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 PATERNITY LEAVE- The time is now for change and you can do your bit

A blog post written by a West Berkshire Family, Dan and Kerry Whiteway, that are helping to raise awareness about paternity leave.


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The UK government is currently consulting on what UK parents are entitled to as paternity leave. And about time too – it is more than 20 years that this was last reviewed. And you can tell.

The two weeks paid paternity leave dads are entitled to is less than half the minimum wage (it is £187.18 per week, for those keeping score). It is the worst in Europe. And this isn’t just an issue for dads. Non-birthing partners get the same package. And if you’re self-employed you get NOTHING.


Speaking on a personal level, I was lucky enough to be able to take an extra two weeks of annual leave after the birth of our daughter in 2021. A) not all new dads are able to do that (it is hard enough to make it work financially just for two weeks of statutory pay) and B) even four weeks was nowhere near enough time to adjust to your entire life changing.


I distinctly remember two clear things from those first two weeks being back at work:

  1. The feelings of guilt whenever I walked out the front door or was sat on a call when I was WFH and hearing my partner struggling in the living room.

  2. The overwhelming sense that I was doing neither parenting properly or my job properly. Nothing I could do in either role was enough. I was letting my wife, our child and my work down all at once.


My partner had a traumatic post-birth experience – she would go on to be diagnosed with PTSD and it took her about 18 months of hard work to feel herself again – and it took me about 12-18 months to figure out that a real shift in my mental wellbeing was probably a direct result of witnessing her traumatic experience. With that bit of added paternity leave, maybe we both would have had the opportunity to confront the mental health issues we were experiencing and get the help we both needed.

All of the above are basically a checklist of what the knock-on effects of terrible paternity leave are:

  • Mental health problems for both mums and dads/ non-birthing partners? CHECK.

  • Financial concerns? CHECK.

  • Parental worry about building a strong relationship with your child? CHECK

  • Feeling unable to speak up as a father as your partner bares the brunt of the load and the struggle? CHECK.

When you add all of this up, is it surprising that 45% of dads experience multiple symptoms of depression in the first year of parenthood, and recent devastating research has shown two to three babies lose their dads to suicide every week in the UK? That’s unacceptable. Especially as 82% of new dads say improving paternity leave is the single biggest thing the government could do to help.

The time for change is now. It is not the 1950s anymore – dads are rightly expected to be fully present, equal parents. But our paternity leave system is stuck and does not empower dads to do this.


The mum’s side of the story

In 2021 my husband and I welcomed our beautiful baby girl into the world. Shortly after giving birth and experiencing that rush of love and happiness of being new parents, complications occurred and I was whisked off to theatre, taken away from my husband and daughter who was not even an hour old. The traumatic experience I went through, led me to being diagnosed with PTSD. I also struggled with post-natal depression.


When returning home from the hospital, I realised within a couple of weeks that I wasn’t feeling the way I thought I should. I was able to reach out to my doctor and receive medication and signposting for PND support, however the thing I wanted and needed the most, was my husband. He knew me, he witnessed what I went through, and I needed him at home with me and our daughter to help me though a really difficult time. The fact was, he couldn’t be at home, he had to be at work so we had enough money coming in to pay the bills and keep the roof over our heads.

I could see he was struggling, but I was struggling, and it felt like a crack was growing between us and a lack of communication and understanding forming. If he had been able to be at home with me for longer, we would have had more time for each other, more time for ourselves to self-reflect and work through our struggles, and we would have been able to build a better and stronger family foundation.


Luckily, I had a great support network from family, friends, NCT friends, West Berkshire Family Hub (Family Hubs - West Berkshire Council), and the Parent Village. I undertook sessions with NHS Berkshire Talking Therapies, for anxiety and depression which was fantastic help in working through PTSD and PND. My husband has been my complete rock, and whilst it has taken some time, we have worked through so much together.


Giving birth and being a parent is both physically and mentally challenging. Our story is one of dealing with traumatic birthing experience, but I have friends who have had emergency/unplanned C-Sections, and planned C-Sections. C-Sections take a minimum recovery period of six weeks, where mums are unable to do anything more than hold and feed their baby. They are completely reliant on others around them for help, usually the baby’s father/non-birthing parent. Two weeks of paternity leave and at least six weeks of recovery time after giving birth does not add up!

As a collective voice, it is time we teamed up with these movements and demand more from our government.

My plea to new parents, you are not alone in how you are feeling, there is support there for you. You are enough and you doing a good job, be kind to yourself.


Links to our recent interview with ITV:


What can you do about it?

Currently, the Dad Shift (along with other groups like Pregnant then Screwed) are campaigning for better paternity leave. A package that is substantial (so dads get enough time to support their partner and bond with their kids), affordable (so at a rate that means everyone can afford to take it), and equal (so both parents get equal leave meaning family roles are not shaped by gender).

There’s tonnes of research that shows that better paternity leave is:

And these campaign groups are just ordinary parents like me and you. So get involved – search “The Dad Shift” to see what you can do.


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