The UK has the least generous paternity leave in Europe, constraining a fathers’ early involvement with their children – this has to change

I’m the first to jump on our cultural obsession with relationships with a new season of Bridgerton, but I’m increasingly convinced that relationships need to become a political obsession too.

Healthy relationships are fundamental to key policy domains. In health, strong and stable partnerships are associated with improved mental wellbeing, reduced loneliness and better overall health outcomes, while relationship distress is linked to increased demand on NHS and social care services. In education and children’s services, the quality of parental relationships strongly influences children’s emotional development, attainment and long-term life chances. In the economy, relationship stability and equality affect workforce participation, financial security, and the capacity of families to balance work and care. And in efforts to tackle violence against women and girls, healthy norms, cultures and values are clearly fundamental.

Policy decisions can have a significant impact on couples’ ability to build equal, healthy relationships. Workplace policies, such as parental leave and access to flexible working, shape how families organise care and employment. Housing affordability and security influence relationship formation and stability. Mental health provision, early years support and the wider social safety net all play a role in reducing pressures that can strain partnerships, while legal and justice frameworks affect how society responds to abuse, coercive control and family breakdown.

Relationships today look different from 20 years ago. Today over two thirds of families with dependent children have both parents in employment. And with divorce entrenched in our culture, 1 in 4 families with dependent children is a single-parent household.

This government is rightly focused on growth as the way this country can improve prosperity. But most parents I know are exhausted. How can we expect great output and productivity from people in the workplace when the strain on couples is so high?

Challenges in relationships also impact how we sustain our population. Our own Secretary of State for Education recently highlighted our falling birthrate and rightly highlighted actions taken by this government to try and change that, such as better funded childcare, and the cost of living and housing. Stanford research published this month found that allowing couples to work a day a week from home would increase the birth rate by 0.5, taking our current rate of 1.4 back up to close to the replacement rate. And yet there are political voices saying we shouldn’t work from home at all.

As a government we give couples screen time advice and encourage them to have more children, but we rarely ask ‘What is life like for you right now, and what would make it easier to be a couple and a parent in 2026?’. We need to do that more.

Domestic violence starts in earnest when couples become parents, with 30% of domestic abuse beginning in pregnancy. This rises to 40% within the first 1,001 days, which is precisely when infant brain development is most sensitive to stress and trauma. And only 0.5% of maternity patients disclose abuse, so those numbers miss the majority of cases.

Abuse during this period worsens maternal mental health, increases adverse birth outcomes, and damages infants’ socio emotional development, effects that shift costs onto the NHS, social care, education and the justice system for years.

The most significant thing we could do in this parliament to improve the strain on relationships, would be to introduce better paternity leave, ideally at least six weeks paid at 90% of pay, which JRF found could deliver £2.68 billion to the economy.

The UK offer of two weeks of unpaid statutory paternity leave is among the least generous in Europe, constraining fathers’ early involvement and entrenching relationship inequality.

And at a time when the role that men and boys play in society is such a hot topic, Ten to Men found that a “loving paternal relationship” was the single factor from boyhood that does most to prevent a boy becoming a man who abuses his partner.

Imagine the benefits if dad or partner could build a bond and confidence with baby, so a society develops where protecting your family bubble becomes the pride point.

Healthy relationships underpin our healthy progress as a society, and government policy underpins healthy relationships. We’re doing great things as a government, with improved relationship education, a powerful VAWG strategy, more flexibility built into our employment rights, a huge increase in Best Start Family Hubs investment and a strengthened court system.

But we have to do more.

Ninety per cent of dads say they WANT to be more present in family life and have a more equal relationship, but our current paternity leave offer blocks them right out of the gate.