question about paid time off for new parents

[Anonymous]

Ok yes, sure, dads who misuse parental leave suck and ruin it for the rest of us. But how do people not see that we set women up for being the default parent throughout their working career if we only give women maternity leave and not parental leave to all parents? In an ideal world, my husband and I would both have 14-16 weeks of leave and could stagger it so baby doesn’t have to go to daycare until much older. As it is, he got 2 weeks of leave, and so I did almost everything. He took the first week off and then a few days here and there when I was losing my mind with a colicky second.

It actually really irritates me to hear people crap on parental leave. Do we think dads have no responsibility? It’s just moms that shoulder the burden? It’s not like that’s going to magically change once mom goes back to work if dad hasn’t been the primary parent for an extended amount of time.

[Anonymous]

Ok fine, Dads get 0 leave and women get 30 weeks of leave.

[Anonymous]

After 20 years ago, I worked at a law firm that offered a paid sabbatical of 3 months once you'd been at the firm at least 15 years. You could use the paid sabbatical to travel or do what you want. The idea was that other people would cover your work for you.

At the time, I remember that striking me as pretty awesome. And I think that it's a good way to retain top talent.

Now, with WFH being so much more common, you could just ask to work part-time remotely for 6 months (or something like that) after being at the employer for 5 years, for example, for full pay?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No and I also find it frustrating. I have 4 kids who I had before my employer, the federal government, offered any paid parental leave. By the last 2 I was out of sick and annual balances so I took unpaid leave for just 8 weeks after a difficult birth because we really couldn’t afford anything more. The men who announce their 12 weeks of paid bonding time make me extremely resentful.

You are making the classic mistake of directing your anger to the wrong party. Your employer is the one who screwed you, not the men who are using a benefit that men have been denied since the beginning of time.

Maybe men have been denied parental leave since the beginning of time because they didn’t do much to become parents and aren’t physically recovering from giving birth. Bonding is a nice thing to do, I’d love to bond with my kids for the next 12 weeks but my employer shouldn’t have to pay for it and my coworkers shouldn’t have to absorb my job duties for that period. I don’t think men deserve parental leave.

Bonding with an infant is feeding, diaper changing, trying to soothe crying, and trying to get the baby to sleep. It’s not a vacation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ok yes, sure, dads who misuse parental leave suck and ruin it for the rest of us. But how do people not see that we set women up for being the default parent throughout their working career if we only give women maternity leave and not parental leave to all parents? In an ideal world, my husband and I would both have 14-16 weeks of leave and could stagger it so baby doesn’t have to go to daycare until much older. As it is, he got 2 weeks of leave, and so I did almost everything. He took the first week off and then a few days here and there when I was losing my mind with a colicky second.

It actually really irritates me to hear people crap on parental leave. Do we think dads have no responsibility? It’s just moms that shoulder the burden? It’s not like that’s going to magically change once mom goes back to work if dad hasn’t been the primary parent for an extended amount of time.

+1. And I get feeling envious- we missed out on parental leave and both my kids were in daycare at 3 months. It sucked. I AM a bit envious of my colleagues who can now stagger their parental leaves to keep the baby home 6 months and then still have sick and annual leave to full back on rather than having to burn that right off the bat. But I'm also happy for them and it's the right thing to do. And I want it to be easier for my own kids if they choose to be parents someday. Plus anecdotally, the availability of infant daycare spots seems even worse than it used to be just a few years ago; getting a spot at 3 months is not easy.