Adventures in Paternity Leave


I've been back at work now for almost as long as I was away on paternity leave, and excuses for not writing a blog about it are wearing thin. My memories are starting to get distinctly rose-tinted too: as we battle through nursery virus season juggling work commitments it feels like a lost era of tranquillity and cake. Not that there wasn't cake, of course, but I'm pretty sure I'm imagining the tranquillity. Time to publish before it turns entirely fictional.

It's only recently that fathers have been given a right to paternity leave in the UK. The standard leave of one or two weeks after birth was introduced only in 2003, and it wasn't until 2011 that it became possible to transfer a portion of maternity leave from the mother to the father (aka "additional paternity leave"). These were the rules under which I took my time off work, but things move fast in the paternity leave game and since 2015 the more flexible "shared parental leave" has been introduced where mum and dad can swap in and out of work more frequently.

I didn't really follow the earlier developments at the time, babies not being top of the agenda for us until recently, and so it took some research and a fair amount of digging through my conditions of employment to understand exactly what leave I was entitled to take. But one thing that both I and Mrs Tomsk were keen on from the start was sharing the main period of leave. From a practical point of view it made sense as we both wanted to keep working and there were no major financial implications to transferring the leave, but apart from that it just felt like the natural thing to do. I wanted to take a step back from life's multitude of other concerns for a while and spend my time getting to know our baby's crazy ways - and that's exactly what's on offer now to dads as well as mums. I'm really glad I took up the opportunity. Every couple needs to decide what works for them, but I would urge anyone who is in a position to do so to consider sharing their leave.

I don't think at the time I quite appreciated how rare it still is for the father to be the primary carer, at least until I realised I was the only one at our antenatal classes who would be doing it. My colleagues at work were completely accepting of the idea, if occasionally bemused by it, while HR were supportive and excited because I was one of the first to take additional paternity leave in the organisation and it gave them something new and interesting to administer. It helped that some of the projects I work on can be put on hold without causing the world to end, and what with "Keeping in Touch" days and the ever-present temptation to check emails (usually suppressed by having 1001 other things to get done during naptime), you never really lose track of what's going on.

We should be grateful that paternity leave is one of the few areas of the welfare state where provision is getting more generous and flexible rather than less. But it remains to be seen whether the new rules will result in more fathers taking up the opportunity. The evidence from Sweden (a mere 40 years ahead of Britain when it comes to childcare arrangements) suggests that it won't make a whole lot of difference and only a "use it or lose it" right to paternity leave will get a significant number of dads taking time more off. Let's hope we continue to follow in the footsteps of the Scandinavians.

Next time: weaning!

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