A shorter but better paid parental leave? The new Minister of Solidarity Aurore Bergé wants to reform parental leave, the number of beneficiaries of which has halved in recent years.
“Why not think together regarding shorter but better compensated parental leave to give families a real choice?”wondered the minister at the end of July.
“Too many women take long parental leave because they have no solution to keep their child” et “too many mothers and fathers give up parental leave because it is too poorly compensated”she added.
Created in 1977 and reformed several times since, parental leave allows parents to suspend their professional activity until the child is three years old. The parent who stops working receives compensation of 429 euros per month.
Valérie, 43, mother of three in Paris, took a total of five years of parental leave. “I didn’t have a place in a crèche and my job as a human resources consultant forced me to work long hours and travel. My salary would have gone to childcare. I wouldn’t have had a third child without the existence of parental leave”she explains.
“I was able to breastfeed for ten months without being too tired by waking up at night and being there at key moments for my baby”. She took advantage of this leave to train and become a liberal psychologist.
Laurence, 54, describes the two-year parental leave she took for her fourth child as “enchanted parenthesis” in a career that led her to become marketing director in Paris.
“When I went back to work, my baby was finally sleeping through the night, so I was in good shape, I wanted to get back to work”explains this Parisian who has extended her maternity leave with each birth.
1% of fathers take it in France
Increasing the remuneration for this leave would allow more men and women to use it without reducing their standard of living too much. In Germany, Austria, in the Scandinavian countries and many Eastern European countries, it is paid at least 66% of the salary.
This leave had been reformed under the Hollande presidency in 2014: the allowance was reduced and the duration was reduced to two years if it is taken by only one parent. The third year might only be taken by the other parent. The goal was for 25% of fathers to take it.
However, the appeal rate for fathers has hardly increased with this reform: less than 1% of fathers take it, according to a 2021 study by the OFCE.
And the number of parents using it has fallen from some 500,000 in 2013 to 246,000 in 2020, according to government figures.
“We have twice as many beneficiaries of parental leave in 10 years, so it’s a failure, it’s a failure of family policy led at the time by the left”said Aurore Bergé, who wants to reopen the site with family associations and early childhood professionals.
The National Union of Family Associations (Unaf) recommends parental leave “well compensated”at 75% of professional income as in Sweden, up to one year of the child.
Afterwards, they must be able to find childcare or be able to take paid parental leave “until kindergarten”recommends Unaf.
“Most young parents feel the need to ease off professionally during their child’s first year of life”. Ils “tinker with solutions: sick leave, breach of employment contract, unemployment benefits…”she notes.
