The UK has just passed two weeks’ bereavement leave for miscarriage beginning in April 2027. While it is progress, it’s not where it should be. It’s unpaid leave, meaning many women who need it will simply not be able to access it.
Bereavement leave clearly attached to miscarriage does a lot to normalise an experience that is still often shrouded in shame, stigma and silence. It challenges the disenfranchised grief that is often part of the experience.
Just because society can’t see our babies, we’re often met with ‘at least it happened early’ and ‘you can get pregnant again’. Our grief is only given permission to exist often by some societal benchmark of ‘how far along were you?’, as if the answer to this question tells the other person how worthy of grief our loss is.
For far too long now, there has been a pervasive acceptance of miscarriage as women’s business, something shameful to be carried in secret and absolutely not to be talked about in public.
Policy validates the grief of early pregnancy loss
For a decade, the organisation I founded after my recurrent pregnancy losses, The Pink Elephants Support Network, has witnessed the complete opposite. That is, hundreds of thousands of women who feel devastated by the death of their loved baby. Women and partners grieving a future they cherished and planned for, cruelly lost.
Some of the main things that help our community are connection through support, talking about how they feel, and feeling seen in their grief: validation, empathy, and connection. When governments change policies to provide bereavement leave, it’s a huge signal that the experience of earlier losses and miscarriages are being validated as a grief experience. This is no small win; it should absolutely be celebrated.
As a founder who lobbied for Leave for Loss for three years here in Australia to have our laws changed to give bereaved parents here access to bereavement leave for miscarriage, I know firsthand what will have gone into this. The evidence building, the case for support, the many people considering the issue and contributing, the sheer number of meetings with MP to ensure bipartisan support for a vote in parliament. What I admired in the UK was the way several organisations came together and lobbied together for the community. They should be commended for their efforts.
This still isn’t enough
I can’t get past the unpaid part of this policy, and I ask so many questions about health equity, how is this fair? How many women will sadly just take sick leave instead because they can’t afford to take unpaid leave. In a cost of living crisis, this hits doubly hard. Taking sick leave doesn’t allow them a safe way to disclose to their workplace what’s going on for them and can isolate them from further support. This is even more important for partners in the workplace, as their workplace is often the safest place for them to open up to a colleague about their grief and not have to wear a brave, supportive face for their partner who is physically experiencing the loss.
So what’s the answer?
Truthfully, people will keep pushing governments, but I think that workplaces have a role to play here. They can adopt their own more inclusive policies for their people. They can offer PAID bereavement leave of an amount that is reflective of the needs of the mother and partner who has just lost their baby. We’ve seen it here in Australia: our bereavement leave for any type of loss in Australia is only 2 days, which is wholly inadequate for any type of grief. In relation to miscarriage, many of us are still wearing adult nappies, bleeding and cramping 2 days post-loss, and that’s without even considering the emotional distress; our babies just died.
Pink Elephants now have the incredible privilege of supporting workplaces that do listen and do want to show up for their people and provide meaningful support and clear supportive policies. Offering more than 2 days of paid leave and peer support companions in the workplace, as well as bespoke resources for people leaders on how to support their people returning to work after these experiences.
Yes, systems change is partly the government’s responsibility, but it also requires all of us to come together and to finally stop turning a blind eye to one of the most profound experiences that many of us sadly go through.
It needs society to stop pervasively accepting miscarriage as something that just happens. I could bang on about reducing presenteeism and absenteeism in the workplace and the links to psychosocial hazards when we don’t support our people in distress, but I shouldn’t need to.
If you’d like to learn more about supporting your people, reach out to Pink Elephants [email protected]