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Put the needs of the children first. Parenting is all about compromises. I'm quite sure that newly placed children won't be too bothered about statements of gender equality.

Both parents can be fully involved at weekends, evenings, holidays etc And of course your wife doesn't have to be the one taking the adoption leave.

Your SWs could be being a bit old fashioned of course but I would give what they are saying proper consideration.

Our children came to us at 2 & 3 after having multiple moves in the care system. They had a high level of needs. We were chosen as a match because we were presenting shared care. The social workers recognised that if all the care for the children fell on one person predominantly the placement was likely to breakdown.

we did not use shared parental leave as it was not necessary due to us both being teachers and the time of placement and holidays. Basically when lo’s moved in we were both home for 7 weeks together (DH took 2 weeks paternity, 4 weeks unpaid parental leave and 1 week annual leave), he was then back 3 weeks, giving me a chance to find my feet flying solo, before he was off for two weeks school holiday. He then had a further 3 months of work before he was off for two month summer break. After this we both returned to work part time (opposite ends of the week) so that one or other of us was home with the kids. We remain like this 18 months in and have no plans to change arrangements.

i have to say that this arrangement has definitely stabilised and strengthened our family unit. I can honestly say I don’t think I would have got through the early months on placement, and even now, if I was at home on my own for the majority of the week I think I would be very ill. My kids suck everything out of us, I can give at the level they need as I know come Wednesday I get to go to work and somebody else takes over. The children have a fantastic relationship with both of us. We do parent very similarly and have similar expectations so I don’t think the kids get confused with mixed signals. We stick to the same routines etc.

if you feel that your proposed plans works best for you then stand firm. Some social workers do have there own values and ideals. It does not necessarily mean they are right. My husband and I clearly parent equally and I have many parent friends (adoptive and birth) who very much envy our situation. Compassion fatigue is much less likely to slip in when you are not doing 80% of the care. Our social workers all have agreed our kids benefited from the arrangement. Sell it from the view point of how you as parents will be able to parent better, rather than from a gender equality prospective.

Thanks for the responses. I've not been able to find anything in the way of research or case studies on this subject so it's especially good to hear from a couple who have done the sort of thing we we planning. We have talked quite a bit about how important it will be to parent similarly to one another but we hadn't considered compassion fatigue.

We have decided in the end to follow the SWs' advice for now. We will both be taking 2 months off at the start then my wife will be the main carer. But our jobs mean we are both quite flexible - we will see how things work out and we may switch roles if it helps us parent better and it doesn't impact on the children. This is the first time we have adopted so a 'wait and see' approach seems sensible.