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I know that a lot of women get a crap deal at work when it comes to maternity arrangements. Statutory maternity pay is an embarrassment and woefully inadequate and leads to many women feeling forced to return to work before they are ready. But what about the Dads out there? Has anyone stopped to think about them?

The majority of companies I've worked for give Dad's up to 2 weeks of paternity leave, often only paying them for 1 of those weeks! This appears to be the norm. After those 2 weeks, Dads are just expected to pick up all of their emotions and walk out of the door leaving their new family behind to return to work. Why?

When my daughter was born, I took the full 2 weeks leave, my work were shocked that I didn't use some annual leave to cover the 2nd week of paternity leave to avoid taking it unpaid (though I did get statutory paternity pay). Apparently most new Dads at the company chose to take leave in order to afford 2 weeks with their new family. My wife suffered from an infection after giving birth and was readmitted to hospital for 2 days during week 1. All in all, I probably had 4/5 days of actual quality family time with my new family. The rest was trips in and out of hospital or to the doctors. If I'd have only taken the 1 week of leave then I'd not have had any quality time with my new family before going straight back to work.

Being a Dad is an amazing thing. But it's tough, really tough. All of a sudden you become responsible for something beyond yourself, something absolutely helpless and vulnerable, and you have to learn quick. I don't think I've ever felt more out of my depth, uncertain or unsure at any other time than I did in those first few weeks.

There's also an overwhelming amount of pressure. For the first time I was truly our sole bread winner, and not just for me and my wife but also for my little girl too. I was painfully aware of my need to work and the pressure for me to do well at my job. My family depended on it.

But living two lives in one comes with new pressures. In one life I was the work me, with the usual deadlines and targets to hit but with a new sense of pressure to be successful to support the others in my life. In my second life I was a new Dad, waking up exhausted in the middle of the night to feed and change my baby, worrying about whether they were eating enough or if that mark on her arm was something to worry about, or how long she'd had that slight cough for.

I was also constantly aware that I was missing out on time with my daughter that I could never get back. You can't go back and be there for the first time she crawls if it happens whilst you’re in a meeting at HQ.

But maybe even worse than missing out on developmental events is the acknowledgment that you're not one of your daughters go-to people when she's upset, because, quite simply, you're not there for her. There are times when my daughter gets upset even now, but will run away from me to get a cuddle from her Mum, or her grandma instead of me, even though I'm right there in front of her. Quite simply because I'm not there for her often enough because I'm at work. And I'm a lucky one, my little girl will let me bath her and put her to sleep on a night, I've friends whose toddlers will point blank refuse to let them put them to bed or to help them when they're upset. This is absolutely crushing. You put all your effort into supporting your family only to be reminded of how much you aren't there for them.

So how do we fix it?

Firstly, let's try to support all parents, remember the Dads that work for you. Cut them some slack once in a while - it could be they've been up all night trying to look after their child.

Find out if there is anything big on the horizon - any events or days they might want to attend with their families and let them go to them, give them time to balance being a Dad and work better.

Set up support groups of new Dads across the company so they've got people to talk to who are going through the same things.

And finally, sort out paternity pay. Explore shared parental leave. Why is it so poorly taken up? The cynic in me believes that if businesses started treating men and women equally in terms of parental leave, it would shine a light on all the other ways men and women aren't treated equally. And businesses really don't want to do that because it would show how badly and unfairly women are still treated at work.

If businesses were no longer able to hide behind the poor excuse of, "But they take time off to have babies and raise families," as an attempt to justify the unacceptable gender pay gap which still exists, then they'd be left without an excuse as to why they still treat men and women differently.

So let's go for shared parental leave and try to change all these old fashioned workplace cultures which exist in which neither Mum or Dad gets a fair deal.