The government is considering a reform as the number of beneficiaries falls

2023-08-03 12:02:36

A shorter but better paid parental leave? Aurore Bergé wants to reform parental leave, the number of beneficiaries of which has halved in recent years. At the end of July, the new Minister of Solidarity wanted to launch a reflection on shorter parental leave, better compensated, “to leave a real choice to families”.

“Too many women take long parental leave because they don’t have a solution to have their child looked after,” said Aurore Bergé. ” [Et] too many mothers and fathers give up parental leave because it is too poorly compensated. »

“We have extended paternity leave to 1 month and extended maternity leave to all women: the self-employed, farmers…

Reforming parental leave means making it more attractive so that more parents have time with their babies. Let’s reform it together.” pic.twitter.com/QV3HxUiLub

— Aurore Bergé (@auroreberge) July 27, 2023

Access to this content has been blocked to respect your choice of consent

By clicking on “I ACCEPT”, you accept the deposit of cookies by external services and will thus have access to the content of our partners

I ACCEPT

And to better remunerate 20 Minutes, do not hesitate to accept all cookies, even for one day only, via our “I accept for today” button in the banner below.

More information on the Cookie Management Policy page.

The failure of the 2014 reform

Created in 1977 and reformed several times, parental leave allows parents to suspend their professional activity until the child is 3 years old. The parent who stops working receives compensation of 429 euros per month. Increasing the remuneration for this leave would allow more men and women to use it without reducing their standard of living too much. In many European countries such as Germany, it is paid at least 66% of the salary.

Parental leave was reformed in 2014: the allowance was reduced and the duration lowered to two years, the third year could only be taken by the other parent. The goal was for 25% of fathers to take it. But the appeal rate for fathers has hardly increased with this reform: less than 1% of them take it, according to a 2021 study by the OFCE.

Parental leave compensated at 75%?

In addition, the number of parents taking parental leave has fallen from some 500,000 in 2013 to 246,000 in 2020, according to the government. “We have twice as many beneficiaries of parental leave in ten years, so it’s a failure,” said Aurore Bergé, who wants to reopen the site with family associations and early childhood professionals.

The National Union of Family Associations (Unaf) recommends “well compensated” parental leave, at 75% of professional income as in Sweden, up to one year of the child. Parents must then be able to find childcare or take paid parental leave “until entering kindergarten”, recommends Unaf, which recalls that today parents are “tinkering” with solutions in order to “raise the foot professionally” the first year.