When Ruth Chipperfield’s son was born in 2021, her husband was one of many UK men to only get two weeks’ paternity leave. The couple decided he would also take a fortnight’s annual leave from his job, bringing his total time off work to one month.

“I would have really struggled if [his paternity leave] had only been two weeks,” says Chipperfield, a 33-year-old jewellery designer from Birmingham. “I’ve got narcolepsy and came off all my medication during pregnancy, so I was extremely poorly.” That month, when her husband wasn’t working, was “essential” in helping Chipperfield through the immediate postpartum period, she continues: “I didn’t even change a single nappy in the first three weeks.”

While Chipperfield’s husband was able to scrabble together a month off to spend time with their family, not all new fathers are so lucky – if you can call it that. The UK’s two-week paternity leave entitlement, available to men and secondary parents of other genders, is currently the least generous in Europe. Statutory paternity pay works out to a miserable £172 a week, equivalent to less than £25 a day and just 44% of the national living wage. (Chipperfield says her husband worked overtime as a graphic designer in the run-up to their son’s birth, trying to make up for the financial penalty he’d suffer as a result of taking paternity leave.)

“Not a luxury but a necessity”: why paternity leave is a feminist issue