Maternity Allowance

So I officially started my maternity leave 12 days ago. I found out all about maternity allowance and finally filled in all the forms and sent them off. It is one of the things about being self-employed that you need to claim maternity pay (or sick pay, etc) through the job centre. It can be done online or by filling out reams of paper and posting them off.

I recently discovered that my father-in-law is baffled by this. He can't see how I should be paid for not working. Even though my husband has explained that it is the same as the maternity pay I received when I was employed in an office with my first child.

It turns out that his bafflement goes a lot deeper than that - he doesn't really 'get' that I work. He thinks that because I don't go to an office every day that what I do doesn't qualify as 'work'. The fact that I pay more tax and National Insurance than he probably does doesn't compute - I'm 'sponging' by claiming maternity allowance. Perhaps if it had been my husband who was self-employed his view would be different - there's no paternity pay for the self-employed.