Parents Who Perform - Supporting Maternity and Paternity Pay in the Arts

Maternity and Paternity Leave and Pay are essential, for full time professionals who choose to start families together, and artists and creatives are no exception to this rule. Working parents who perform for a living, should have the financial support, to balance a full time job, with full time childcare, so that they are can raise a family, while pursuing a great career. But this is not as straightforward as it may seem.

Going from contract to contract, it may not be easy to guarantee contractual maternity pay, without a steady paycheck from an employer in the performing arts industry. And in our Gig Economy, this lack of lonegevity may make it hard to plan for the future.

So the question remains: how to guarantee steady maternity/paternity pay - aside from the bare minimum state paid leave that the govenment can provide, and what performers and creatives can collect from their contracts? While i dont claim to have expertise in this area, there are i believe, two possible options available to working parents who perform for a living.

The first option is through union contributions. Regardless of your current employer, your trades union is one constant source of investment from yourself and other arts professionals. So it makes sense, to use it as such.

If you perform full time and plan to start a family, i suggest petitioning your union to set up a maternity/paternity package, that you can contribute to, on a monthly, or bi-annual basis. Your union might consider talking to a big insurance company, to set one up a specialised collective savings account on your behalf.

The account would exist as a special 'pot' for you to cash in, if and when you have children. This would have to have large scale support to work, and would probably work best as a large scale collective investment, but as the larger arts unions already offer specialised insurance for performers, then they could consider this as well.

Your other option is to consider a maternity/paternity package, attatched to your pension 'pot'. While unlikely, it might just be possible that some of the big pension providers might be persuaded to offer this, as a special deal for their customers.

The savings option is the more likely of the two, as savings accounts - certainly in the uk - are tax free places, where you can put large amounts of money away for that important time in your life, when you decide to start a family.

Professionals in many other industries are supported as a matter of course, for their maternity and paternity leave. And if you perform for a living, you should have the financial support to do the same.