My parental leave comes to an end soon. Some brief thoughts:

First, I am very lucky to have an employer that encourages the taking of such leave. I encountered many fathers who were basically told (sometimes even explicitly) that they could not take SPL without being a pain.

Unsurprisingly, those fathers didn’t take beyond the first 2 weeks, or took a much shorter period of SPL than they & their partners actually wanted to. This is appalling.

Second, I was apprehensive about being the only man at baby groups, etc. I’d heard some horror stories

Perhaps I was just very lucky, but when I was the only man (roughly 75% of the time; for the other 25% I was usually 1 of 2 men), I still felt very welcome.

(Contrastingly, shops, etc that only had baby-changing apparatus in female toilets couldn’t make me feel less welcome!)

Third, I was pleasantly surprised by the very low number of requests/demands to do work (without 1st asking if I was doing KIT days, etc.) that I received. I expected more.

(I was more put out by a small number of inquiries about how my research was going. Erm, ‘not at all’.)

Fourth, and connectedly, I have found that having four months away from constant email noise and my research has given me a perspective on work that I don’t think I would otherwise have gleaned.

That is an added bonus of taking such leave that is worth remembering, I think.

But of course the main reason to take SPL is to spend time with your child. I’ve loved it. I’ve had the privilege of watching him develop in a way I couldn’t otherwise have done.

I am forever grateful to the Lib Dems for accomplishing this good thing before they imploded.

Final observation: if you misspeak and refer to yourself as your child’s ‘sole’ carer, this will not go down tremendously well. It was day 3.