'Grandpaternity' leave may be a childcare breakthrough

Famous for its progressive family policies, Sweden now plans to allow grandparents to take a share of paid parental leave. The UK should follow its example, says Katie Rosseinsky

- Katie Rosseinsky

There are plenty of reasons to be jealous of the Swedes. Their society is famously egalitarian. So far do they seem to have solved the conundrum of how to strike a better work-life balance that they even have a word – fika – to describe the act of leaving your desk to have a coffee and a chat. And their capital city has an entire museum dedicated to Abba. Now they’ve given us yet another reason to feel envy: they’ve just improved their already world-leading parental leave policy, putting other countries to shame.

At the start of this month, Sweden launched a new law allowing parents to transfer some of their paid parental leave allocation over to the grandparents during a child’s first year. A couple will be able to re-allocate 45 days of their joint 480-day allowance (240 days each), while a single mum or dad can pass on 90 days. The move comes 50 years after the Scandinavian nation became the first country to introduce paid parental leave that could be split between both parents.

The UK would do well to take note. Our childcare system is among the most expensive in the developed world; prices here are now double the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average. For some mothers, it’s barely worth returning to work when their childcare costs might outstrip their salary. Last year, a survey from the charity Pregnant Then Screwed found that 76 per cent of mums who pay for childcare believed that it no longer made sense for them to work. It’s situations like this that help keep the gender pay gap alive and well. And if your career is a big part of your identity, having no choice but to put it aside must be incredibly frustrating and isolating.