Wendy's blog: The power of two - Shared Parental Leave

I recently took eight month’s maternity leave to have my first baby, a lovely boy called Oskar. It is true that nobody can prepare you for how hard it is, particularly when your family isn’t close and you don’t have that support network when you desperately need to catch up on sleep.

Of course I also experienced the usual concerns around taking time off from work, handing my job over to a contractor, transitioning back to work, balancing work and motherhood and generally the impact having a baby would have on my career. Thankfully, I was able to navigate motherhood and my way back into corporate life without any hiccups, thanks to support from two sources – my partner and my company. I know from other mothers that this is not a given and that unfortunately, maternity leave can be very disruptive to female careers.

From the beginning, my partner has been my anchor. While nature dictated that Oskar was pretty much attached to me for the first few months, he ran around cleaning up the sick, did the dishes, changed nappies and cooked. He was generally there for me; all the while he worked full-time on never more than three hours of sleep at night. It is only logical that we decided to share our parental leave – we both felt that he should have the opportunity to spend an extended amount of time with his son.

My partner works for a large, multi-national support services and construction company. He was the first of 24,000 UK employees to take shared parental leave. His decision was met with a variety of reactions by his predominantly male colleagues. Many supported him, but some questioned his motivations for spending time with his baby and therefore his commitment to work. Unsurprisingly, he has experienced the same concerns that I had about taking time off work.

What made it easier for me is the flexibility with which I was able to organise my affairs prior to and upon returning to work. I was able to transition back slowly, using my accrued holidays to initially work only a few days per week. My manager supported and in fact encouraged me to reduce my work week from five to four days – I had the flexible working policy and application form waiting for me in my inbox on my first day back. I did a few KIT days while I was on maternity leave and generally kept in touch with my team, which made the return to work much easier. My colleagues welcomed me back with arms wide open and reasonable expectations, meaning that within a few weeks I was back in the swing of things. I can’t see any detriment to my career arising from having gone on maternity leave, quite the opposite. I was recently promoted to Director.

Of course I am struggling to balance both my work and private life, there is simply so much work to do on both fronts, but that’s the way it is now. What makes it easier is that I don’t feel bad for leaving work when I need to, or leaving Oskar in daddy’s care when I can’t be back in time. I’m really happy the shared parental leave legislation came into force in time for us. I’m convinced our parenting and partnership works as well as it does because we have both been able to experience and appreciate each other’s roles and responsibilities – him being at home with the baby all day, me working all day and then being handed the baby in the evenings!

Shared parental leave also had obvious benefits for Oskar. Having learnt to say goodbye to me in the mornings (he waves his little hand) and spend the day with daddy as his main carer, he now finds it easy to adapt to other people and has become a pretty independent and confident baby.

We are about to give Oskar into the care of a nanny, and soon we will both have to juggle work and private life. But I’m confident that we will do this with mutual respect for each other’s careers, workloads, struggles and wishes.

I really hope that more men will take the opportunity to spend time with their babies for exactly these reasons. Importantly, balanced partnerships at home will help women thrive upon their return to work and increase the number of senior women we are so desperately lacking in our industry.

Wendy is a Director in the Corporate Communications team at a gloabl asset management firm based in London.