Shared Parental Leave

Shared parental leave and pay is available to parents of babies due, or children placed for adoption, on or after 5 April 2015 and allows eligible women to share their right to maternity/adoption leave with their partner.  It provides both parents with the opportunity to consider the best arrangement to care for their child during the child’s first year and was considered a huge step forwards in the quest for gender equality.

The amount of leave available is calculated using the mother’s entitlement to maternity/adoption leave, which allows them to take up to 52 weeks’ leave. If they reduce their maternity/adoption leave entitlement then they and/or their partner may opt-in to the shared parental leave system and take any remaining weeks as shared parental leave. This means their partner could begin to take shared parental leave while the mother is still on maternity/adoption leave.

Take up has however been far lower than envisaged and here, we speak to Sarah Nolan, Head of Commercial and Employment Law at QualitySolicitors Jackson Canter on why fathers are applying in such small numbers.

‘At Jackson Canter, we are finding that there is still a real awareness gap amongst new and expectant fathers that they qualify for shared parental leave. The change in legislation was brought about to enable families to decide how best to care for their children based on their individual personal and financial circumstances.

In spite of this change in the law, it’s clear that it’s going to be quite some time before take up reaches the level originally expected.  There was a blaze of publicity last year when the law came into effect but it seems that the expected rush of fathers looking to spend more time at home hasn’t quite come to pass and there are a number of reasons for this.

Within many families the man will still be the highest earner and due to the pay provisions associated with shared parental leave, it simply isn’t economically viable for the father to take shared leave. As much as we have seen the roles of mothers and fathers evolve in recent years, the fact remains that in the majority of families the man will be the highest paid and families will obviously need to take this into account.  Shared parental leave is paid at just £139.50 per week or 90% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lowest, and so for many families the possibility of the father taking such leave is unfortunately not an option.  Rather than take the hit on their pay, I find that very often fathers will simply take extended annual leave rather than shared parental leave in order to ensure that they continue to receive their full pay.

Industry also has a role to play in encouraging more fathers to view extended leave as a realistic option for them.  Enhanced maternity pay has been available to women for some time with lots of employers offering enhanced pay to their female employees.  However, whilst this is established practice for women, employers have been slow to react to the change in legislation by offering the same privileges to fathers. It’s also saddening that many new fathers feel they need to return to work at the earliest opportunity through fear of missing out on pay rises and promotion. A combination of these factors has almost certainly limited the take-up by fathers of shared leave.

Aside from the economic factors affecting take up, it’s true to say that sharing leave simply isn’t attractive to every family.  I find that mothers very often like to take their full maternity leave and often don’t want to share leave and be separated from their child.  The preference for families is often that the mother will take her maternity leave and the father will take annual leave, for a variety of reasons.

A combination of economic realities, lack of awareness and family preferences is almost certainly responsible for the low numbers of fathers taking up shared parental leave.  There is certainly a long way to go until take up reaches anywhere near the level it was expected to reach but with raised awareness and enhanced pay on offer it seems very likely that the numbers of fathers opting to take shared leave will undoubtedly increase.