Tackling the Big Two: maternity leave and childcare
NS March 31st, 2009
The Times and many other news sources reported yesterday on the new proposed changes to maternity leave in the UK, scrapping plans to increase it from 9 months to one year by 2010 and instead introducing a system where mothers’ leave is reduced back down to six months but at a higher rate of pay. Currently, women are entitled to nine months of paid leave: six weeks at 90% of their salary with the remainder paid at the statutory rate of £117.18 per week. Under new proposals, pay for the six month period would be at 90% throughout.
Once the six months was up, “parental leave” would kick in wherein both parents would have the right to take a four month period of leave with at least eight weeks paid at 90% and the rest at the statutory rate. This means fathers* would be entitled to four months leave as opposed to the paltry two weeks they receive now and women would have the option to take another four months leave after the initial six months they automatically get. Fathers would not be able to transfer their leave to their partners so if their portion was not used it would be lost. This would help ensure that more fathers actually take the leave rather than passing it off on their partners. Both parents, regardless of whether they take advantage of the parental leave, would also be entitled to a further four months of “family leave” which would be divided up between them and paid at a lower rate, though it is not clear whether this can be used at a later date or must immediately proceed the maternity and parental leave periods.
The aim of doing this, according to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, is to level the playing field between men and women a bit more — both at home and in the workplace — by giving fathers a chance to bond with and care for their children in the early stage of life and set the tone for more equitable parenting. I wholeheartedly agree that this is important not only to the child and the father, but to the couple’s partnership as well. The more equal a couple feels with regards to childrearing, the more equal they feel with regards to other areas of life as well. Considering that so many marriages or partnerships fail because of resentment and a skewed division of responsibility (or perception of), I view this as a positive step in the right direction: men taking responsibility for the care of their children, strengthening relationships within the entire family, and giving women more options with regards to their jobs and when to return.
Increased paternity leave would also be good for women, regardless of child status, the Commission says. No longer would employers be inclined to bin the CVs of women of childbearing age for fear that they will abandon their careers once they have a baby; if men can take months off after a child is born too, it will be much harder for companies to discriminate against anyone with the potential to become a parent, as doing so would effectively mean disregarding anyone between the ages of 18 and 45. Knowing that even women with no intention of having children get bundled into this category means that support for this measure should be coming from all corners of feminism and proponents of gender equality, not just the mummy set.
To me, a huge benefit of this plan is that giving women six months at the higher rate of pay would encourage more mothers to take the full six months off that they are entitled to. At the moment it is mainly those who are abe to afford to take so much time off on so little pay who are taking the full leave. Many working class and some middle class women must go back before they’ve even recovered physically from the birth, let alone emotionally, because the statutory rate is hardly going to pay the rent or mortgage. So the ‘option’ of taking six months on such little pay wasn’t really an ‘option’ for them in the first place. Hopefully this will enable more women to take time off if the rate of pay is 90% of their usual wage.
Ironically, the other set of women who are predisposed to returning to work early are those in very high profile and powerful jobs. Returning to work isn’t about paying the mortgage to them, but the reality of working in a male-dominated field where machismo rules and time is money. Remember the raised eyebrows over Rachida Dati, the French Justice Minister, who went into the office a mere five days after having a caesarean section? Despite the media interest in such an ‘unusual’ case, women returning to work two weeks or less after giving birth is not unheard of. Do some of them do this because they want to? Sure, but it’s probably a rather small percentage. Even of those who claim they wanted to return to their jobs straight away, I have to wonder how much of that is fear of admitting any kind of physical weakness or emotional vulnerability to their male colleagues and bosses.
I cannot think of another situation where a person would be highly commended and admired by her colleagues for getting back to work five days after having major surgery, even when this is generally against medical advice, and particularly when the surgery resulted in another human life to care for. What kind of message does that send to women competing for the top jobs in the UK but who also want children? That they must work twice as hard to be regarded even half as much as their male counterparts and that allowing their biology to interfere with their job performance would be tantamount to career suicide. In the face of that kind of pressure, it’s no wonder that so many women opt to return as quickly as possible or not to have children at all.
That’s not to say I blame women like Dati for feeling she needed to return quickly; I blame the workplace structure that penalises women’s biology and props up the male body and lifestyle as the gold standard. Unfortunately, until attitudes in the ‘boys club’ change, these new maternity leave proposals probably won’t alter length of leave for those top-rung women. I suppose the only reassuring factor is that at least they have the means and resources to ensure their infants are being cared for properly, and most likely the time and space to express milk at their offices. The working and middle class women who go back very quickly out of absolute necessity often aren’t so lucky.
However, that brings me to another perceived benefit of making the six month leave a more viable option — breastfeeding. Breastfeeding rates in the UK are pretty abysmal and are among the lowest in Europe, as evidenced in this NHS report:
The UK Infant Feeding Survey 2005 (Bolling et al. 2007) showed that 78% of women in England
breastfed their babies after birth. However, a third of these women had stopped by week 6 so that
only 50% of all new mothers were breastfeeding by week 6 and 26% by 6 months. For more details
of the Infant Feeding Survey, please see link.http://www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/breastfeed2005
So just over 3/4 of new mothers initiate breastfeeding but by week 6, only half of those babies are being breastfed. That quarter drop can largely be accounted for by lack of support and correct information, along with a small percentage experiencing medical problems that make breastfeeding impossible. This is a huge problem in and of itself and would merit numerous posts to address, but that is not what I’m writing about today. I want to look at how many are breastfeeding at the 6 week mark but not at 6 months, which I used to find strange. Why, after persevering through the most difficult part (the first 6 weeks), would a mother give up before the 6-month benchmark so vital for babies’ health? The answer, in many cases, is the return to work.
Without the proper equipment, support, time and means to continue breastfeeding when they return to employment, the task becomes rather impossible for many women. Some give up in anticipation of their return, sure from the stories of difficulty they’ve heard from other mothers and the lack of support by their employer that they will be unable to keep it up. Even those determined to succeed, armed with information and support, are often waylaid by the drop in milk production that inevitably comes if they are not able to pump as often as necessary to maintain supply. Not many small businesses or service-based jobs offer the opportunity to pump, sadly. Even large, multinational, “progressive” companies often have nonexistant or minimal support for lactating mums: herding them into semi-public spaces like supply closets or conference rooms where they risk being walked in on, causing a great deal of stress and embarrassment; providing little or no space for the milk to be stored at appropriate temperatures without being labeled ‘biohazard’ by outdated health regulations or alongside squicked-out colleagues’ lunches; docking break time or wages for taking 15 minutes to pump a couple times a day, even if other employees take the same amount of time smoking or drinking coffee; having to hear behind-the-back sniping about how ‘unfair’ pumping breaks are and how colleagues have to “pick up the slack,” making her feel like a burden and a liability. In the face of such obstacles, is it any wonder that many women who return to work before 6 months end up quitting breastfeeding?
So if these new laws would enable more women to take up and continue exclusively breastfeeding their babies to the recommended minimum of 6 months, that’s fantastic. But this must be done in conjunction with improving lactation support for mums returning to work before that time, whatever the reason, or for those who wish to cary on past 6 months for the recommended 1-2 years and beyond.
As a start, I’d like to see the government stipulate that all new office buildings and/or those over a certain square footage and/or businesses that employ a certain amount of people must have a lactation room(s) and a policy on expressing breaks for returning mothers. Financial incentives for smaller businesses to follow suit would undoubtedly help in getting more places of employment to be new mum and breastfeeding friendly. I wonder too if a scheme could exist where a father could defer his portion of parental leave to a later date, say when they child is past one year of age, if his partner is exclusively breastfeeding. That way a couple who find themselves in the situation where the woman wants to use as much of her leave as possible to carry on breastfeeding wouldn’t be penalised for not using the father’s leave immediately. Pipe dreams, I’m sure, but they make sense, to me at least.
The other issue that needs to be sorted out is childcare. Not just in the first year of a child’s life but until he or she begins full-time schooling. I really don’t know why more companies don’t have in-house childcare for their employees. Think of the time saved in having to drop off and pick up, often meaning a later start or earlier finish for at least one parent (usually the mother). Parents wishing to use the scheme would contribute a percentage of their paycheque to fund the centre and the rest would be government funded, like it currently is at pre-schools and daycare centres across the UK for children over 3. This would take some of the legwork and guesswork out of finding reputable childminders as they would be officially vetted and background checked by a special liasion in the HR department. Sick children could be kept in a room separate from the others with one or two employees supervising them, to minimise the spread of sickness and also allow a parent to report to work. The parent of a child in the ‘sick room’ would be entitled to longer or more regular breaks that day(s) in order to visit with, care for and dispense medicine as necessary. Those who choose to hire a full-time nanny or stay at home themselves should also be eligible for voucher schemes, perhaps toward petrol, food and activities for the children.
I don’t know, maybe I’m too much of an idealist. I certainly haven’t thought out the minute details and costs of these plans but I do know that they make sense, to this mother at least. At some point we have to say screw cost and just suck it up and dole out the cash to implement these kinds of programs and structures. Plans implemented now, no matter how painful the price tag, will have multiple long-term benefits with positive knock-on effects. When businesses complain about the cost they are being blind to the potential for growth in productivity and the dangers of keeping things as they are. We have to start somewhere, right?
Lastly, I want to say how deeply disappointed I am that there wasn’t even a mention of this on The F-Word, the leading UK feminist site. Hell, it wasn’t even discussed on The Times’ very own working mothers’ blog, Alpha Mummy! This is why so many mothers feel marginalised in the feminist movement and in the media, largely fronted and voiced by young and/or childless women. I fight for the same things they do — safer streets, equal pay, an end to violence against women, the freedom to control my reproduction — even when they are not my most pressing personal concerns. But when it comes to issues that mean the world to mothers, things like the right to paid maternity leave, the right to breastfeed in public, the right to give birth where and how we want, the right to affordable childcare…radio silence. Oh, we get the odd murmur of activity if something is particularly salacious or eyebrow-raising but by and large issues that are important to mothers are ignored and it angers me. No, it infuriates me. We are mothers and we matter, goddamnit! Even if you think these are not your fights, they are. When we are marginalised, so too are women everywhere. We are deserving of commentary, we are deserving of discussion and we are deserving of column inches.
So let’s get this conversation rolling. Be you a feminist or a mother or both, what are your thoughts on the proposed changes? What are your ideas for bettering maternity and parental leave, for supporting breastfeeding in the workplace and for improving childcare arrangements for working parents? What about if one of you stays home — should you be on your own if you choose not to return to work or should that role be government-compensated in some way as well? And if you are a father, please share your feelings on the new proposals and what you think it will mean for your family and your career.
*I use fathers throughout because this is how the non-birth-giving parent is referred to in the mentioned articles but I would apply this equally to same-sex partners of the primary parent
