Kate Connolly

speaker

53 appearances 2 recordings 2 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 1 Jul

Kate Connolly’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Today with David McCullagh · Work first, family second? Maternity leave rights, are they enough? · 1 Jul 2026 podcast

Okay, so I think it's difficult to compare apples and pears, but basically the maternity leave here, you have full protection and full pay for six weeks before your due date and eight weeks afterwards.

Full net salary, which is paid for partly by your insurance company, partly by your employer.

And you have protection from dismissal from your job from the day of conception to four months after the birth.

But what we also have is what's been in place since about 2007 and which is really, I think, revolutionized.

I think it would be fair to say the way that parenthood was seen in Germany, early parenthood.

is a so-called Elton site parent time and parent money.

And this is basically a legal entitlement that both parents have together.

So you have to share the time up.

to three years of unpaid but job-protected leave.

And also, so that's the parent time that you have.

And up to two years of that time can be taken before the child is eight.

So it looks all pretty good on paper.

But I'll come to the same way I sometimes criticise.

And you also have money that you get, so-called parent money, which replaces up to 67% of your net income and is capped.

at 1,800 a month.

And you get that sum of money over 14 months.

So if you share it between those parents.

So a very typical model and one that I ended up doing when I had my children was that I took the 12 months, which I really was happy to do and wanted to do, had then this, you know, 67% of my net income paid to me.

And that helped me very much because I was self-employed at the time and that still came to me.

Then my partner took two months from his job, which took a bit of persuading, but it meant that in the two months he was looking after the baby, I could then start back at work and feel just kind of happy that the baby was being looked after.

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