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.


 

"On Monday 9 March, Catherine McKinnell MP will be chairing the Petitions Committee debate on providing 15 hours free childcare to working parents for children over 9 months. As well as the financial impact of childcare, she’d like to know how the cost of childcare affected your decision to return to work. How has the cost of childcare affected your family as a whole and what else do you think the Government could do to support parents returning to work after parental leave?"


"The petition, which received 146,397 signatures, stated “After 9 months of maternity leave, most working mums do not receive any maternity pay and need to go back to work. I think all working parents should be entitled to 15 hours free childcare from the time a child is 9 months. It makes more sense to provide this funding from 9 months instead of 2 years.”"


"We will pass on your comments and experiences to Catherine McKinnell MP who will use them to inform the debate. Links to watch the debate and read the transcript will be posted when they become available."


"Tell us about your experience by midday Sunday 8 March. She may quote and refer to your contributions during the debate."