Hellobee Boards

"One of the mom co-workers said aloud she assumed she would get priority on holiday time off because she has kids.: -- Actual LOL, that's ridiculous.

I think in most workplaces, including mine, expected travel is expected travel regardless of your personal situation, and nursing moms would be expected to pump. I am crossing my fingers that I won't have any work travel before LO is one year old. She's doing fine on bottles for the duration of a workday, but that is a totally different ballgame than if she were on bottles 24 hours/day for 3-4 days. I don't think she'd be happy, plus work trips tend to be full-steam situations where taking 3 breaks a day to go find a private pumping place would be an enormous pain. But no I wouldn't request to miss a trip because I'm a nursing mom. There's usually someone else who could cover for me on any particular work trip, but it does not look great for my career to miss that kind of opportunity.

For the priority time off I can understand why parents think they might be a little more entitled. My daycare is closed between Christmas and New Years and I have no family to help with my daughter. I have no option but to take time off then. Before my daughter I would have been ( and was) happy to let parents take that time since it was a different situation for them. It's not that I just want that time off, I don't have an option.

i think its hard on young kids when parents have to work Christmas. Where my husband works now, you get Christmas or New Years off and there's no automatic deference of Christmas off for parents of youngsters but it seems to work out that way, with some of his coworkers even offering to switch if he didn't get his pick (some of them prefered New Years off).

I do think family situations make traveling hard sometimes and that should be taken into account though it might not always be feasible to accommodate. But sick family members, recent deaths, newly back from maternity leave, can give people pause from traveling far from home even if they are back to work. My jobs have always been conferences 1-3 times a year and people have backed out for all those reasons and I've never seen a fuss made about it. But i guess those conferences are seen more as a bonus anyways and like a mini vacation, so maybe that's why.

I mean.... business is business. I think some things can and should be accommodated for (like pumping at work, etc) but getting out of a mandatory work trip? Yeah, you're probably going. Getting priority on time off? Nope. And once you're back from maternity leave, you're back.

I mean... I feel like my (female with children) boss would laugh in my face if I told her that I couldn't go to a mandatory work trip because im lactating. She would tell me to suck it up.

@Smurfette: I'm just saying that companies that ARE accommodating will attract and retain more talent than those that don't. I think it would be pretty shitty to require a new mom to go on a week long trip when she has a 14 week old (or less) at home, whether she's nursing or not!

@Adira: But it would be OK for a new father to go on a business trip? Or not as shitty? I feel like you think lactating women deserve special treatment over any other employee.

I think once you return to work, whether it's one day or one year after your maternity leave ended, you have to do your job. If your job requires that you travel to some week-long meeting, then you go, and you can make arrangements (that your company should not be required to cover) if you need someone to come with you to bring the baby. You're back at work, you need to carry your own weight, and you shouldn't get a "pass" because you have children.

At my workplace, yes women with babies are off the hook when it comes to travel. I work in a middle school, so we aren't talking business trips, but each grade has a weekend trip every year. The 7th graders go on a weekend "retreat" at a camp, the 8th graders go to D.C. for 4 days, and the 6th graders have an overnight in NYC and teachers are expected to sign up to go...they also get paid extra to go.

No one has ever pressured me to go since I have an infant and a 2 year old, but I assume when they are older I will have to "pay my dues".

I think they understand it would be mildly impossible to pump every 3 hours while supervising middle schoolers on field trips. I can't very well leave my group unattended while I disappear to go pump.

eta: they are also nice to preggos.

@Adira: agree.

I think we hate to think of ourselves as *those parents,* the ones with the special snowflakes who expect the world to bend for our children. But that doesn't mean we have to act like parenting is some self indulgent hobby with no impacts on our lives outside the home or society.

I have taken exactly one biz trip since returning from my maternity leave 16 months ago. I used to travel quite a bit for work. (I may have to travel next month but am hoping to squeeze it into one day instead of an overnight.)

I work in a consulting-like field, and my team covers clients in many locations. But a lot of them are in the NYC area (where I live). I have managed to limit most of my new projects to local clients which had made it possible to minimize travel.

Everyone was very accommodating about this. But I also made a strategic decision after I got married to quit my job at a large bank and start working at a small financial technology company. I am now making more money and have more responsibility and flexibility, but I am no longer working for a big brand name company. I worked here for 2.5 years before getting pregnant and am pretty well established at this point.

If I had stayed at the big bank I suspect I would have quit or been really miserable now with a baby.