Hellobee Boards

My situation is very similar to @brownie: With my first I took 16 weeks and didn't work at all, I returned permanently on a part-time basis.

With my second I took 1 month off from on site teaching- BUT I continued to work through my "leave" for my online classes and my tutoring because if I hadn't, nobody would take care of my students. We were right at the start of a boards window when my son was born, so I still had that responsibility to my students, baby or not. Our school depends on their passing rates, so I needed to return ASAP. I think any first time mom should be able to take a long leave, I had no idea what I would or wouldn't be able to handle.

@LindsayInNY: I feel like this is getting a bit off topic from the original post, but-

For my personal work situation, ample notice and adjustment is not enough. I’ve been gone for a week at a time before, with plenty of preparations made months in advance, and it’s been very difficult for everyone else to cover for me. Litigation can be unpredictable. We can’t control when the other side will file their motions or how the courts will schedule things, but we have to be prepared to respond accordingly for all our cases. You can’t work ahead on all your cases then be away from them for months.

There’s no chance of another attorney taking maternity leave as none of the others could bear children at this point, but assuming another attorney needed some kind of extended leave, as I said in the last post, we would either need to replace them immediately with someone who could instantly handle their full case load or we’d have to give a lot of our cases to another firm, which would be very costly for us as we usually work on contingency (which means we only get paid when the case is over, so we’d get nothing for all the work we already did on those cases). If a non-attorney needed leave, we would make whatever adjustments we had to make to accommodate them, as we did with the non-attorney who asked to take 6 months of maternity leave. Legally, we are not required to give any of our employees any leave, as we are too small for FMLA, but we choose to do so. If I insisted on taking a longer leave, everyone else would do what they could to help and the firm would just end up having to lose a lot of money, but no one would stop me or retaliate against me in any way. I am choosing not to because 1) from a practical standpoint, I lose money when the firm loses money; 2) I’ve suffered from severe medical problems and taken care of newborns before (albeit not at the same time), and I believe I can handle a short leave; and 3) I care about my coworkers and clients, and it would upset me greatly to adversely affect any of them when it is unnecessary.

Again, my original response to the original post was that I wouldn’t want the government or anyone else insisting that I take a certain amount of leave when I do not want to take it. Although everyone’s work situations differ, I have to believe there are some other women who also would prefer shorter maternity leaves and would hate to feel forced or pressured into taking longer leaves that they do not want, just as so many women here have expressed that they do not want to feel pressured into taking shorter leaves then what they would like.

I would be pissed if a senior person at my company came back after two weeks. That's a terrible precedent. It's the responsibility of senior employees/owners at a company to set an example in general regarding work/life balance, so a good company should have high-ranking staff using their vacation time, taking sick days, and absolutely using any available parental leave. It's part of a healthy culture.

@MrsBananaGrabber: I am with you that I don't think the government should mandate a set leave. It should be up to the individual woman to take as long or as short of a leave as she wants and both situations should be supported.

@shellio: you are very lucky! To be fair, with my first daughter I took four months, but I was doing more urgent care than hospitalist shifts, and that was much more flexible... It was also May, which helped immensely.

@mrs.shinerbock: yes, I would be in favor of the government enacting such policies more favorable to families. Just not in favor of women being forced to take leave if they do not want to or feel they can't for whatever reason.

We have legislated parental leave in New Zealand (up to a max of twelve months plus any annual leave) but there is no legal minimum a family must take. Interestingly enough, as an employer in the manufacturing industry, the company i used to work for wouldn't usually allow a woman to return to work prior to 6-8 weeks post partum due to health and safety risks.

@AprilFool: The original post described a situation where if you return early from your leave, you don't get paid for ANY of it. That's a punishment for taking a shorter leave. It's not the same as only paying someone for the actual leave they take (which is perfectly fair- if you take 4 weeks of leave, you get 4 weeks of pay), it's making shorter leaves entirely unpaid.

@Maysprout: It was mostly financial, at the time I didn't have much paid time off saved up and I am the sole wage earner in my family. We could have made it work with credit cards or something, I guess, but definitely did not want to enter debt. By #2 all the leave was paid plus we were in a much more stable place financially.

Thanks for starting this thread. I am currently drafting a maternity leave proposal for my small company (~100 employees). I was the first pregnant employee a year and a half ago, and my leave was arranged on an ad hoc basis. But that is insufficient in my opinion.

@AprilFool: How does knowing it advance make it not a punishment? Don't most children who act out or criminals who get caught know that there is a possibility of punishment before they act?

In my mind, saying "If you take X amount of leave, you will get Y % of your pay every week during that time, but if you take less than X in leave you will get nothing (or even just less than Y %) for every week of leave that you take" is unfair to women who choose to take shorter leaves. It would be fair to say that everyone gets Y % of their pay for each week of leave they decide to take up to X amount, in which case women who take shorter leaves obviously end up with less total leave pay because their leaves are shorter, but it's not the same as insisting that they take a mandated minimum amount of leave to get any pay for that time at all.

@Mae: You are right! Getting in on a Mat Leave contract in Canada is a great way to get your foot in the door of a company. Often employers will keep you on after the Mat leave, provided they like you and it's in the budget. I'm so grateful that we get a full year, although I only took 9 months

I work for a DC employer. DC has its own "state" FMLA law that is more generous than the federal one. DC protects 16 weeks of medical leave and 16 weeks of family leave. For an uncomplicated pregnancy/delivery/baby this means a couple weeks of medical leave in late pregnancy, 6-8 weeks of medical leave for postpartum recovery, then 16 weeks with baby. There's no guarantee for any of it to be paid though.

I found out when I needed to submit my leave paperwork that HR had (in violation of the DC law) only been providing information about the federal FMLA. I'm guessing that's why so many of my coworkers took 12 or fewer weeks.

@tinyperson: one more question...i am assuming both men and women pay in?

@looch: We actually have something similar in NJ already. But it's only for 6 weeks. It's called "Family Leave Insurance" and everyone in NJ pays into it--it's really really small though, a couple of dollars per paycheck--and then anyone who has to take family leave (not just for birth, for a family member's illness, so this can be men and women) can draw it.

Again, it's only 6 weeks and the max payment is something like $500/week. So....$3000 total? But it's better than nothing. I wish NJ would expand it to cover all 12 weeks! You can't draw it if you are otherwise getting paid by your employer though, so no "topping off".