn't make any difference to maternity leave.
Men don't breastfeed. Men don't have to recover from labour. And women are the ones most likely to be subjected to pressure or coercion - which is one reason why benefits used to be paid to the mother by default.

Not all women having babies have partners.

should be compulsory for part of the year to be taken by the father

Absolutely not. What about in a situation where the parents have split up? What about single women who have used a donor?

I don’t think it should be compulsory for the father to take part of the leave - that’s just silly. I do think this sort of legislation makes it harder for women to get / retain jobs though. It’s a nice sounding idea but childcare and the tie of the school run is a much, much bigger issue.

I was still breastfeeding at 1yr. At 9 months my 1st little darling slept around 2h overnight and this was in dribs and drabs. I appreciated being able to take the year off, it meant i was in a better place to return to work. My dh would have been very unhappy at home alone with a baby for 8h a day and wouldn't have wanted to do that.

It's nice to be shared where wanted but i would be against it being compulsary. Also i was left with health complications, which stll bother me years after. Had i returned to my very physical job even 3 months earlier, the damage done may have been worse.

For some people a few weeks mat leave is fine, somw want to share and some take the year or even more. I would always argue for that choice to be a family one not a state one.

I think it is a great idea along with more flexible working. 4 day week also great idea. Much more family friendly and more women will return to work and stay in work and more families sharing care.

I have to say a huge fat fuck off to compulsory fathers leave. Im breastfeeding. If i returned to work id then have to express at work to provide milk. So id go to work and still have breastfeeding responsibilities.

What id rather see is 12 months maternity leave plus the option of paternity leave and or extra careers leave for non birthing parents. Some mothers need extra support well after the first 2-4 weeks. So having a partner being able to access some extra leave to help with that would be amazing.

Big fat fuck off from me too for sharing maternity leave. Maternity leave is for the MUM to recover from birth. It's also for baby, at the most vulnerable and vital developmental stage of their life. If we're serious about increasing breastfeeding rates too then we shouldn't be encouraging giving away our rights. Our fore mothers fought hard for those rights. This generation are rushing to throw all these rights away

Agree with Inebriati - whatever arrangements are proposed for fathers should not impact on those in place for women.

Once a woman has a baby, research shows her vulnerability to domestic abuse rises. I would be against anything that decreased her financial autonomy and choices and made it dependent on a man’s.

Whatever is in place needs to be flexible. I am pregnant and currently planning to return to work after 7 months (6 months mat & 1 month annual leave) & people keep telling me I will change my mind/won’t want to do this/etc. But I earn vastly more than my partner, & there is no sense in me being off without my pay whilst he works. I would love to breastfeed for as long as I can (if I can) but not if the downside is us being short of money.

Equally, he wants to care full time for our child. I appreciate @Sunkisses & @ICJump posts about about hard-won maternity rights, but this also contributes to women being seen as the ‘default parent’ and to wifework scenarios. Breastfeeding and post-birth recovery aside, there is nothing that makes me a better parent/more suited to staying at home than DP.

Flexibility and options are key.

Possibility of sharing is good. But it should be compulsory for part of the year to be taken by the father where both parents are working.

Absolutely not! Quite aside from the financial argument, compulsory paternity leave would mean forcing a mother to return to work even when she absolutely enjoys being the main child rearer and does not see it as drudgery.

For me, and my husband, this would have been horrendous. He was not particularly good with babies and toddlers: he was quickly bored. He came into his own as a father much later. Whereas I loved being with my little kids, learning to connect with them and understand them, watching them grow into more and more independence, being the one to steer that growth and encourage them. Repetitive jobs didn't bother me. I'd rather change a hundred nappies than sit at a cash register all day or balance some business's books.

Yes, give fathers, the families, the choice to take leave, but making it compulsory goes against the interest of those mothers who really, really enjoy motherhood and don't think baby-care rusts their minds; and the interests of their babies, who would prefer an invoved mother than a bored father. Making it into an ideological or political issue ("it's just not proper feminism!") is too much interference into the private lives of parents. Let each couple decide for themselves.

And behind it all is the sexist view imo that caring jobs (done mosty by women) are inherently inferior to regular paid employment . These are male values, ie established by men and willingly accepted by women.

Mothers have been through 9 months pregnancy, given birth and many will choose to breastfeed. Maternity leave enables mothers to adjust and recover from the huge biological changes that this process involves and allows them to invest the time that is required to successfully establish and maintain breastfeeding. This is good for both Mothers, babies and society in general. Maternity pay should be at a high enough rate that Mothers do not lose out economically for doing this valuable work. One of the big reasons that this is something that has to be fought for is that even without Maternity leave and pay Mothers will do this.

Make no mistake though. Once Mothers win the right to well paid Maternity leave and the work they do gets recognized as important then men will want the Maternity pay and the recognition that Mothers deserve. It's already happening.

Once Mothers win the right to well paid Maternity leave and the work they do gets recognized as important then men will want the Maternity pay and the recognition that Mothers deserve. It's already happening.

So true. And it's sad that only then will some mothers appreciate that role. And that's when men will cling to it, and take away this right as well.

Some of this thread reads like a riff on 'The Life of Brian': What do women have to do with maternity leave? OK aside from pregnancy and labour and breastfeeding and post childbirth recovery...?

Of course it doesn't follow that child rearing and housework should also become the woman's job but I think this has to be a separate discussion. When it comes to pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, it's women who take on all the risk and do all the work. No amount of waving away will change that and I would resist any attempt to force them to share their maternity leave.

It’s another fuck off from me.
I already have two friends who have gone back to work sooner than they would like, despite traumatic births and breastfeeding, so that their partner could have a turn. He gets to play the enlightened modern man while she suffers.
I have another friend who was completely sold on the idea of swapping at 6 months and certain that she would continue breastfeeding with the help of a pump. It didn’t work so the baby was moved to formula milk.
This bullshit is just another attempt to break the mother-baby dyad.