It’s the new era of shared parental leave (if you can afford to take it)

The aims are bold: to challenge the norm for new working mothers, propel more women through the glass ceiling and fashion a generation of nurturing fathers.

As shared parental leave (SPL) comes into force, it would seem to be a giddy step toward a gender-equal utopia. Working parents of babies born – or children adopted – become the first to qualify, but experts are not predicting an overnight revolution. This latest legislative step, it seems, may not quite go far enough.

Under the new arrangements, parents can take up to 50 weeks off – shared between them – following the first two weeks after birth, and receive statutory pay. It is hoped this will banish the old assumption of the woman as the parent who will stay at home with the newborn, and provide alternative role models for generations of young to come.

But, according to academic Dr Jana Javornik, who researches care, labour and equalities issues across Europe, the UK’s efforts are a “light-touch solution”. In reality, finances will dictate that, for many couples, it’s business as usual. Unless an employer is more generous, pay will be at the statutory level for 39 of the 52 weeks based on the salary of the parent on leave. For the first six weeks the person on leave will receive 90% of his or her average weekly earnings before tax, after which it will be 90% or £139.78 – whichever is lower – for 33 weeks.

For those mothers whose partner earns more, without an enhanced SPL allowance it makes little financial sense for them to sacrifice the more generous wage. Critics say this is where the UK has not been bold enough.

When Sweden became the first country to introduce shared leave in 1974, there was just 5% take-up. Since then it has added “daddy quotas” – time off specifically allocated to fathers on a “use it or lose it” basis. Gender equality bonuses encourage parents to share leave more equally. An allowance of 80% of salary for the first 390 of the 480 days leave available is another incentive. Around 85% of men now take some time off, though this is usually the non-transferable part.

Iceland is unique in framing its legislation around the rights of a child to be cared for by both parents. It has a 3-3-3 formula – three months for each parent with the remaining three months shared.

“After Sweden introduced the ‘daddy quota’ there was a really rapid increase in take-up by fathers,” said Javornik, a work, care and global transitions fellow at Leeds University’s school of sociology and social policy. “When sharing leave is left to parents to decide, it kind of doesn’t work,” she said. “The British government’s failure to propose a more forceful ‘use it or lose it’ structure, designed to create incentives and not just rights, means this well-intentioned effort to de-gender childcare rings hollow.

“I think it is a very important step the UK is making. But it still places the responsibility for childcare in the mother’s hands. The way it is done is overly complicated. And rather than giving dads an independent right, it leaves women fundamentally in charge.”

It would not, she said, affect the so-called “motherhood penalty” – discrimination by employers reluctant to employ women as they might take time off for motherhood. “It is challenging public attitudes. It is an important step forward. But the time is ripe to start thinking more boldly and actually challenge gender equality and gender roles,” said Javornik.

The Fatherhood Institute lobbied hard for “daddy quotas” and is disappointed at a “watered down” policy which, it says, amounts to “transferable maternity leave”. Implementing a “use it or lose it” portion for fathers or partners “would make it very clear to everybody, and crucially to employers, that this is not just women’s stuff, it is stuff that everybody wants and arguably needs to do”, said the thinktank’s spokesman, Jeremy Davies.

The TUC estimates that around 40% of working parents will not be eligible because either the mother doesn’t have a paid job, or the couple do not meet the requirement of being with the same employer for at least 26 weeks by the end of the 15th week before the due date or adoption match.

Mary Mercer, from the Institute of Employment Studies, said one fear is that companies with “lovely enhanced maternity packages because they are so keen to bring women back to work” would end up not really bothered about enhancing SPL. As few parents could take a less financially beneficial package, “it will be business as usual”. It was costly to enhance SPL, so some companies might look at ways of reducing maternity enhancement, she said. One option open to employers might be to just enhance certain blocks of SPL – a month, or two months, but taken in a solid block that is easier for employers to work around.

Ben Black, director of My Family Care, which provides family-friendly solutions to large companies, said it had had “hundreds of thinktanks and loads of employers” discussing implementation problems, in particular the impact of employees taking “a month here or there”. As to take-up, he said, even the Scandinavians faced the issue of “professional women marrying professional men three or four years older” who earned more. Enhanced paternity pay or enhanced SPL might come at the expense of reduced maternity packages, he said.

According to a recent survey of 1,000 people by My Family Care and Workingmums.co.uk, 41% of couples would not consider SPL, although 80% said they would change their decision if their company enhanced it. One in four were unaware of the changes, while nearly one third (32%) were confused. Most confusion (72%) was over Split days – which allow parents up to 20 days to work during leave to keep in touch.

“It’s a really positive step forward, but it’s going to take a while for momentum to grow,” said Workingmums.co.uk founder Gillian Nissim.

In Sweden, one generation on from the 1974 introduction,many more fathers are now practising the kind of fatherhood they did not experience in their own childhood, according to a 2004 study at Gothenburg University by Anders Chronholm. Not only has their parental leave resulted in “a closer relationship to their child”, according to Chronholm, it has also had “a positive effect on their partner’s possibilities for work or study”.

One other benefit, it transpired, was that “it opened their eyes to how much time is actually needed to do daily housework”. As a result, 44% found it led to a more equal distribution of housework. One more small step towards utopia.

How it works

■ Shared parental leave (SPL) and shared parental pay (ShPP) are available for working parents whose baby is due or who adopt a child on or after today 5 April 2015.

■ Statutory maternity leave and pay, ordinary paternity leave, adoption leave and pay will continue as before and run alongside SPL.

■ SPL must be taken in the 12 months following birth or adoption.

It can be stopped and started. One partner can start SPL while the other is on maternity leave, or both can be on SPL at the same time, so both parents can be home together for 25 weeks if they wish.

■ Or they can stagger it: mothers can end their maternity leave after two weeks and parents can split the remaining 50 weeks any way they like.

■ ShPP is £139.58 a week unless an employer offers an occupational SPL/ShPP scheme.

■ SPL is for couples rather then single parents, and couples must share the main responsibility for caring for the child. If the employee is a mother, she can opt into SPL with the child’s father (even if they don’t live together), their spouse, civil partner or partner who lives with them.