But that’s a risk that women simply have to live with, in addition to all the expectations on us surrounding care duties.

We, on average, spend more than twice as much of our time on unpaid work – think childcare, cooking and housework – than men. This is a huge factor at play in the game that is gender inequality, which the pandemic has exacerbated. (In case the fact had escaped you, women have experienced the worst of the economic fallout.)

That said, lots of new mothers actively want to swap the office for parental duties and forget about work for a year, which is great. But either way, it should be a choice – and not one made under the pressure or influence of outdated and preassigned expectations. We deserve to have as much control over our lives, careers and parenting options as our partners.

“Expectations of myself and from my family and friends never allowed [shared parental leave] to even be a consideration,” says Louisa Herridge, a former teacher and now a reinvention and empowerment coach for mothers.

“I remember about six weeks into my leave reading my work emails with the longing to be ‘me’ again. No one prepared me for how hard it would be to give up my identity and what made me tick. In hindsight and with what I know now, I would act differently.”

"Shared parental leave should be a choice, not one made under outdated and sexist expectations"