SPD on families

The SPD wants to lengthen Elterngeld (parental allowance) from 14 to 18 months, with six months reserved for each parent. A new two-week paid leave for fathers or partners after a birth is also planned. The aim is more family time and a more equal split between partners.

Parents should get parental allowance for longer. It would be 18 months instead of 14. Each parent has six months just for them. After a birth, fathers or partners should get two weeks off. They keep getting their pay during that time.

The parents can divide six further months freely between them; the reserved months are meant to involve fathers more and improve their standing with employers. The family start time provides full pay, financed through a levy. A graduated maternity protection would apply after miscarriages, and the next government is to draw up a maternity protection concept for the self-employed. The SPD sees working hours as a matter for unions and employers and backs unions in seeking more flexible and shorter hours.

The SPD advocates fee-free education from daycare onward and a free, healthy lunch in daycare centers and schools. An annual family budget would subsidize household help. Parents should thus be able to rely on childcare and get relief in daily life.

Daycare and school should cost families nothing. All children should get a healthy lunch there without paying. Families should get money each year for help at home. Families in hard situations should get support for longer.

The SPD wants to introduce the lunch together with the states and follow the recommendations of the citizens' assembly on nutrition. The family budget would directly subsidize household services with social insurance coverage, be available digitally and, in the party's view, also push back undeclared work. The Frühe Hilfen (early support) program would gradually extend to the end of elementary school. Youth services, schools and health services would be brought together in family centers at daycare centers and schools.

Low-wage families, especially single parents, should get by on child benefit, child supplement and housing benefit without topping up with Bürgergeld (citizen's income). The SPD also wants to expand education and participation services and sees these as steps toward its basic child allowance.

Some parents work and still have too little money. The SPD wants to help them with child benefit, child supplement and housing benefit. Then they no longer need citizen's income. Applying should get easier. Daycare centers and schools in poor areas should get more help.

A central contact point is meant to ease access, digital applications are to become simpler, and benefits are to be paid automatically where possible. Plans include good daycare everywhere, a Startchancen (equal start) program for daycare centers in disadvantaged areas, more family centers, a larger Startchancen program in schools, all-day programs and mobility for young people. The SPD also wants to research and combat loneliness.

The SPD wants to put funding for voluntary service programs on a new footing through an agreement between the federal government and the states. The platform argues that in many places there are more applicants than places.

Young people can do a year of voluntary service. Often there are too few places. The SPD wants to secure more money for this. The federal government and the states should arrange it together.

The federal government and the states are to agree jointly on how voluntary service is funded. The allowance paid to volunteers should be set so that young people from low-income households can also afford to take part. The platform treats civic engagement as part of young people's education.