A Labour government will double paternity leave for dads from two to four weeks, and increase their weekly paternity pay to £260 - over £100 more than present. No doubt this move will be tagged as anti-business by Labour's opponents. But is it as pro-family as it seems?
I was lucky that I spent the first six weeks home with my daughter. I can't imagine not having spent that time with her, and I feel for other fathers who wanted the same but weren't able to.
While this Labour policy may seem progressive, reflecting the reality that many fathers want to be at home with their newborn too, I feel what it's really reinforcing is that after four weeks a man's place is still at work while a woman's is at home with the baby.
There are many reasons why fathers decide to become stay-at-home dads. In our case is was a combination of me really wanting to be home with our daughter; my wife's desire to return to work and maintain her career; and a feeling that I might be better suited to being home all the time with an insatiable grub that lacks basic conversation skills. The fact that my wife also earned more than twice as much as me was not an obvious influence, but perhaps it made our decision easier.
What I think families need more than a simple increase in paternity pay and entitlement, is support to make these type of flexible decisions that are right for them, for there is no one size fits all way of parenting any more. While for some couples the mother being home full-time is what's wanted, others (like us) would prefer have the dad home in those early years. Many couples would like to both be working as soon as possible. The financial hit would be harder on some rather than others, so that too would affect decisions.
Far more progressive is the Shared Parental Leave system that comes into force from April, where parents can share the majority of the mother's 52 week leave entitlement between them, in theory letting the couple decide which one of them is to become the primary carer. One of the biggest stumbling blocks with this is that many women have generous maternity packages from their employer that are far in excess of the Statutory Shared Parental Pay of £138 per week.
I remain unconvinced about Labour's proposal, though I am sure it will lead to more fathers taking time off to be with their newborn. The IPPR, who came up with these proposals, believe take up will increase from 55% to 70%. That sounds optimistic, but I guess we'll see should we have a Labour government come May.
I believe that the level of pay is really a small part of the reason for the low numbers taking paternity leave. For parents who had no interest in the father being home, their feelings will remain unchanged. Many men feel that their employer would look unfavourably on them taking leave, that their job cannot be interrupted, or that it will hurt their career. They too will remain feeling the same way about paternity leave.
The policy seems rather outdated next to Shared Parental Leave in that it assumes the father will return to work after four weeks while the mother is home with the baby. If Labour really wanted to encourage more men to become stay-at-home dads, or women to become working mothers, then I think they should really be building upon the Shared Parental Leave system, perhaps finding a way for mums and dads to share an employers parental leave system.
So is Labour really trying to be progressive? I am reminded of the free childcare/early education for three year olds. The 15 hours of free childcare per week, notionally intended to encourage at-home parents back to work is now seen as more of a rebate to middle class families. They would be paying for the childcare at nurseries anyway but now get a term time fee reduction. I have a similar feeling about these proposals, that it's intended to be a nice little financial present for those families who would have probably used paternity leave anyway.
This feels less about a policy helping families, than a headline to help persuade disaffected supporters to vote Labour in May. But at least a few more dads will get to spend time with their newborn like I did.
Originally published on Man vs. Pink.