U.S. moms looking at 6 weeks of unpaid maternity leave will have to pinch themselves when they read about the U.K.'s proposed changes to their current 9-month, partly paid government guaranteed maternity leave. After complaints that such a long maternity leave shortchanges fathers and potentially makes women of childbearing age less appealing to employers, while the small percentage of pay made it difficult for families with low incomes to take the leave, some changes have been proposed.
The new plan would give mothers 28 weeks of leave at 90% of their pay before the leave. It would retain the current 2-week leave for fathers, but add another 4 months, also at 90% pay. Then another 4 months of parental leave would be available for either parent to take up to the child's fifth birthday.
Many employers offer more than the government-mandated leave options as well.
The plan is expected to cost about 5.3 billion pounds or $7.5 billion. To give you a sense of how that fits into the U.S. budget, the first economic industry bailout last fall was over $700 billion.
The plan, while not pleasing everyone in the UK--from those who don't want a penny of their tax money to go to anyone with kids (huh?) to those who think mothers should get a round 12-months to encourage that amount of full-time breast feeding--and to give employees filling in for someone's leave time to build a better resume--it still sounds like a fantasy world to most US American parents.
My only suggestion is to take gender out of the equation entirely. Children of single parents will get less parent time if leave is assigned by gender. And rather than 90% of someone's paycheck, why not a single pay amount for all families taking leave? Maintaining a tie to someone's current pay is more likely to maintain the current discrepancy between the poor and the middle class, as to who takes advantage of available leave.
What are the conditions of your parental leave if applicable? How would you feel about a plan more in line with European plans (most of which are even more generous than the U.K.'s.)?
image: guardian.co.uk
