When Shared Parental Leave and was introduced on 1 December 2014, it was hailed as something that would revolutionise family leave. It was to be the tool that would take society away from the archaic assumption that women take on the bulk of childcare responsibilities. Families would finally have a choice by being able to share their leave, rather than the outdated assumption that Maternity Leave needed to be a year but Paternity Leave only needed to be two weeks.
However, ten years later, it is fair to say that Shared Parental Leave has thus far failed to live up to the hype. The Government's Evaluation Report in September 2023 revealed that only 1% of eligible mothers and 5% of eligible fathers/partners had taken up the option of Shared Parental Leave. A recent freedom of information request to HMRC revealed that Shared Parental Leave was used in less than 2% of births last year.
Why aren't families interested?
There could be any number of reasons for the low take up. One of them is undoubtedly a lack of awareness. The Government's report established that upwards of 33% of mothers and 45% of fathers/partners had not heard of Shared Parental Leave. This lack of awareness could ultimately stem from the employer. The laws behind Shared Parental Leave and Pay make the scheme unnecessarily complicated, and employers could be more reluctant to promote the scheme within the workplace if they struggle to understand how they'll have to manage it in practice.
Another reason for the poor take up has to be money. Through things like gender pay gap reporting, the gender pay gap in the UK is slowly declining. However, it remains true that men statistically earn more on average than women. It might therefore be no surprise that most families continue to opt for the traditional Maternity/Paternity Leave route where the higher earner goes back to work sooner.
Reform the system?
The Government recognises that in practice, for most families, Shared Parental Leave offers a stark choice: The benefits of families better sharing the childcare responsibilities vs the anticipated financial loss of taking it up. Given the precarious state of the UK economy and the downward pressure on wages, it is easy to see why the financial argument is winning and families are sticking to the traditional Maternity/Paternity Leave model.
A BBC news article earlier this week seems to emphasise this, with recent analysis showing that take up of Shared Parental Leave is statistically highest in the wealthier South-East of England - where families are better able to absorb the financial loss of the scheme in favour of the benefits of shared childcare responsibilities.
Ultimately, if Shared Parental Leave is to achieve its original 2014 goals, the system needs reforming. Conservative Governments in 2015 and 2017 promised big changes, but nothing substantive materialised.
The new Labour Government has promised to look at Shared Parental Leave in its first year of taking office. In a repeat of the 2014 goals, their intention seems to be to incentivise more equal sharing of childcare responsibilities. If that is the goal, part of the review must be to look at the financial points - otherwise we may be waiting for the gender pay gap to slowly equalise before Shared Parental Leave makes any real progress towards becoming commonplace.
Whilst work can be done at a Governmental level, employers can also play their part by promoting policies and increasing awareness amongst the workforce.
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