Shared Parental Leave fails to deliver for dads

Shared Parental Leave (SPL) has failed to encourage greater take-up by fathers, a new study from Cardiff University and the University of Bath shows.

Introduced in April 2015, SPL was designed to let parents share the load of looking after their children, giving fathers a greater role at home and encouraging mothers to get back to work sooner.

But new research by economists at Cardiff University and the University of Bath shows that the policy has fallen flat.

The study which used data from 40,000 households across the UK, compared families with children born before and after the SPL rollout and shows paternal leave uptake has not increased and the leaves being taken are not longer.

Academics have issued a policy brief with three key recommendations which could improve SPL. They are:

1. Improve the financial terms: UK maternity leave is already among the worst paid in the OECD, and SPL’s pay is even lower.
2. Simplify the system and provide legal support: The current system is too complicated and hard to navigate
3. Loosen eligibility criteria: The strict rules around how long parents have to work for the same employer and how much they earn are making it hard for some to qualify.

Leo Montague, a Labour councillor from Milton Keynes, and his wife Flo have three children. Reflecting on his experience, Leo said: “I would have loved to take more than two weeks off with my kids, but the reality is we just couldn’t afford it. As the main breadwinner, cutting my income down to statutory pay after two weeks would have meant struggling to pay the mortgage. Shared Parental Leave only works if both parents’ employers offer generous pay, which isn’t the case for most families.

“The policy simply isn’t fit for purpose. We need a paternity leave law that guarantees at least three months of full pay to give dads a real chance to be there for their families.”

Professor Melanie Jones from Cardiff Business School added: “Our evidence is stark. SPL has been completely ineffective in encouraging fathers to take more and longer leave at the birth of their child.”

Dr Joanna Clifton-Sprigg from the University of Bath commented: “Our work demonstrates that this policy, although conceptually desirable, in practice has not changed decisions of an average household with regards to who is the primary caregiver of the child in their first year of life. This is an important finding, particularly in a society that seeks to reduce gender inequalities at work and in which parents are increasingly wanting to be both active in their child’s life right from the start.”

Professor Eleonora Fichera from the University of Bath added: “Although the introduction of SPL is certainly welcome, our study suggests that the devil is in the detail. The design of the policy as it stands does not change care-taking roles within an average household in the U.K.”

Dr Jeremy Davies, Deputy CEO of the Fatherhood Institute, a UK charity working to improve support for involved fathers, described the research as a “wake-up call” for the Government: “Shared parental leave has officially failed. International evidence shows clearly that if we want dads to take a greater share of the caregiving, we need to give them their own leave, paid at a rate where they can afford to take it.”