Reflecting the requirements of parents with young children

"Productive parents"

Authors: Thomas Cawston, Andrew Haldenby, Patrick Nolan, Laura Taylor and Elizabeth Truss

Publication date: July 2009

The report acknowledges that many parents struggle to find a healthy balance between family life and working life. The report calls for the State to do more to recognise this in the provision of maternity pay. The report argues that fathers should be encouraged to play a more active part in bringing up their children in the first few months rather than being treated as an irrelevance. In addition the report calls for maternity pay to be rebalanced towards low income families.