Times generation gap article

[Pudmyboy]

Sorry I can't do share tokens..in the Sunday Times, article 'Mind the generation gap..' about generational differences, there was this delight:
Cadi, who works in healthcare, agreed: “Recently we were updating some internet pages and one of them was to do with maternity leave and we updated the pronouns from she and her to they/them, just to be more inclusive. I think it’s definitely a positive ... I can’t see how it would affect anyone negatively.” But she had trouble convincing her parents. “I’ve got very liberal parents, but even they were against it, but they took some time to sort of realise what it was
Exclude to include...I despair!

I don’t think equal leave is the answer unless it enshrines in law a minimum period specifically to allow for breastfeeding. I would never return to work before 7-8 months as it would be challenging for breastfeeding. And how does equal leave ie one parental leave policy allow for medical leave during pregnancy for related illness and appts that only the mother needs? You just have to find new words to refer to the one who is a mother to distinguish them.

@Thelnebriati

But in the period where the mother is recovering, her partner should be around to help out.

I don't see anyone saying thats not the case?
What we disagree with is what that leave should be called. Men never gestate and are never post partum.

My comment was more regarding the shared parental leave. I don't think that it is a good idea. I think partners should have their own leave written into their job contracts separate from the mother. Shared parental leave can result in people being bullied into taking a smaller share for example. Also it can affect the leave the woman REQUIRES to properly recover and spend with her newborn, without problems of being "fair" with the partner who would also like time off to be with their child

@timeisnotaline
The advantage to parental leave is that it gives couples complete freedom to chose who takes the time and how much of it they take. Yes obviously, the mother will be taking time for appointment and may have to stop work before her due date due to complications. The same with recovery, you don’t know before childbirth whether you will have easy birth and recovery or a hard birth and long recovery. Couples can adapt as things happen instead of having to commit to a scenario up front.

Then when it comes to breastfeeding
I would never return to work before 7-8 months as it would be challenging for breastfeeding.. This is your choice, my choice was to return to work FT at 10-11 weeks and pump breastmilk. My DCs were still exclusively breastfed the first 6mos of their life and self weaned (except for DC#1 who was weaned at 15mos because my milk dried up due to being pregnant with DC#2). My DH would have liked to stay home with them longer than the 2 weeks he got. I would have liked that too, but that choice wasn’t allowed/supported. The only choice allowed/supported would have been for me to stay off work longer. That hardly seems fair.

So, my ideal parental leave is leave that would support your choice, my choice and all the other choices women and their partners might like to make. I think too supporting all choices equally would go a long way to men taking time off to be with their babies. And this then would narrow the gender gap/eliminate the motherhood penalty.

But it shouldn’t be exactly equal choice between the parents. What pregnancy related medical leave does a man require? Of course you can choose not to breastfeed but importantly women should also have the freedom to breastfeed if they want and we can’t all pump. ‘I did it this way so it will work for every woman’ is not how to go about it- instead we should recognise in law the significant physical difference between a woman having a baby and a man or woman being a partner to a woman having a baby, and ensure those laws allow women freedom to make choices about what they think is best for their baby within healthy norms. Breastfeeding exclusively (as milk source) for the first year is a healthy norm.

@timeisnotaline
we should recognise in law the significant physical difference between a woman having a baby and a man or woman being a partner to a woman having a baby, and ensure those laws allow women freedom to make choices about what they think is best for their baby within healthy norms.

This is overly prescriptive to me. The danger in this is then debate about how much leave for before birth? How much to recover from childbirth? Because this wildly varies depending mostly on luck of the draw, the law would tend towards prescribing the worst case scenario to cover the most unlucky (bed rest at 28weeks, near death experience, post partum infections/sepsis, broken tail bone, etc etc). That then forces the average to luckier than average woman to take or lose time they don’t need or want. They can’t transfer any of it to their partner if a law were to prescribe weeks/months that can only be taken by the birthing woman.

I say it should be simply 2yrs parental leave and the couple can divide it how they wish and as they go. Your main worry seems to be that woman’s partner would refuse her whatever leave she needs/wants. That would be highly unusual for a committed couple to not come to an agreement between themselves and would probably result in the woman breaking up with her partner. The partner would then lose all automatic entitlement to parental leave (in my ideal world) and would have to go through the courts to get any, and courts are not going to ignore the biological differences that result in women needing recovery time.

Anyway that’s my vision. Understand it’s not for everyone. I just am against laws boxing in our freedom of choice.

I don't understand what's unfair about the mother - who's put her body and health on the line - having the right to her own time off work, or about giving a name to this time off.
I don't see either how we can ever hope to make life better for mothers if we won't even use language that acknowledges that she's the one who's does the heavy and dangerous work.

I don't see either how we can ever hope to make life better for mothers if we won't even use language that acknowledges that she's the one who's does the heavy and dangerous work.

Unfortunately “maternity leave” hasn’t made life better for mothers in terms of equality between the sexes. Instead, it has perpetuated the gender pay gap and pension gap which are mostly caused by motherhood and taking long maternity leaves. There is nothing wrong with a woman having the right to time off, but there’s is everything wrong with a society that systematically expects only mothers to take extended time off work...up to years and also systematically prevents the partners of mothers from doing a fair share of infant care. This results in only mothers losing careers and sacrificing long term financial health, while their partners suffer no such consequences.

The specific issues that stop men taking parental leave can be tackled without putting women at a further disadvantage, imo.

I don't think that answers my point (and the point made by several other posters) which is that, when it comes to pregnancy, childbirth and infant feeding, women do bear the heavier burden, and that changing language to obscure that fact helps no-one, least of all mothers.

Sorry X post

LemonSwan - I don't have any children and I'm way over 30, but I've noticed the same thing with a friend's daughters. The elder, born in 1989 has a very different POV than the younger, born in 2001. She seems to have gone the blue-hair-and-gender-studies route, and it will be interesting to see if she matures out of it eventually.

But we have shared parental leave in the uk. Literally 2 weeks is reserved for the mother. In sweden 90 days are reserved for each parent.

Maternity leave has not made working life worse for women. It’s supported them to have babies and recover. Its mandated their right to return to their job after a suitable period as almost no woman can drop a baby one night and be back on shift a day later. Supporting women to have a job has in no way made the gender pay gap worse than when women were forced out of work for having a baby except that there are women earning salaries there to be measured in the pay gap.

@timeisnotaline

Maternity leave has not made working life worse for women. It’s supported them to have babies and recover. Its mandated their right to return to their job after a suitable period as almost no woman can drop a baby one night and be back on shift a day later. Supporting women to have a job has in no way made the gender pay gap worse than when women were forced out of work for having a baby except that there are women earning salaries there to be measured in the pay gap.

Sorry, I did not mean maternity leave has made the gender pay/pension gap worse in terms of comparing working life for U.K. women in the past to the present. I meant in terms of comparing the gender pay/pension gaps of U.K. women vs Danish or Swedish women.

@PlanDeRaccordement

I don't see either how we can ever hope to make life better for mothers if we won't even use language that acknowledges that she's the one who's does the heavy and dangerous work.

Unfortunately “maternity leave” hasn’t made life better for mothers in terms of equality between the sexes. Instead, it has perpetuated the gender pay gap and pension gap which are mostly caused by motherhood and taking long maternity leaves. There is nothing wrong with a woman having the right to time off, but there’s is everything wrong with a society that systematically expects only mothers to take extended time off work...up to years and also systematically prevents the partners of mothers from doing a fair share of infant care. This results in only mothers losing careers and sacrificing long term financial health, while their partners suffer no such consequences.

Or - we could accept that many mothers will take more time of work, have interrupted careers, etc, and as a society make sure they still have security and long term financial health.

Otherwise it's just telling them they ave to live their lives in a way identical to the male model of employment.

I promise that I am not Cadi but some terms are exclusionary. Paternity leave does not work when the partner not giving birth is another woman. Shared parental leave is irrelevant for women giving birth who do not have a partner.

Having said that, there is no inclusive language policy which is going to help realities like the woman who posted the other day asking if her employer could demand 'proof of pregnancy' before she could take time off to attend ante natal appointments. That's the real exclusion - between women who have access to good pregnancy and maternity rights and those who do not.

That's why I agree with allmywhat that some of these discussions act as a distractor. What really shocks me is that some of the worst NHS scandals in recent years have been in maternity services. That's where the NHS should be concentrating its efforts but that demands giving actual attention to the quality of the service, not the glossiness of the leaflets.

@PlanDeRaccordement

Well I do think that maternity leave as a term is outdated and should be called parental leave especially since there is shared parental leave and we should be encouraging men to take it instead of kowtowing to the socialisation that only the mother can be home with a baby on leave.

But switching pronouns to they/them when you still use the term maternity leave is ridiculous.

But parental leave is completely different to maternity leave.

Maternity leave is for child birth, and recovery from child birth and is necessary for the FEMALE body whether or not the baby actually survives, or is kept my the mother.

Parental leave is for child care

Scanned the article on Sunday morning and my blood pressure was raised by the kid saying that if you're not a transactivist, you're an idiot , so thought I'd leave it there 🧘‍♀️ breeeeeeaaaathe