A decade on from the introduction of a landmark scheme aimed at helping new parents share childcare, campaigners say shared parental leave is failing the working families it was designed to help. As the sole earner in his young family, 21-year-old Josh Wiborg couldn’t take shared parental leave when his twin girls were born. Like so many dads, he was entitled to only two weeks off work, at reduced pay. He says it left him “feeling like a stranger” to his twin girls in the first few weeks of fatherhood. Introduced 10 years ago by the previous Conservative government, shared parental leave is a state-funded scheme that allows parents to share up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay after the birth or adoption of a child. It was hoped this would allow dads to play a more prominent role in fatherhood. But new analysis, seen exclusively by BBC News, shows it might not benefit all dads equally. The uptake is heavily skewed towards higher earners, predominantly based in London and south-east England.
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