Prioritising economic productivity but retreating from day-one rights

Prior to the 2024 general election, Labour’s manifesto and Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay (2024) signalled potentially transformative reforms. They stated:

Proposed reforms included introducing day-one rights to parental leave and pay, removing the qualifying period that excludes many workers in insecure, part-time, or short-term employment, doubling statutory maternity and shared parental pay to £350 per week and making it unlawful to dismiss women six months after returning from Maternity Leave, except in specific circumstances.

Still conducting their review a year later, Labour has yet to fulfil its proposals and has retreated from several of their core pledges already. Though new provisions for Neonatal Care Leave and Bereavement Leave have been prioritised, significantly addressing acute needs for families in crisis, statutory parental pay available to the majority of families remains at £187.18 per week, not the promised £350. Fathers must still also have worked continuously for the same employer for at least twenty-six weeks by the end of the fifteenth week before the baby is due to qualify for paternity pay. These reversals, occurring alongside Labour’s broader fiscal tightening and the challenging passage of the Employment Rights Bill through the House of Lords, underscore the role of political processes and economic priorities in driving incremental approaches that eclipse more radical reforms. These retreats are also indicative of the continued prioritisation of market imperatives rather than care as a societal and policy good (Daly, Reference Daly2002).

On the current trajectory, Labour therefore risks reproducing a longstanding pattern in UK policy making whereby longer-term structural reform has been subordinated to immediate financial considerations, and where employability goals systematically override equality commitments. The UK remains among the least generous countries in terms of public expenditure on leave policies (Otto et al., Reference Otto, Bártová and van Lancker2021), a trend that looks set to continue. Yet the inadequacy of payment levels undermines both stated economic goals and any possibility of gender-equal care-sharing, particularly because many families cannot afford for fathers to take leave at such low rates, especially in families where gender pay gaps are more pronounced (Woodward, Reference Woodward2025).

Paradoxically, Labour’s productivity goals depend on maternal workforce participation, which requires paternal care participation, yet their policy choices emphasise maternal employment protections while failing to recognise how paternal care participation could equally contribute to productivity objectives. The framing and language of Labour’s proposed reforms exemplify this contradiction, with parental leave positioned as essential for ‘growing the economy’, to ‘Make Work Pay’ and ‘breaking down barriers to opportunity’ (GOV.UK, 2025) while maintaining pay levels that actively prevent fathers from taking leave. This implicitly maternalist approach mirrors frameworks of many European leave systems, particularly those that were in place before the introduction of the EU Work-Life Balance Directive in 2019 (Koslowski, Reference Koslowski2021).

Despite the dominance of maternalist frameworks in Europe and the UK both historically and internationally, the case for Labour to abandon this approach is compelling. Economic modelling from UK think tanks, the Centre for Progressive Policy and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, estimates that increasing Paternity Leave entitlements to six weeks of leave at 90 per cent of earnings could generate a net economic benefit of £2.68 billion annually (Singh, Reference Singh2025). Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) data also demonstrates that countries offering more than six weeks of paid Paternity Leave have a 4-percentage point smaller gender wage gap and a 3.7-percentage point smaller labour force participation gap than those offering less (Fogden et al., Reference Fogden, Singh, Merkulova, Brearley, Fabianski and Franklin2023). This evidence suggests that care-centred reforms and economic growth are actually mutually reinforcing rather than competing goals. Thus, in adhering to the principles of a liberal welfare regime (Baird and O’Brien, Reference Baird and O’Brien2015) and pursuing modest adjustments rather than structural transformation, Labour is unlikely to achieve its stated economic objectives.

These financial barriers are additionally compounded by workplace cultures that systematically fail to recognise or support fathers as caregivers. Extensive research demonstrates that employers often lack clarity about their obligations under parental leave schemes, and burgeoning evidence in organisational studies suggests that employers do not recognise or support men as fathers or in terms of their caregiving roles (e.g. Gheyoh Ndzi, Reference Gheyoh Ndzi2021; Gheyoh Ndzi and Holmes, Reference Gheyoh Ndzi and Holmes2023). This has led Burnett et al. (Reference Burnett, Gatrell, Cooper and Sparrow2013) to describe fathers as ‘ghosts’ in the organisational machine, and Kelland (Reference Kelland2021) to conceptualise fathers’ employment experiences in relation to leave entitlements as a ‘fatherhood forfeit’, where men’s childcare responsibilities are neither recognised nor supported in the workplace. The absence of any norms around paternity replacement cover, unlike the well-established maternity cover, further entrenches gendered divisions of care (Børve and Bungum, Reference Børve and Bungum2015). Even where employers offer enhanced pay, inconsistent policies and poor internal communication impede take-up, as does the administrative complexity of SPL, especially when parents are employed by different organisations (UCL, 2024).

The combination of restrictive eligibility criteria, absent paternity replacement cover norms, and limited organisational recognition of fathers as caregivers creates a system in which fathers face significant professional and financial disincentives to taking leave, perpetuating mothers’ default positioning as primary carers. Without addressing eligibility barriers and organisational cultures simultaneously, Labour’s statutory reforms will only serve to replicate SPL’s failure to deliver either gender equality or economic outcomes.

While these financial and organisational barriers are significant, the next section examines how they interact with the transferable leave model, a policy design that Labour has not pledged to radically change yet one that shapes whether and how parents can share care.

Paternity leave, shared parenting, and the rejection of dual-carer models

Labour’s pre-election pledge to introduce a new model of parental leave included proposals for an additional month of Statutory Paternity Leave, paid at 90 per cent of earnings (likely subject to a cap), on a ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ basis. This marked a promising shift toward creating independent entitlements for fathers and partners, rather than relying solely on shared or transferable leave. Alongside wider calls, from campaigning groups and academic research, for extending Paternity Leave to six weeks, Labour’s proposal indicated potential for a more inclusive approach to promoting shared caregiving. It also reflected an intention to address the UK’s longstanding gap in father-focused leave provision compared to other European countries (Bannister and Kerrane, Reference Bannister and Kerrane2024).

That this extension has not been implemented indicates a politically significant decision constituting implicit endorsement of the status quo. Despite the de-traditionalisation of fatherhood (Bannister and Kerrane, Reference Bannister and Kerrane2024) and generational shifts toward more involved fatherhood (Dermott and Miller, Reference Dermott and Miller2015), the UK’s provision of Paternity Leave remains woefully inadequate. Recent reforms allow the existing two-week entitlement to be split non-consecutively across fifty-one weeks, but this modest flexibility, which maintains the two-week total, exemplifies an incremental approach and reinforces rather than challenges the gender traditionalism historically embedded in UK parental leave. Kaufman’s (Reference Kaufman2018) international analysis highlights that UK policies are still particularly unsupportive of men (and thus, by implication unsupportive of women), with persistent barriers such as financial inaccessibility, stigma around men taking extended leave, and restrictive eligibility criteria (see also Twamley and Schober, Reference Twamley and Schober2019).

Further, the introduction of flexibility in what weeks fathers can take their two week leave entitlements represents little more than a ‘symbolic gesture’ (Daly, Reference Daly, Nieuwenhuis and Van Lancker2020), whereby the existing policy system acknowledges some cultural change in fathering, but with limited explicit attempt to facilitate fathers’ longer-term investments in caregiving. The consequence is that such reforms will fail to fundamentally alter gendered family relationships, instead continuing to confirm mothers as primary caregivers, albeit more indirectly than in the past. This exemplifies what Daly (Reference Daly, Nieuwenhuis and Van Lancker2020) identifies as a form of contemporary implicit maternalism. Rather than explicitly pursuing a maternal role for women, it emerges as the outcome of weakly conceived measures framed in gender-neutral and market-friendly terms, namely a form of ‘new parentalism’ that nonetheless reproduces maternal primacy in caregiving.

Beyond the financial and organisational barriers for fathers appraised in the previous section, SPL’s transferable leave model has also been found to perpetuate gender inequalities (Atkinson, Reference Atkinson2017; UCL, 2024; Stovell, Reference Stovell2025). Introduced and expanded by the Conservative government as a flagship gender-equality reform, SPL has attracted robust critique from family policy scholars for failing to address both the moral and economic cases for increasing leave uptake among both men and women (e.g. Atkinson, Reference Atkinson2017; Kaufman, Reference Kaufman2018; Koslowski and Kadar-Satat, Reference Koslowski and Kadar-Satat2019; Twamley and Schober, Reference Twamley and Schober2019). Its ‘transferable leave’ model places the responsibility on parents to decide how leave is divided, a seemingly gender-neutral, liberal welfare approach that exemplifies implicit maternalism, or policy framed as a neutral choice that nonetheless produces gendered outcomes. Research finds that parents rarely engage in explicit joint work-care decision-making; rather, leave decisions are shaped predominantly by policy design and entrenched gender norms, with women overwhelmingly leading decision-making about leave regardless of relative earnings or existing care-sharing patterns (Stovell, Reference Stovell2025). Many men also report feeling less entitled to leave (Brandth and Kvande, Reference Brandth and Kvande2016) and hesitate to take leave that is culturally perceived as ‘belonging’ to the mother, even when previously expressing commitment to egalitarian parenting (Stovell, Reference Stovell2025).

The financial constraints discussed earlier intensify these challenges. Where men are higher earners, the financial sacrifice of statutory or unpaid leave frequently deters families from sharing leave more equally (Gaunt et al., Reference Gaunt, Jordan, Tarrant, Chanamuto, Pinho and Wezyk2022; Hamilton, Reference Hamilton2023). Even when mothers do transfer leave, partners may be unable to afford time off, especially after week 39 when statutory payments end. These dynamics have also been observed among migrant mothers living in the UK, illustrating how gender norms, economic constraints, and cultural expectations intersect to shape leave behaviour (Kabylova, Reference Kabylova2025). Thus, the UK’s policy framework continues to reinforce heteronormative assumptions that mothers will take parental leave (Bendall and Mitchell, Reference Bendall and Mitchell2023).

In contrast, ‘default policy option’ models, namely those that give both parents their own non-transferable entitlement to leave on a use-it-or-lose-it basis, have been found to be significantly more effective in promoting gender equality in caregiving (Women’s Budget Group, 2024). There is compelling international evidence from the Nordic countries, which have long enshrined gender equality as a central objective, and more recently from countries such as Spain and Germany, that individual, non-transferable and well-paid leave is the most effective way to increase parents’ sense of entitlement to leave, particularly for fathers (Brandth and Kvande, Reference Brandth and Kvande2019; Eerola et al., Reference Eerola, Lammi-Taskula, Hietamäki and Räikkönen2019; Gaunt et al. Reference Gaunt, Jordan, Tarrant, Chanamuto, Pinho and Wezyk2022; Farré et al., Reference Farré, González and Hupkau2025).

Notably, Spain’s recent equalisation of parental leave at sixteen weeks for both parents, with mandatory initial periods and generous income replacement, has also achieved dramatic increases in paternal participation from 46 per cent to over 75 per cent uptake (Farré et al., Reference Farré, González and Hupkau2025). Similarly, Germany’s Elterngeld system, which includes a ‘bonus for sharing’ offer, has seen uptake by fathers reach 43 per cent (Blum et al., Reference Blum, Fischer, Peukert, Reimer, Schober, Stertz, Dobrotić, Blum, Kaufmann, Koslowski, Moss and Valentova2025), far above the UK’s low uptake of just 2 per cent. Countries achieving greater inclusion have embraced comprehensive approaches combining individual, non-transferable entitlements, high wage replacement, and clear labelling that leave is for fathers (UCL, 2024; Blum et al., Reference Blum, Fischer, Peukert, Reimer, Schober, Stertz, Dobrotić, Blum, Kaufmann, Koslowski, Moss and Valentova2025).

The UK’s resistance reflects divergent underlying ideological and policy paradigms globally. Nordic states treat parental leave as a regulatory instrument for gender equality, actively reconfiguring gender relations conceptualised as an individual earner-carer regime (Sainsbury, Reference Sainsbury and Sainsbury1999). Under the Nordic paradigm, where parental leave rights are conceptualised as individual entitlements rather than family benefits, father quotas become coherent policy instruments for state-led gender equality. Under the UK’s liberal welfare paradigm, mandatory individual entitlements have been eschewed in favour of transferable models that preserve family choice, reflecting the regime’s foundational principle of minimal state intervention in private family arrangements (Baird and O’Brien, Reference Baird and O’Brien2015).

Despite Labour’s encouraging but modest proposal for a ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ month for fathers and partners in their manifesto, their retreat from implementing extended, well-paid Paternity Leave demonstrates that UK policymakers are not explicitly connecting gender care gaps and pay gaps with economic productivity in their current policy goals. The evidence from countries that have moved beyond piecemeal reform demonstrates that achieving both gender equality and economic productivity requires abandoning transferable leave models in favour of individual, non-transferable entitlements combined with adequate pay and universal access from day one of employment. Labour’s failure to implement their promised six-week Paternity Leave extension, which would have been modest in and of itself, reveals the limits of their appetite for genuine transformation and continued adherence to liberal welfare principles that treat care distribution as a private family matter.

While addressing the transferable leave model’s design flaws represents a necessary step toward gender equality and shared parenting, even reforming this model cannot achieve equity if eligibility criteria continue to exclude substantial portions of the workforce. We move on to examine how class, employment status, and ethnicity create compounding barriers that render even well-designed leave systems inaccessible to many families so that they are exclusionary.

Extending eligibility: self-employment, precarity, and intersectional inequalities

The UK’s current parental leave system reveals a deeper issue about which families are considered worthy of support. By excluding self-employed parents, and those in education or on precarious contracts from parental leave entitlements, the system systematically disadvantages families already navigating the margins of traditional employment and family structures. In their manifesto, Labour acknowledged the exclusion of self-employed parents from parental leave entitlements and signalled an intention to extend parental leave rights to self-employed parents, recognising that current entitlements exclude a growing proportion of the workforce (Labour Party, 2024). As with several of their core pledges, progress on this commitment has been limited, and the leave system review process has not yet yielded concrete reforms.

The preceding analysis establishes that Labour cannot achieve its economic productivity goals without enabling gender-equal care through robust Paternity Leave entitlements or shifts towards more care-centred policy goals and designs. However, even if Labour were to adopt these, the parental leave system would continue to fail substantial portions of the population unless it also addresses how class, employment status, ethnicity, disability, and age create compounding barriers to accessing leave. These intersecting inequalities are not incidental to Labour’s reform agenda but central. Without addressing how policy design systematically excludes working-class families, minority ethnic families, self-employed parents, and precariously employed workers, Labour’s reforms will neither achieve gender equality in caregiving nor enable the broad-based workforce participation necessary for economic productivity.

Currently, the scale of exclusion is substantial. In 2023, approximately 4.1 million individuals, or 13.3 per cent of the population, were self-employed in the UK, of which 12 per cent were from a minority ethnic group (ONS, 2023), locking a significant portion of families out of the leave system altogether. Self-employed mothers may be entitled to Maternity Allowance; however, self-employed fathers and second parents are not eligible for Shared Parental Leave or Pay. The strict eligibility requirements also exclude precarious workers with zero-hours contracts and agency work, disproportionately affecting lower-income families (Bendall and Mitchell, Reference Bendall and Mitchell2023). Even where the introduction of day one rights had potential to alleviate some eligibility criteria, fathers must still be classified as an employee and must have worked continuously for the same employer for at least twenty-six weeks by the end of the fifteenth week before the baby is due.

Self-employed fathers are particularly disadvantaged, with no access at all to paid parental leave, an issue explicitly acknowledged by Labour in their manifesto. A recent study of the lived experiences of precariously employed young fathers, aged twenty-five and under, confirms that limited access to leave, including for those still in education, impeded their ability to balance work and care, to develop a sustained bond with their baby, and to support their co-parent in the transition to parenthood (Tarrant et al., Reference Tarrant, Gaunt, Jordan, Harle and Ladlow2025). In contrast, countries such as Sweden allow parental leave to be accessed by parents in education, recognising caregiving responsibilities beyond formal employment (Tarrant et al., Reference Tarrant, Ladlow, Harle and Tarrantforthcoming). While Labour has committed to reviewing parental leave for self-employed parents, allowing employed fathers to take only two weeks non-consecutively additionally weakens the case for extending these rights to self-employed fathers, who remain entirely excluded. Moreover, focusing reforms on self-employed parents reinforces an existing pattern of prioritising support for ‘working parents’ who are deemed economically productive and therefore more ‘deserving’ of entitlements based on their employment status.

Labour is therefore perpetuating a parental leave system in which class inequalities are deeply entrenched. Beyond the complete exclusion of self-employed and precariously employed parents (Tarrant et al., Reference Tarrant, Gaunt, Jordan, Harle and Ladlow2025), Bendall and Mitchell (Reference Bendall and Mitchell2023) demonstrate that SPL especially fails working-class families through both practical barriers and deeper cultural incompatibilities. The inadequate statutory pay rates make leave unaffordable for families without adequate savings and working-class mothers often leave the workforce due to inflexible shift patterns and limited access to flexible working arrangements, making leave-sharing impossible. Additionally, working-class fathers face greater job insecurity, compounded by the unsupportive workplace cultures described in a previous section.

Bendall and Mitchell (Reference Bendall and Mitchell2023) also caution that existing legislation imposes middle-class ideals that clash with the realities of low-income family life. In particular, the legislation assumes a nuclear family structure, ignoring that working-class children are more commonly raised by lone parents or in cohabiting relationships, making the requirement for mothers to ‘transfer’ leave to partners particularly ill-suited to these family forms. Relatedly, in their focus on eligible, working couples, Birkett and Forbes (2023) found that SPL uptake was most common among professional couples, particularly where the mother earned more, or where the father’s employer provided enhanced leave pay.

Research has also found that ethnicity, income, education, and occupation all influence the uptake of SPL and parental leave more broadly (O’Brien et al., Reference O’Brien, Aldrich, Connolly, Cook and Speight2017; Koslowski and Kadar-Satat, Reference Koslowski and Kadar-Satat2019; Twamley and Schober, Reference Twamley and Schober2019; Hamilton, Reference Hamilton2025). Parents from ethnic minority backgrounds, lower-income households, less-educated groups, and manual occupations are less likely to perceive SPL as an option, be eligible for it, understand how it works, or take it, disparities reflecting broader intersectional inequalities that influence access to and uptake of parental leave. Structural racism with regards to paid leave has received much less research attention, although US scholars Goodman et al. (Reference Goodman, Williams and Dow2021) argue that inequitable access to paid parental leave through employers and government programmes can exacerbate racial inequities from the birth of a child. Ongoing cuts to welfare, including reductions in disability support (e.g. the Personal Independence Payment) in the UK, are also likely to place further economic strain on low-income families.

A key challenge for the current Labour government is that the intersections of gender, ethnicity, disabilities, and age will continue to play a key role in determining leave access, indicating that modest reforms that involve maintaining or only tinkering with eligibility criteria and pay levels, are unlikely to achieve either care-centred, inclusive, or economic productivity goals. Where policy design excludes minority ethnic, low-income, and precariously employed parents from meaningful access to leave, these groups are also excluded from meaningful participation in gender equal caregiving. Labour’s promise to review provisions for self-employed parents, while welcome, remains insufficient without concrete action and without simultaneously addressing the broader exclusions built into the system’s eligibility criteria and pay levels.