Reply to If you had a baby with no FMLA, what did you do?

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Reply to "If you had a baby with no FMLA, what did you do?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

I think what pp is getting at is that there is a trade off for this leave.  I looked at a job in London and was shocked at how the salary was lower than my salary in NY.  Much lower!  I would gladly take the unpaid leave for maternity and keep the higher salary for my entire career.  I do understand how certain jobs can handle the leave.  For example, the government.  However, there have to be some jobs where this leave is a major problem and negatively impacts other workers, salaries etc.   for the record I fully support paid leave but there seem to be a lot of people who truly think this benefit is free or doesn't hurt their career.  [/quote]

I'm the PP from London. I'm not sure about this. There are a lot of factors that go into salaries and maternity leave is only one of them (health care is the main thing I am thinking of here). For what it's worth, my job in London as a lawyer was paid exactly the same as in NY. The benefits were different (probably better in London, including maternity leave) but the tax in London was a bit higher. It all averaged out. The issue of whether it hurts your career is another question. I genuinely don't think taking 6 months hurts anyone's careers and I saw a study somewhere that said that. Taking a year might because it's a long time to be out of the loop, although it is still doable. But I went to a meeting of parents in my office here in DC last week and it seems to me that your career can be hurt any way you do it - people were talking about returning to work after 8 or 12 week leave and finding the first several months extremely difficult and stressful. When I went back to work after 7 months I didn't feel like it was hugely stressful because I was completely recovered, my baby was sleeping really well by then, he was eating food so although I exclusively breastfed, I could cover his day time feeds by pumping before I went to bed.. it felt manageable whereas I think if I'd had to go back after 8 or 12 weeks I would have been a complete wreck and actually, I may not have gone back. I may also have gone back part time (which can also hurt your career) whereas I didn't feel the need to when I went back. [/quote]

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