Plenty of new dads will tell you they would love to spend more time with their family. Whether it's a stressful job, or simply the need to make ends meet, a lot of fathers see less of their kids than they would like.

But for children due on or after April 3rd 2011, there will an opportunity for their dads to stay at home, when they’ll be given the right to take up to six months’ additional paternity leave during the baby’s first year. At the moment they can only take two weeks off, compared to mothers who can take a year off.

Fathers will be able to start their leave once the mother has returned to work and may be paid at the same rate as statutory maternity pay if the leave is taken during the mother’s maternity pay period.

Arbroath dad Mark Main gave up his engineering job to spend the last ten years looking after his two children ten year old Eden and eight year old Cameron while his wife, Georgina, became the main ‘bread-winner’. Given the chance, he says he would do it all again.

‘The best bit has been watching my kids grow up and develop every day. It brings you closer to your children. It is not cut out for everyone and has not always been a bed of roses, but the positives have outweighed the negatives.’

‘I’d definitely encourage dads to take as much paternity leave as they can and enjoy it’, says Mark, who is now retraining in social and health care.

The government’s commitment to promoting shared parenting and flexible parental leave has been welcomed by Karen Molloy, Director with Aberdeen based Thorpe Molloy Recruitment.

 “Although not possible for everyone, flexible working has been really beneficial for my family. My husband, Mike, decided to reduce his hours of work when our second child was born eight years ago. This has worked really well for us as it provided the support I needed to continue working full time and Mike gets to spend much more time with the children, which they love.’ she says.

The principles of a Scandinavian style policy, where parents share leave and both spend time at home, are attractive to many people but will many of Britain’s dads want to, or be able, to afford to take leave that is unpaid? Some may not even want to take this time away from work due to work pressures or fear of ridicule amongst colleagues.

‘I’d say finance will have a lot to do with it. Men are traditionally still higher paid so it’s a financial cut and a bit of a hardship living on one salary as we have for a decade, but money isn’t everything,’ says Mark Main.

Meanwhile a new survey has shown that employees value flexible working more than performance-related bonuses The PricewaterhouseCoopers research showed that flexible working arrangements were prioritised by both men and women as being the most important benefit.

At the moment millions of parents with children under sixteen already enjoy the right to request flexible working - such as changing shifts, varying start and finish times, working from home or shifting to part-time hours.

However the survey comes as the new Government promises to extend the right to request flexible working to all employees. The Coalition has pledged to consult with business groups on how best to proceed with plans to ‘remove barriers’ and ‘extend’ the rights of flexible working.

Tom Hadley, Director of External Relations at the Recruitment and Employment Confederation said: “Flexible working is key to keeping the UK moving particularly during these economically challenging times.

“Such flexibility also offers parents a chance to consider re-training or re-skilling themselves in an area where they are current shortages such as in the IT or accountancy sectors.”

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