Maya Forstater

Friends told me that during parental leave they finally got to read books they had planned to read. I figured out how to write emails with a baby sleeping on my lap.

The reactions to our choices of parental leave were illuminating. I got a few "oh, so short, only 8 months?!", my husband many "wow, so long, 4.5 months!", often followed with "don't you worry it will hurt your career?"

Nobody worried about my career. Perhaps they didn't care, perhaps they thought that parental leave only hurts mens' careers.

There is a lot of discrimination here - my husband was basically told by his boss that taking 4.5 months is a terribly idea career-wise, while a female colleague (at the same level of seniority)  announced that she will take twelve month of parental leave  at the same meeting, ..

.. without negative comments. We talk a lot about the wage penalty for after birth, but taking a longish parental leave get much more pushback. Several junior male colleagues of my huband told him they were grateful, as he was forming a path that they could thus follow later

36% of German fathers take any parental leave; 60% of those who take it take two months. This shows the importance of anchor points - a couple gets a total of 14 months (instead of 12 months) of paid parental leave if each partner takes at least two months.

This also shows options for reform - perhaps if we paid more if the leave was split more equally, it would be shared more equally.

Many told us it's great we're splitting parental leave equally. We're not. I was at home twice as long as my husband, and I'll get our son started in nursery. We decided together that this was the best split, but it's interesting to see how it is perceived from the outside.