Call to replace outdated maternity leave

Published on Wednesday 1 July 2009 21:59

FATHERS should be given greater rights to spend time at home with their children, a doctor from Scotland said yesterday.

Dr Sacha Haworth, a junior doctor working in a geriatrics unit in Inverclyde, said that the current paternity leave allowance of two weeks was not long enough for men to bond with their baby or support their partner before they had to return to work.

She said that in countries such as Iceland and Sweden, parents can split leave between them to spend time at home with their child.

"If they can successfully implement these measures I don't see any reason why the UK shouldn't drastically increase its paternity leave allowance," she said at the British Medical Association conference in Liverpool.

Dr Haworth said that if a couple adopted a child, either parent could take the full 36 weeks adoption leave. But if a man was the father of a child he conceived, he would only be allowed two weeks.

She said she would like to see maternity and paternity leave dropped, and replaced by a system of joint leave.

"That way if the man wants to take on the responsibility of child-rearing, that's something that he could do," Dr Haworth said. "The legislation we have is based on the outdated assumption that women will do the majority of child-rearing and that they should do it.

"That assumption is completely baseless. There's no reason why a man can't do child-rearing or provide a supportive and loving environment for a child."