Bank holidays get a pretty bad press all in all, mainly it has to be said down to the British weathers uncanny ability to rain on anyone's parade with unerring accuracy when they happen to have a day or two off work.
This Easter break though was different wasn't it? High pressure, low pressure, whatever was the benevolent force behind the sunshine that has continued into this week it's been a real treat.
As ever with a surprisingly lovely break though there comes the jolt to the system that is getting back on the work horse. It was perhaps with this in mind that the fiendish election spin doctors chose Easter weekend to launch the long trumpeted shared paternity leave policy on an unsuspecting parental world.
For millions of future parents this plan has the potential to change the fabric of our society for good and help restore work life balance in the early days of having children.
Or at least that's what we hoped for and what the headlines implied.
What's more with hundreds of thousands of mothers being the main breadwinners in countless homes across the UK, the ability to share 52 weeks of paternity leave and 39 weeks of pay makes an awful lot of sense and has been held up as a rare Lib Dem success during their otherwise bruising time riding sidecar to the Tories motorbike of power.
But as is all too often the case with these things, beneath the headlines and the tub thumping the practicalities leave a lot to be desired.
According to one study around the policy 40% of new fathers may not be eligible to share their leave because the mother does not have a paid job and what's more while the concept has long been the norm across many Scandinavian countries for years there have been generous payments for new parents to make the whole thing tick.
Needless to say this will not be the case for us.
Unless a particularly benevolent employer offers an enhanced package, pay will be 90% of a worker’s average weekly earnings before tax, for the first six weeks, and then £139.58 a week, or 90% of average weekly earnings – whichever is the lower – for the next 33 weeks. All if which means just 39 of the 52 weeks will be paid putting what initially looked like a promising, sensible option out of reach of many families for whom the prospect of three months with no money coming in is simply out of the question.
As an indicator to how this policy will actually play out, the fact that while fathers have already been allowed to take up to six months leave after the child reaches 20 weeks and very few have done so, does not bode well at all.
So, all in all it looks like an opportunity to change the work/life landscape for the better has been missed. Thank goodness we don't need to rely on Government to legislate Job Sharing into existence, find your perfect partner and anything is possible!
