Earlier this week Reform issued a new report, Productive parents, on Britain’s support for families with new children. The report concluded that these arrangements, especially maternity pay and leave, are unfair, anti-dad and bad for business. The study showed that fathers are treated as an irrelevance and that government maternity pay is more generous for rich mothers than poor.
This means that current arrangements for parental leave are short-changing the families who need it most. While professionals and managers can rely on generous employer help and afford time off, those in casual and low skilled jobs receive the least pay and take the least maternity leave.Mothers earning £50,000 and taking six months leave receive nearly £8,000 from the taxpayer. Mothers earning the minimum wage (£12,000 per year) receive only £4,500. Two thirds of professional/managerial mothers also receive employer based support, while around 10 per cent of mothers in lower skilled occupations receive no maternity pay at all.
British fathers are ‘invisible men’ in the current system, with fathers having few rights to parental leave. Politicians and commentators have raised a chorus of concern about the absence of the father in the modern home. Policy has largely been limited to campaigns to raise awareness of the value of fatherhood, without tackling the financial disincentives for fathers to take greater responsibility in the home. This is in spite of evidence that families are stronger and fathers more likely to read to their children if they take paternity leave.The British system also forces mothers to make an “either / or” decision about working or staying at home. Mothers who want to stay in touch with the workplace without returning full-time are likely to forfeit their maternity pay. These arrangements are out of touch with modern employment and reflect an outdated idea that what counts is hours spent at work rather than work achieved – that presenteeism matters more than productivity.
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