Who’s looking after the parents?

Sarah Lewinson recently returned to work after giving birth to her daughter in May 2000. How has she fared in the work-life balance stakes? ‘I returned to work full-time last November and this was a financial decision, as my partner and I have a mortgage that needs two salaries,’ states Lewinson. ‘My husband only had two official days of paternity leave, which he luckily made up to two weeks, using his holiday entitlement. This is a laughably short amount of time, but it was vital that one of us return to work as soon as possible to keep the finances on an even keel,’ she says.

Lewinson was lucky to have the support of her mother, who virtually moved in for the first few weeks after the arrival of the baby. What are her childcare arrangements now? ‘The majority of my salary now goes on paying the childminder, which sometimes makes me question why I am enduring such a hectic daily regime. Every day, after an often sleepless night, I frantically dress and feed my daughter and drop her off to nursery, before dragging myself into the office,’ states Lewinson.

Does she feel that changes proposed will have a real impact on her life?

‘Men need to be fully included in the responsibility of childcare. Longer paternity leave is a fantastic idea, as it’s only my career that has suffered, despite the fact that it was a joint decision between my partner and myself to have the baby,’ states Lewinson.

In fact, the announcement that men will be offered the right to two weeks' paid paternity leave from 2003, is a huge step forward towards the recognition that caring for children is not just the mother's responsibility, and that men might need financial help from the government to be able to take a bigger caring role. Certainly, all the evidence from elsewhere in Europe is that entitlements to leave are not taken by men in any numbers, unless it is paid and paid at a high enough rate to replace earnings from work.