Paternity leave is outdated and unequal, MPs say
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crmk07jyjmxo
by Alert-One-Two
Paternity leave is outdated and unequal, MPs say
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crmk07jyjmxo
by Alert-One-Two
26 comments
Happy this is on the table for discussion. Society has moved but the way we treat new fathers – and by extension the modern family unit and how it has to operate – has not. My own workplace gives 2 weeks leave, one of which is on statutory pay, just as an example.
We had the introduction of shared parental leave recently.
This is currently Voluntary but it needs to be made compulsory for all employers to offer.
I will have had 5 months leave by the time my daughter reaches one I actually feel like an equal parent.
It is absolutely bonkers that paternity leave is so short. I’m due to give birth in mid October and the prospect of my husband having to go back to work after only two weeks is quite frightening.
Other dads I know have decided to take all their annual leave at once just to make sure they can have a good month to 6 weeks at home with their new baby, but they shouldn’t have to do that.
If ever a business or government wanted to close the gender pay gap, equalising maternity and paternity pay terms would probably be the single biggest change they could make to achieve it.
Paternity leave does need up hauling. Especially for Same sex married couples that adopt or do IVF.
Men do need more time adjusting to having a newborn at home as well. Two weeks isn’t enough. Let the family bond with their new addition.
Had my daughter 8 months ago.
Whilst my wife is the primary care giver, I am up in the night to feed and the one who gets up with the baby when she wakes for the day at 5am etc.
The point being, I am involved far more than my father and his father would ever have been and yet, I received approximately the same paternity leave entitlement.
I am also sick of hearing “you can share your partner’s maternity leave”, yes I can, but in the majority of situations due to breastfeeding etc, it’s not an efficient option for most families.
Needs to be so much more, my husband going back after two weeks was so terrifying and hard. Obviously we all end up managing it but I couldn’t believe whilst I still couldn’t sit down properly and was heavily bleeding 24/7, in agony constantly, and emotional & hormonally wrecked, that I was being left to care for a new born baby all on my own.
I feel it should be 6 months for both, and then another 6 months for either parent to choose to stay home.
Paternity is woeful in this country. 2 weeks is just not enough. By wife will have a planned C section. Her recovery will be much longer than 2 weeks.
I actually think maternity leave and pay is nowear near enough either. We are asking parents to put babies into child care from such an early age or basically give up work. Soooo financial hardship either way.
Not to mention how crap statutory maternity pay is. During covid the government was happy to realise that people needed somthing close to their actual normal pay levels during furlough to meet their financial commitments.
Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) is paid for up to 39 weeks. You get:
* 90% of your average weekly earnings (before tax) for the first 6 weeks
* £187.18 or 90% of your average weekly earnings (whichever is lower) for the next 33 weeks
fuck the mortgage and bills I suppose.
No wonder people arent having children.
I got two weeks’ pay leave and planned to take my remaining two weeks’ annual leave immediately after. My A/L request was declined.
Yes. Wtf is 2 weeks going to do? How are you supposed to get to know your child in 2 weeks?
It isn’t long enough
Taking annual leave isn’t right answer either that should be spaced throughout the year to get adequate breaks.
We may be having a child soon – I am hoping to take 2 weeks unpaid leave and the 2 weeks paternity leave
Its better to have two people at home in those early months. Mother has to breastfeed, good fathers wake up at night or change diapers. Chores around house can’t be split or put on the mother. Running house helps if two people are home and father helps out more with this if hes not working and still getting paid.
Plus stops that shitty boss thing of not hiring young married women ‘cose they get pregnant and go on maternity’
I’ve not much faith in anything changing, They’ll probably just reduce Maternity leave to match instead of increasing anything.
I wasnt entitled to take any paternity at all! I got made redundant whilst my partner was pregnant, found a new job, and couldn’t take paternity as I hasn’t been in my current job long enough. Had to use 3 weeks annual leave instead. Ridiculous system.
I’d say both paternity and maternity pay aren’t great in this country. Unless you have got an employer that tops up pay it’s not really sustainable
Great. The UK is way behind on this. The Nordic countries in particular are way ahead, none of which are economically poor countries or unproductive countries (which is where the arguments against this typically arise).
I get that dads don’t need as long off to physically recover like mum does, but any decent husband and father would want to be *be there to help her* while mum recovers. He would want to see his child, care for his child, and share the early burden of “holy shit, we have a kid now” with mum equally.
Millions of decent dads are also trying to pull their weight (night feeds, etc) while also working full time. It’s not fair and it’s not healthy.
The setup we have means that dads don’t get to be as present as any (decent) one would like, and mums are burned out doing all the immediate care themselves alone at home while also recovering from one of the riskiest medical events of their lives.
Literally everybody wins if paternity leave is increased. They shouldn’t have to share the leave with the mum either – they should just get more leave straight up.
I don’t want this to come off as bragging, the company I work for offers 6 months of full paternity pay.
The time I had with my daughter will likely be the best time of my life.
2 weeks is abysmal for dad, mum and baby. I couldn’t imagine leaving my partner, who had a C-Section and still couldn’t fully move around after 2 weeks and go back to work? There needs to be some serious change and update to the social contract.
I got 20 weeks and it’s absolutely baffling to me that this isn’t the norm. I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to spend so much time early on with both my children but something needs to be changed. It’s a net win for society but something that will get zero votes politically so I dunno how you’d start to push for change.
12 weeks should be the minimum.
The country stops in it’s tracks when WFA is removed from homeowners with disposable income but new parent’s are given the bare minimum. Almost went into debt because of the extortionate increase in heating costs when having a baby in winter.
2 weeks is barely enough time for new mothers to heal especially if they’ve had a C-section or significant tears so it’s very daunting to think about fathers leaving for work. We are very behind other European countries and should be given at least 3
months paternity and increase the maternity pay. It’s never been more expensive to have children and austerity has only made it worse.
All this talk about anti-immagration is ridiculous when the country has done very little to encourage young people to start families.
How about Sweden’s 480 days to share between parents as they wish? You can use it until the child is 4 and can even save 96 days to use up until the child is 12!
Father of 2 born by caesarian here. The recovery for c section is a minimum of 6 weeks, so why is the legal minimum leave for birth partners not that?
Another thing that needs to be considered as part of this conversation is that countries with good paternity rights have higher rates of breastfeeding. Having the father around to support the mother with the running of the house while she breastfeeds (which only she can do) is a significant help. Many UK families will choose to bottle feed instead as it removes all of the burden from the mother.
This isn’t an anti bottle-feeding post by the way as we chose to do it, but if the government is serious about getting more breastfeeding uptake then paternity rights are ironically one of the best ways to do that.
Some of the worst in Europe, don’t have to compare to the nordics to see how bad it is. In Spain, fathers have to take a mandatory 6 weeks after the child is born to ease the burden on the mother, and both parents each get a total of 16 weeks full pay by law.
The UK is so far behind Europe on most social policies that it is embarrassing, it’s the America of Europe.
Fathers are treated horribly and nobody cares.
When I took my little girl for her vaccinations (that her mum had booked), the nurse refused to do it as her mum wasn’t in the room with me.
She made me call my wife in front of her so she could verify we had the mum’s permission.
We’re happily married and there was no reason at all to do this.
My wife was fuming and made a complaint to the surgery manager.
I completed my paternity leave not long ago. Two weeks.
The birthing experience is a nightmare. I had to watch my soulmate be in excruciating pain for days on end, watch her go through countless medical procedures (I literally watched doctors digging around in her spine so they could numb her) and selfishly not get a wink of sleep for days on end with the only respite being a series of plastic school cafeteria chairs that they kindly provide for the “birth partner” that declined in quality each ward we were pushed to, and not to mention the graphic imagery of the *actual* birth burned into my brain for all time.
You are then discharged from the hospital, to return home with a wife who can’t sit down without a special pillow and can’t get up or down without assistance, a newborn baby who needs near 24/7 attention and again, selfishly, a terrified, traumatised father with a crippled back and zero sleep.
None of this changes after two weeks though. My back still hurts, baby still crying, no one has sleep, wife struggling physically and mentally. But don’t worry, you have a 9am catchup in your diary so you can pretend to care about the missed deadlines that happened on your incredibly selfish 2 week impromptu holiday.
I know the mother has a harder time. I get it. But the father’s role has changed. It’s not the 50s. I’m not down the gentleman’s club smoking cigars waiting for the midwife to call. I want to be there. I wanted to be by my wife’s side. I want to be a care giver to my son. I want to help with his development. I want to create memories that are not confined to the weekend.
But no. I get two weeks and then it’s back down the mines. Still traumatised. Still broken. Thank god for my car, so I can at least cry in peace on my lunch break.
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