Shared Parental Leave evaluation: What are the barriers and enablers for taking leave?

By Ros Bragg, Director

Blog 3 of 5.

In the eight years since Shared Parental Leave was introduced, there have been several communications campaigns to raise awareness of this option for taking leave.?Take-up of leave remains very low, possibly less than 2% of all working fathers and second parents, and concentrated amongst parents who are older, higher earners in professional or management roles. The recent?Shared Parental Leave evaluation?explored some of the factors influencing take-up of leave.?This is the third in a series of blogs exploring the evaluation findings.

The evaluation of Shared Parental Leave drew on a range of data sources, relying heavily on the 2019 Parental Rights Survey.?This survey was completed prior to the pandemic so there are questions about the degree to which it reflects the current environment.?The evaluation includes some supplementary data which was collected more recently.

The evaluation found that factors contributing to take-up of Shared Parental Leave include support from partners and support from employers, including enhanced pay.?Barriers to take-up included poor understanding of Shared Parental Leave by employers, financial constraints and workplace culture.??

The evaluation found evidence that the complexity of the scheme affected take-up, noting that the scheme required two employers to be involved in resolving leave arrangements. The evaluation found that 9% of mothers and 8% of fathers who did not take up Shared Parental Leave stated that it was too complicated to set up and manage.?Amongst employers, 9% of managers mentioned the complexity of the scheme, rising to 17% in larger workplaces.?Similar concerns were reflected in the qualitative research.

Financial factors were a significant factor in parents’ decisions not to take Shared Parental Leave, with 25% of mothers and 30% of fathers citing this as the main reason.?Interestingly, a greater proportion of women with higher income partners reported negative financial impacts as a barrier (56%, earnings of over ￡50,000 p.a.). Parents with higher household income were also more likely to report financial impacts as a barrier (41%, household income of at least ￡40,000).

The duration of Shared Parental Leave was affected by financial factors, with 44% of parents who took Shared Parental Leave stating they couldn’t afford to take their full entitlement.?Worries about harming their career or business were cited by 14% of parents who took less than their full entitlement to Shared Parental Leave.

The evaluation found evidence of a workplace culture which was not supportive of fathers taking leave.?‘Hesitant’ employers saw maternity leave as not optional for female employees and parental leave as optional for male employees. This was based on persistent cultural expectations that men will prioritise work and women will prioritise childcare.

The evaluation pointed to the ‘shared’ aspect of leave as a major factor affecting take-up of leave.?One in four mothers who did not take Shared Parental Leave said that they did not want to share leave and 18% of fathers said that their partner did not want to share leave.?

The evaluation focused on the factors affecting take-up amongst those who were eligible to take Shared Parental Leave.?Due to the strict eligibility criteria for Shared Parental Leave, approximately 40% of working fathers are without entitlement.?This includes fathers whose partner is not working or not entitled to maternity leave, fathers in various forms of insecure work, fathers who changed jobs after their partner became pregnant and fathers on low incomes.

The evaluation did not comment on the high rates of?maternity discrimination?in UK workplaces, in which three quarters of mothers experience some form of maternity discrimination and one in nine are dismissed or forced out of their job.?This is useful context for the finding that 15% of fathers taking Shared Parental Leave reported that taking this leave negatively affected career progression.?It is unsurprising that the negative employer attitudes to women who become pregnant and take maternity leave are extended to fathers taking leave to care for their baby.

Given the very low take-up of Shared Parental Leave and the limited demographic using it, there is a clear need to rethink the framework for maternity, paternity and parental leave.?The evaluation flags barriers including the framework of shared leave, rather than individual entitlements, the complexity of the scheme and financial issues.?Maternity Action has proposed an?alternative approach?which is based on individual rights, extends eligibility to all working parents and which offers a staged approach to overcoming the financial barriers to taking leave.

Maternity Action has prepared a?briefing?analysing the Shared Parental Leave evaluation.?Subsequent blogs will look at the health dimension of the evaluation and the Government response.

Read blog 1 in this series ‘Shared Parental Leave evaluation: What is the take-up of Shared Parental Leave?‘.

Read blog 2 in this series ‘Shared Parental Leave evaluation: Who is taking Shared Parental Leave?’.