Would renaming maternity leave as parental leave help change perceptions?

[classicslove]

I've never posted on this board but something has just got me thinking about the way maternity leave is perceived in the UK.
Surely one way to change this is to rename it as Parental Leave more in line with the Swedish system with a set amount of time for the mother to recover and the rest split between both parents.
Details are not as simple as this but surely while it is still called Maternity it is assumed that it is solely the females responsibility in the thought process of the general public and in particular men and employers, whatever the law actually says.

In a lot of workplaces, including mine, it's been called parental leave for years.

It’s maternity leave to help the mothers body recover and relax..

No leave it as it is. It’s maternity leave as it’s for mum to spend time with her baby away from work after a long 9 months of carrying, growing and delivering her baby.

Actually relax… pahhh! 🤪
would you also like the maternity ward changed to parents ward?

It seems that many things that are the prerogative of women are downgraded to suit men. It’s maternity leave - you know, for a mother who’s given birth. There’s also paternity leave for Dads.

No thank you. I feel it is important to maintain and protect women's (and children's) language and rights at this time as they have been and are under sustained attack.

Maternity is for the mother. Paternity is for the father. I don't see why we need to change the names.

I can see it being problematic to have a set time, by which the mother is expected to be recovered, when that is so variable too.

Campaign for longer paternity leave instead.

That's not a renaming, that's a fundamental change in what it is. Shared parental leave already exists and does what you suggest.

(My pet hate is employment policies that tie themselves in knots referring to parental leave and then talking about non-birthing parents and birthing parents. I have seen too many and often, in an attempt to draft out the realities of sex, you can't tell which type of leave they are talking about. Recently I reviewed one where they had renamed both fathers/mother's partners and primary adopters as "non-birthing parents" and it just made no sense!)

No I think it needs to be protected for the mother.

Whilst raising a child is the responsibility of both parents, the mother is more important at the start. Downplaying that smacks of "female erasure". Feminism is not about pretending men and women are the same, and doing so gets us into all sorts of problems.

It’s not parental leave though. The woman’s body grows the baby. The woman’s body makes milk.

A father can adequately care for an infant, but he is not filling the same exact role as a woman who gives birth to the child.

Denying biology doesn’t help keep women in the workplace. It doesn’t help prevent discrimination. We can both accept that women play a unique role in the continuation of the human race and accept that they deserve economic independence and fulfilling careers.

Well that just confirms my view of this, thanks everyone.
It really has gone beyond equality hasn't it. So sad.

Women have to go through pregnancy - easy for some, awful for others, hormonal changes etc and then either squeeze a new human through a small aperture or have invasive surgery. After that they are either bf which makes them totally indispensable or ff whereby they are still the ones getting up in the night generally speaking. 6 months maternity leave minimum is needed to recover in my opinion. After that feel free to divvy up as suits you. But that 6 months should be sacrosanct.

Whats gone beyond equality?

What has “gone beyond equality” and what does that even mean? What is “so sad”??

I am quite happy that leave for new mothers is called maternity leave, and that leave for new fathers is called paternity leave. Shared parental leave already exists in the UK, although what it really is, is the woman’s maternity leave being surrendered and used for the father to take additional leave. I would rather that there was a separate entitlement to parental leave that didn’t rely on the mother having to give up her maternity leave.

What does this mean?

Just listened to a youngish lad on the news saying changing NEETS to LEETS will change everything. (Not to Looking. Negative to Positive.)

Used to work in PR. New client? Suggest a rebrand. Name, logo, branding.

A rose by any other name…

Part of the purpose of maternity leave is to allow physical (and mental and emotional) recovery from birth, plus establishing breast-feeding, all things that are unique to the mother. What would be progressive would be to offer fathers/partners a period of leave equal to maternity, whereas the Shared Parental Leave model takes from the mother to give to the father/partner.

You're going to have to explain a bit more, if you'd like anyone to see your point of view.

What has gone beyond equality? And what is so sad?

But parental leave already exists. As does paternity leave.

Really? That must be confusing as parental leave also exists in the UK as a separate thing from maternity and paternity leave.

💯.

Yes of course there is the option of share leave but how many women would actually say 'I'm on parental leave' rather than 'I'm on maternity leave'. Also the uptake currently of shared parental leave is incredibly low at between 2 and 5%.
In order to effect real change we need to normalise the idea that having children is the responsibility of both parents from the outset. If you believe that both partners need to take equal responsibility for children's upbringing and employers need to treat both parents equally in terms of career progression (because whatever the law states, you cannot police peoples thoughts) then those ideals need to be clear from the start.
One of the biggest problems in my view is that currently the overwhelming male view is that their world/role will not change significantly after having children.This needs to change and by changing the title to Parental from Maternity after a set period before and directly after birth, would go some way to addressing this issue.
This is not about devaluing women's role in the birthing process but changing society's attitudes to childcare responsibilities ans the view of women in the workplace.

In reality it would be good if there was maternity leave, acknowledging that women do the birthing.

And (in an ideal world) an additional Parental Leave which could be divided up as and how it suited the parents.

@IwantToRetire exactly, whilst still recognising the physical difference the change in perception would go a long way but only if it was expected after a set period after birth.