Jo Swinson has cast a critical eye over George Osborne’s plans to extend parental leave to grandparents in an article for Personnel Today.

As minister responsible for introducing shared parental leave just 6 months ago, Jo explained why they hadn’t included grandparents at that time:

When the legislation was being debated in Parliament we looked carefully at extending leave to non-parents, and rejected that change for good reasons. If it is no longer to be about developing parental bonds, then why draw the line at grandparents? Shouldn’t leave then be shareable with aunts, uncles or friends?

Important though other carers and relatives are, parents have a unique role in a child’s life.  Shared parental leave is also about addressing the historical lack of workplace provision for men to fulfil their roles as fathers.

Traditional stereotypes of dad as breadwinner and mum left holding the baby are persistent and hard to shift. Our culture still presents babies as a woman’s domain – from official forms to advertising imagery to mother and baby groups. This creates barriers for dads seeking to be every bit as involved in parenting as mums.

George Osborne made a telling comment in launching this new policy, “More than half of mothers rely on grandparents for childcare when they return to work.” No mention of fathers thinking about childcare when they return to work – the assumption is that childcare is the mother’s responsibility.

That point about Osborne’s referral to mothers and Cameron talking in his speech yesterday about how he talked about childcare with female members of the Cabinet are a marked change from the sort of things Nick Clegg used to say. He was always very clear about childcare being both parents’ responsibility.

She also identified a more pressing problem for parents that the Government needs to look at:

 Paid parental leave ends by the time the baby is nine months old. The free 15 hours a week of early years education doesn’t start until the child is at least two years old, and not until three years old for 60% of families. Instead of planning to double this to 30 hours a week, the Government might have looked to close this gap in support for working families.

By all means extend support for grandparents, just don’t make it harder for dads to play their important role.

You can read the whole article here.

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