This is an old thread, but I saw this in the news today and thought I would share the stats here as I thought it was quite interesting to see the number of families taking on shared parental leave since the original post was written (almost 3 years ago): Unicef UK gives all staff equal parental leave


At the moment in the UK, pregnant employees have the right to 52 weeks maternity leave. Shared parental leave allows parents - after birth or adoption - to share up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay. Fathers are entitled to two weeks of statutory paternity leave at £148.68 per week, provided they have worked for the company for 26 weeks. Only about 2-8% of eligible fathers are making use of these policies, according to Unicef's latest report, with financial reasons cited as the main obstacle. 


Analysis by the University of Birmingham found only 9,200 new parents (just over 1% of those entitled) took shared parental leave in 2017-18. That increased to 10,700 in the financial year 2018-19.


Unicef, the United Nations children's agency, has said parental leave is to be equalised for all of its UK employees and will now offer 52 weeks leave and equal pay for all new caregivers, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Unicef said the UK ranked fourth lowest out of 31 European countries when it comes to family-friendly policies.


 

This is an old thread, but I saw this in the news today and thought I would share the stats here as I thought it was quite interesting to see the number of families taking on shared parental leave since the original post was written (almost 3 years ago): Unicef UK gives all staff equal parental leave


At the moment in the UK, pregnant employees have the right to 52 weeks maternity leave. Shared parental leave allows parents - after birth or adoption - to share up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay. Fathers are entitled to two weeks of statutory paternity leave at £148.68 per week, provided they have worked for the company for 26 weeks. Only about 2-8% of eligible fathers are making use of these policies, according to Unicef's latest report, with financial reasons cited as the main obstacle. 


Analysis by the University of Birmingham found only 9,200 new parents (just over 1% of those entitled) took shared parental leave in 2017-18. That increased to 10,700 in the financial year 2018-19.


Unicef, the United Nations children's agency, has said parental leave is to be equalised for all of its UK employees and will now offer 52 weeks leave and equal pay for all new caregivers, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Unicef said the UK ranked fourth lowest out of 31 European countries when it comes to family-friendly policies.