Six months after having my first baby, I was excited to return to work and my partner was excited about starting his six months of shared parental leave. There were many things I was looking forward to about being back, being able to eat lunch without a small child attached to me being one of them, and another was being released from being the expert on our baby.
Up until that point, my partner and I had been splitting a lot of the physical time spent with our daughter pretty evenly - he’d done some heavy lifting on the nights, and we were scrupulously fair about making sure each other had some time to ourselves when we were both at home (this was during the pandemic, so work or home were basically the only two locations on offer). But a lot of what we would term the emotional labour had been done by me - I’d read the parenting books, listened to the podcasts, googled the articles, planned the approach to napping / feeding / sleeping, sought advice on all the many many questions and issues that pop up during the early weeks and months of a child’s life.
And that was fine, because I was on maternity leave. At this moment in time, in very basic terms, my partner’s job was to bring in money, and mine was to raise our daughter. But that was about to change - we were going to reverse roles. The risk that I was cognizant of, and that so many women experience, was that, despite returning to full time work, I would remain the expert on our child. This would mean that I would still be the one googling the articles, or reminding my partner that the next set of vaccinations were coming up, whilst also leading an arts organisation in a moment of global crisis.
But, thankfully, that’s not how things played out. I went back to work and my partner began to read about and implement the messy business of weaning, blending many a vegetable into an unappetising looking puree that our daughter would subsequently throw on the floor. He chased up the various nurseries we’d put our names down for and managed the settling in process when it was time for him to go back to work too. What’s interesting (and logical when you think about it) is that, to this day, when we’re now both at work, these areas tend to remain ones that he takes the lead on - he’s much more on top of what the kids are going to eat than I am, and our nursery tends to call him first rather than me. Much of the way we split our parental responsibilities goes back to the fact that we were able to divide that first year of leave between us, so we could both experience being the ‘lead parent’ for a period of time.
In comparison to other more progressive countries, shared parental leave, the mechanism by which the birthing parent can share some of their statutory leave allocation with their partner, is a pretty flawed system. If the birthing parent isn’t eligible for statutory maternity pay (for example, if they’re a freelancer) then the other partner isn’t eligible for shared parental leave either. It’s overly complicated, involves a lot of form filling in and can confuse the hell out of HR departments who haven’t encountered it before. It doesn’t address the issue of proper pay during parental leave periods - for many, the choice about who goes back to work when has to be made on a financial basis given how low statutory parental pay rates are. But it’s better than nothing and it saddens me each time I read an article about how woefully low the take up is - because, if we want women to succeed in the workplace, we’ve got to make it possible for men to take time off to look after their kids. And we, as leaders, can play a part in that.
Both times that I was on maternity leave, many people asked me how long I was taking off work and, as I neared my return date, whether I was planning on returning full time. My partner was literally never asked these questions. For hetrosexual couples having kids, it’s usually assumed that the man’s life will stay the same, and the woman will flex and change hers in response to the needs of their new arrival. As leaders and managers, one of the most powerful and important ways we can contribute to a culture change is simply by not making those assumptions.
This starts from ensuring that any policy we’ve got that covers maternity leave and pay is mirrored in paternity and shared parental leave provision. The latter kind of leave in particular can often be found buried away in the back of a policy, filled with relatively inscrutable wording taking from the government website - it’s worth considering whether this can be simplified so it feels clearer and less off-putting, or, proactively understanding it yourself so that you can explain it to any direct reports who might be eligible for it. When a man, or a non-birthing partner, tells you that they’re expecting a baby, we can use the same approach that we would for a person who’s pregnant - when the time is right, open up a conversation about what leave they want to take off, and when. If they’re not sure about how shared parental leave might work, be their champion - get your head round it, talk it through with them and, if your organisation is big enough to have an HR department, be a proactive part of conversations with them if it’s the first time this kind of leave has been utilised. When the baby is born, even if they’ve only taken two weeks off, treat it like you would any other return to work after a period of absence - checking in, keeping lines of communication open, seeing if there’s any adjustments or shifts they might need in the short term whilst they’re trying to both hold down a job and support their partner in keeping a two-week old alive.
There are so many factors that influence how couples choose to split their time off when they have a baby - one size will never fit all and, ultimately, I think it’s on the government to introduce some more progressive parental leave arrangements, ideally involving additional leave for partners (as this interesting article outlines) so the birthing parent doesn’t have to give up some of theirs to enable time off. Progress towards gender equality in the workplace is going to be stymied until this happens - at the moment we’re trapped in a vicious circle where the pay gap between men and women means that often, if the man is the higher earner, it makes the most financial sense for him to return to work whilst the woman takes the entirety of the leave…which in itself runs the risk of increasing the gender pay gap still further. But until that point, we should embrace the small acts that are within our power to move us closer to equality - because to empower women to succeed at work, we’ve got to empower men to succeed at home.