Has your partner taken paternity leave recently?

[Tom]

Dear mumsnetters

I wonder if I could ask your help...
I need to find a few couples where dad has recently taken paternity leave, to get some quotes and stories for a major speech by the govt minister who introduced paternity leave - Patricia Hewitt (the minister for women).

I'd be particularly interested in dads who would not have been able to get time off after the birth had it not been for the introduction of the new law (perhaps because their employer would have said no), and also couples where the two weeks off were a particularly positive experience - for example, if mum had a traumatic birth and because of the two weeks off, the dads presence after the birth was really helpful, or perhaps dads who really took the opportunity to get stuck into the baby care during the initial two weeks, providing them with a solid start in terms of confidence and competence as far as looking after the baby.

If anyone has a good story to tell, please could you respond on the thread or email me at [email protected]

Mucho appreciated.

My input is only that paternity leave should be fully paid to encourage men to take it. I also think men should have the option of sharing leave with the mums. I think if like in Scandinavia, men could take over for women for a few months, then that would help them both bond with their baby as well as understanding what it's like to care for a baby by yourself for weeks at a time. Very few men have the opportunity to spend a huge amount of time alone with their children. I also think this would make men and women more equal at work!

Quite Bron. Tom, what should be included in this major speech by Patricia Hewitt is NOT "we've introduced a great thing that's made a world of difference to families and fathers" but "it was a great idea but we didn't think enough about the pay involved and therefore uptake has been pitifully low for very obvious reasons. We're going to do xyz about it". Ha ha, in our dreams hey?

Same here - they used to give 5 working days on full pay, which didn't have to be consecutive, now it's just "one or two complete weeks commencing on a Monday" @ the statutory £100.

Tough luck then if baby decides to arrive during the week and you want DH/DP with you

Do I detect a pattern here? Seems almost everywhere paternal leave and/or paternity pay has actually been reduced since this was introduced.

I am lucky in that my DH works for a smallish company who are quite flexible. He told them DS's due date and but continued working until I went into labour (only 1 day late as it happened) and then took the week's apternity leave from there and the week's leave subsequently. However he was in Newcastle (2.5 hours drive) on DS's due date so was a bit worried about him getting back in time. He was due to do some tests on the top of a tower block on a very windy Feb day so when I woke him up to tell him I was in labour he was fairly pleased. But had to dash around madly arranging a replacement, leaving the testing equipment in our back garden (so someone had to actually drive out to our house to collect it) etc before we left for the hospital at 8.15 am. So think his company was fairly reasonable about all this.

Think Bron makes a very pertinent point though.

We were aggrieved that DH only got 2 days paid leave and due to work pressures, he would have literally cra**ed in his own career patch if he had taken anymore leave than that unpaid ,holiday or otherwise. Holidays had been used due to excessive pregnancy sickness when I needed so much of his help.
He does however have the ability to work from home at all times so this has been our way of getting the time that we needed when going through heart surgeons and consultants for our daughter in her early months.

I actually posted in fury about this very subject eight months ago. My dp took holiday. I'm still VERY VERY angry and every time I hear someone pontificating about paternity leave I want to throw something at the telly.

ALSO, while on this subject, as a freelancer I got very little maternity entitlements. I have now paid for two lots of maternity leave myself. Which means that I am currently plundering my savings to pay tax because, guess what, a substantial chunk of my/our household earnings goes, you've guessed it, on childcare.

Not used it as yet but due beginning of June and DHs small technology company offer two weeks at 90% of salary - so there are some good ones out there!

DH took a day off as leave for the actual birth, but that was all he thought he could expect from an ailing company. He was made redundant the day I brought DD home. Now he's self employed so paternity leave just doesn't come into it. Sorry Tom - these are not stories to support paternity leave. It really isn't worth it at £100 a week. Most people would rather childcare was a tax deduction!

Haven't used it yet but in some ways wish dh worked for my company who pay 2 weeks full pay for paternity and top up the maternity to 100% for first 6 wks as well.
Dh will be 'working from home' for at least 1 week and will use holidays carried over from last year for the other as we can't afford the drop to £100 a week which is all his company paid.

Twiglett - they didn't make dh redundant because of the benefits, they made everyone redundant as they thought they were going bust as their main client did go bust. Client was taken over so people got re-employed again.

Reading all the comments on annual leave being used instead. When ds was born, May 2001, dh had to book his weeks annual leave in advance with fixed dates!!! They said he could work part time/a few hours a day for the second week. This turned out to be 9:30-4:00 instead of 9:30-6:00. Whoopy do! DS was a c-section

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Tom - could we have a response from you, please?
Thanks! M.

The world is so neanderthal, isn't it?

DP took two weeks paternity leave, and a further weeks holiday, which was fantastic. Who paid for it? His small voluntary sector co run by two women who both have children. If we had had to rely on £100 per week, we wouldn't have been able to afford it, and he would have taken holiday.

I am boss in our company, and my most senior manager is about to become a father, and yes, our company will give him 2 weeks on full pay. (so I guess our company will be better off by the £100 per week subsidy, as we would have given him that, whatever). I also agree very flexible working patterns, working from home etc for all parents / carers in the company. And guess what: we have a really hard working team, low staff turnover and increase our turnover and activities by a minimum of 15% every year. I can count on 100% loyalty and conscientiousness from every member of staff.

Treat your staff like family people, and they treat the company like their family.

hmmm, ok, but am I the only one who is not completely convinced by claims that none of these fathers can 'afford' to take two weeks unpaid leave? Did none of you take any unpaid maternity leave? Or reduce your hours (and pay) when you went back to work?? I am now working 70% wte, the amount of income we have lost as a result far exceeds dh taking a mere 2 weeks paternity leave. We chose to take both hits to our income, because the time is important, and sometimes more important than money. Obviously it would be much much better if it were paid, but I do feel its a bit sad that it seems to be acceptable for women to lose income as a result of having children, but not men.
(ducks for cover.....)

Lets be honest the stat maternity pay is cr*p too....my dp probably could have taken two weeks unpaid, but it was the timing, not the money, that was the issue. My colleague could not afford to, as this was his second child and he is the only wage earner.

I do see your point, elliott, totally agree about how it's somehow OK for mothers to earn less than fathers; the problem is (a) with reducing an already depleted family income (in our case we had NO idea about the rate till dp rang work the day after I'd given birth) (b) the government showing off about how madly generous it is being.

Elliott: I agree with MI, esp on the showing off isue! Financially, it's swings and roundabouts, isn't it? If the woman is taking unpaid maternity leave, or even on the pathetic statutory leave, or has given up work altogether, there isn't much leeway for the father to be on a low income. In our case we probably would have done it...but then we knew I would be returning to work early so could catch up on the debt more easily....at the cost of my time with DS.

elliot, frankly I don't care whether you are 'convinced' or not. So. do you think we are just moaning about having a cut in our champagne and caviar allowance? Personally, our budget is tight enough that 1 day unpaid is difficult enough, DH takes holiday because thats the only way we can afford paternity leave. Incidently I'm going back to work in 2 weeks as that when my maternity pay runs out, I don't want to.

MI, Blu I agree about the whole showing off business. Its a great idea that just doesn't go far enough.

Tom? Will you be taking this to the minister?

Elliott I can see your point but ...

I didn't take any unpaid maternity leave when I had DS - but got an enhanced package for the 18 weeks from my employer so never got as low as statutory maternity pay. This time I am working 3 days a week so my pay is consequently lower and we will still have to cover DS's nursery fees when I am not working. I will get 18 weeks at full (ish) pay and 8 weeks at £100. Not sure we can afford this but have saved two weeks holiday to tag onto the front of my maternity leave thus pushing my start day back and so may return before the end of my 6 months. Suppose this amounts to the same thing as most people are doing with their paternity leave.

I got the stat leave - ie 6 weeks at 90% and whaever it is at £100 a week. I took four months off - the final one being my entire leave entitlement for the year....this was the only way we could afford it as I am the main breadwinner (by a mile...!)

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I have to agree with Elliot here, how come on other mumsnet threads people have loads of money (all those "how much do you earn" and "what do you pay your cleaner" threads) but suddenly on this thread everyone is too poor to afford paternity leave?

Yes it is crap how little it's paid. and I don't want to contribute any story to make the government smug about this pathethic policy (the UK is the worse in the whole EU about this still).

But it's not convincing that no families can afford for the fathers to take some unpaid or low paid leave. My dp takes lots of unpaid parental leave and it's not that we are particularly high earners. meanwhile many of our friends who earn much more say they can't afford this. we would do it even if it made us really financially stressed cos we both really value him having lots of time with the children.

I don't think earning lots of money (or having a cleaner!) means you are rolling in it, maybe you have lots of outgoings that, if you took parental leave, you wouldn't be able to meet.