It’s Been a While!
I haven’t written a blog for rather a long time. Almost a year in fact, which is pretty rubbish of me.
It isn’t as if nothing has happened in that year. In fact, my life has been changed, absolutely and completely as I have a 7 month old daughter.
.
Part of me didn’t want to write a blog which mentioned having a baby.
That’s because, over the years I have heard all of the following while working for other people:
o Have child-care issues all the time and often need time off
o Don’t work as hard, they want to get home to their kids so won’t do the hours that everyone else will
o Aren’t as focussed on their career so don’t try as hard as everyone else
o Will inevitably want more than one child and in fairly quick succession
I spent the last decade of employment convincing the people I worked for that I didn’t want kids, was never going to have them.
The truth was, I didn’t know if I wanted kids or not, I just knew that in order to get ahead, I had to make them believe that I didn’t.
On top of this I know a lot of women who don’t want children for whatever reason. It’s hard to be a woman who doesn’t want kids, some people tell you you’re making a mistake, that you’ll change your mind and are really quite patronising about it.
To compensate that there are a lot of articles and posts going around about how anyone who has a baby cannot possibly run a successful business, or have nice things or basically be happy. These articles sometimes imply that women who have children are less independent or strong than those who have decided not to have them.
It’s a pretty judgemental world we live in but weirdly, men don’t seem to face these judgements.
Are Things About To Change?
However, that may be changing and that was what I wanted to write about.
You see, I was back at work within 2 weeks of giving birth.
My husband has taken 9 months off because he has used Shared Parental Leave
This was actually a pretty perfect option for us and I’m not sure that everyone knows about it yet as it is still relatively new, it came into effect in April 2015.
What it means is that if the mother stops her maternity leave, the other partner can take the remainder. So you don’t have to do it the way that we did, where my husband took it all, you can mix and match to suit your needs.
This is so much better than the statutory two weeks paternity leave the father gets and is a real sign that things are on the way to becoming more equal.
We Aren’t There Yet Though
Unfortunately, the pay isn’t equal for fathers who take the option as Shared Parental Pay is a maximum of £139.58 per week. Whereas maternity pay is paid at 90% of your earnings for the first 6 weeks, but still, it’s a step in the right direction.
Hopefully, as more people become aware of it and decide to split the leave, giving both an equal chance to bond with the baby (and appreciate the stay at home parent’s efforts a little more!) then maybe the negativity surrounding women who have babies can stop.
The negativity actually starts while women are pregnant and I lost a few prospective clients while I was pregnant as they didn’t believe that I would return to work straight away and I had a few comments from existing clients doubting that I would.
Then again, I’ve had some negative comments from people about going to work and leaving the baby so young (erm, she’s with her dad?) and my husband has encountered a lot of judgement from people thinking it is weird to be a stay at home dad.
I actually think that some people just need to stop being such Judgey McJudgeyfaces and the world will be a much more pleasant place! 🙂
Vikki
PS Please do give me a bell if you want to chat about SPL or anything else.