Another media mum not happy with Labour

HDPA writes:

There’s a thing you learn in the sleep-deprived craze after having a baby: do not for the love of God ever give parents unsolicited advice on how to parent. …

There are a lot of new parents in Labour. Tāmati Coffey had his second six months ago. So it’s surprising none of them passed on the golden rule and stopped Labour making a prat of itself over paid parental leave.

It has gone down very badly with even Labour luvvies that the party voted against Nicola Willis’ parental leave bill.

On Wednesday, every party bar Labour supported her bill to allow parents to take paid parental leave at the same time. That’s not possible at the moment. The primary parent gets 26 weeks. They can share some of that with the other parent if they want. But they can only share it once. And they can’t both take it at the same time. It has to be one parent, then the other parent.

For most parents that works fine. But not for all parents. Some babies come very early. Some are twins or triplets. Some mums get bad postnatal depression. In all of those cases, it could be very helpful to the mum if the other parent is at home helping her for the first three months.

But Labour decided it knows best and voted it down.