Help me procrastinate even more

[F1rstT1meMummy]

So I am in the final part of my dissertation, looking at how people combine professional work with being a parent and the juggling that they have to do to combine pressures of work, with duties that parenthood brings (I realise that is quite poorly worded and has already some of my subjective experience placed upon it).

Anyway - one of the things that came up is males not using their paternity leave due to a big drop in pay. So - I know some companies/sectors have nice maternity packages over and above the statutory and I was wondering if any companies do anything nice for new dads!

As I recall, we were fortunate to have a little put aside for my DH to take his pat leave (and annual leave) which was way way way to much time off together so we wouldn't feel the pinch of Statutory Paternity Pay for two weeks - but I was wondering what other people do?

This has no bearing at all really on my dissertation - its just something that has sparked a thought in my head!

some companies do over parternity leave on full pay - my DH worked for a univerisity and they did a weeks full pay - with a weeks AL - for DS2 that was fine -

Not had kids yet but planning to soon so thinking about this a lot. He's lucky enough to work somewhere where his 2 weeks are on full pay. However also thinking about him doing the last 6 months of the 12m mat leave allowance which would be 3 months at smp and 3 months at 0, and we're putting aside for it already.

Also, good luck with the dissertation. Am in the last throes of mine myself and also procrastinating on here :-)

My workplace and DH's both give 2 weeks' full pay for paternity leave. However, neither employer offers anything for men beyond that - in fact I've never heard of any employer that does - whereas they do offer enhanced maternity pay packages (several months at full pay). Naturally this sort of different treatment reinforces the likelihood that women will take several months off while men take at most 2 weeks.

In addition, many men at both our workplaces don't take even the 2 weeks (let alone longer), not for pay reasons but because they are "too busy" at work or at least want to appear indispensable.

MY DH, who works for a large company where there aren't that many men, got four weeks full pay. The catch was that you could only take the additional two weeks after the first year and not earlier (ie when I returned to work at 10. 5 months which would have been very helpful!). Then when he did request to take it they were a bit a shocked that he wanted to take a day a fortnight in order to be share fridays off with our DD. They did approve it in the end so I think it was just more surprise than anything else and it has worked well for us all.

Civil service offer 3 weeks for men. But alot of my friend's partners have gone back after a week because of pay. Given the change in law and move to share leave which may come in during the next few years it is likely that many more will offer enhanced packages.