Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see no reason why I should have to pay for your choice to have children. Plan better.

Why should others have to pay for your retirement and your healthcare during retirement?

I am a parent of two. I really wish we could balance out our priorities here. But the fact is this - Not everyone has kids (or even likes them for that matter), but everyone gets old.

Until we realize that we need to focus on our very young and very old - our two most vulnerable populations - women need to realize that few care about them or their newborns. So they need to have solid plans in place.

When my colleague was out on bed rest and then extended her leave, we did her job for her. We are an office of 11 people. I had to learn parts of her job. People (and we're all parents, too) were fed up. Thankfully, it was temporary, and things are back to normal.

Sorry but NO. Not everyone gets old. A lot of people die before retirement. But everyone was once a infant who wanted a mother's care in the beginning. I took 12 weeks unpaid though as a fed and I think that was long enough. I would have like a maternity leave, but didn't have any leave saved due to it being a new job.

25-35 year olds don't have a lifetime to save before maternity leave the way the elderly can save before retirement.

Anonymous wrote:I am so happy to be Canadian. Currently in my 9th month of 12 month partially paid mat leave with my 3rd baby. Infants need their mothers, it's provides the best outcome for mother aND child. The emotional distress you may be subjecting your employee to by essentially plucking babe from her arms makes me cry. Give her the extra time as a kind jesture if anything. FWIW I am conservative and educated.

No one cares, Trudeau.

Go find yourself a Canadian equivalent of DCUM for your posts.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, tell her "no.". Other employees have been filling in for her and they planned their vacation around her original date of return . Her choice, come back or terminate employment. She is going to give you notice after you give her the extra two weeks.

+1. We just went through this in one of our departments. Baby lady was supposed to come back on day X, but instead asked for one more week. Her covering co-worker had scheduled a cruise two days after scheduled return of baby lady. Boss asked cruise lady to cancel/reschedule cruise, she said no and called in sick until cruise date. Boss made baby lady come back or risk termination if she didn't have a medical excuse from her physician (she didn't), she then quit a month later after taking the extra week of vacation.

I hope she doesn't plan on using her former boss as a reference.

I only took 9 weeks off after a c-section because I didn't get any paid leave. Your 12 week policy is better than anything I have heard of in DC. The problem is usually day care. we had an aupair ...but for those people putting their kid in a center ...most don't take kids really young.

I don't think she 's coming back either as others have said. My guess is she wants the extra paid weeks and will then say she is not coming back.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow! That's awesome that you offer 12 weeks paid at a small business. I work for a small business and we only get 2 weeks paid. The rest has to be our PTO or taken as unpaid leave. We also can only have a max of 160 hrs PTO each year, so the max amount of paid time a woman has to use after giving birth is 6 weeks.

We've only had one woman return after her 6 weeks. The others choose to stay home and quit after using their paid time.

...and can you really blame them?

Right? I probably would have quit my job if I had to go back after only six weeks. That's way too early. Parental leave in this country is a joke.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dear Larla--
Thanks for your email. The pictures you sent of Larlita are just precious.
Unfortunately I cannot approve your request for vacation from August 1-14. As you know, we have to balance out the workload when one of us is on vacation. We already scheduled for others to take leave during that time. The best I can do is to approve Aug 1-7 with a return date of August 8th. We look forward to seeing you then. Please let me know what questions you might have and/or ways I can support your return.

Molly

This seems like a good start.

Setting aside the debate about what's fair for paid leave etc, what rubs me the wrong way is this woman is trying to tack on vacation at the last minute. The women I know who added on vacation to their paid maternity leave set this up well in advance before giving birth, so that they would not catch their employer off guard.

I think this is the nub of the issue. Others have had to plan their own work and leave around one absent employee. It is unfair to extend her leave and disturb other's expectations. I bet that other staff have already put in their leave requests for the summer based on the expected date of return of the employee on maternity issue.

This is missing the big picture. What's the cost to lose this employee? Surely it is worth letting someone take vacation to take care of a newborn so that they remain an employee and continue working for the company. Now maybe you don't value this employee? If you don't then say no.

Fwiw this is why we need paid leave policies. Op shouldn't be forced to make such an awful decision and the poor woman shouldn't be forced to return to work at 12 weeks in order to keep her job. We need to stop having babies for men until this ridiculousness stops.

The notion that women "have babies for men" is risible. In the vast majority of couples I know, the woman is the one who pushed for a baby, a second baby, a third baby. Frankly, it seems to me a lot of women use men as sperm donors and ATMs to create and fund the babies...they could do without the men themselves.

-signed, a woman

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see no reason why I should have to pay for your choice to have children. Plan better.

Why should others have to pay for your retirement and your healthcare during retirement?

I am a parent of two. I really wish we could balance out our priorities here. But the fact is this - Not everyone has kids (or even likes them for that matter), but everyone gets old.

Until we realize that we need to focus on our very young and very old - our two most vulnerable populations - women need to realize that few care about them or their newborns. So they need to have solid plans in place.

When my colleague was out on bed rest and then extended her leave, we did her job for her. We are an office of 11 people. I had to learn parts of her job. People (and we're all parents, too) were fed up. Thankfully, it was temporary, and things are back to normal.

So, I skipped over some posts in the middle, but people seem to be confusing two things:

1) How long do most employers provide full paid maternity leave?

2) How long do most white collar professionals take off?

The answer to the first question is 6 weeks. The answer to the second is somewhere between 12 and 20, in my experience.

That is, white collar employers will typically pay for 6 and then let you use a combination of vacation, sick, and short-term disability to stretch out to 12 or 16 weeks. Sometimes 20 if your boss really likes you and you do a ton of work on the front end to make sure it doesn't hurt the team.

So, by that standard, OP is being quite generous in giving twice the typical amount of paid leave, and pretty normal in wanting the employee back at 12 weeks.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let her have the time off.

it sounds like the problem is that she mentioned using her vacation time,
would you feel the same way if it was unpaid leave? In that case, would she still need the same type of approval as vacation? Can you hire someone temporarily until she returns?

Also, have you ever had a Baby?

Responses like this are so clueless. Where is the line? She already got FAR more than most women get even at big companies, let alone at a small company. What if she wanted 6 months off?

Have you ever had a baby is sucj an insulting question. This is about business, not creating a social safety net for new mothers.

Then what big company? As a professional, most companies offer 12 weeks now. I've been in banking, finance and law. I now work at a nonprofit and we even give 12 weeks. It's a crapshoot. Women in the US work less than in other developed countries. We need women to grow the economy. One of the reasons women work less is b/c in the US has such poor maternity leave policies. It was literally on the WSJ podcast today.

Now, when my employees come back, I don't want to hear about child care issues. I really don't. I give the time needed upfront, but my expectation is that when you are back, you are back.

I have a 13 and 9 yo. I was given 6 weeks for a typical delivery. My friends who had C sections were given 8 weeks. Maybe times have changed b/c 12 weeks sounds delightful. I had a friend who - with her last - returned after 5 days b/c she used up her leave (big family).

But we returned WITH solid childcare plans in place. As soon as I got pregnant, I started looking. I can take months to secure a spot in a center or one that's home-based. Thankfully, we could find a balance between family and a wonderful PT nanny.

Leaving your child is hard - very hard. So planning and timing are everything.

I agree with other PPs. If she's extending her leave, she's not returning.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing how many heartless people are on this board. For those saying that the employee should have requested the annual leave beforehand, did you ever stop to think that maybe she's struggling with postpartum depression or another post delivery complication. Or like others have suggested, maybe her child care situation fell through at the last minute. She's asking to take vacation time that she accrued, not a handout. For those saying she is making women looking bad for doing so, if it was a man going through a major medical procedure and asking for a little additional leave time I doubt you'd be so judgmental.

+1.

And that's fine. AND just like every other employee who asks for vacation, it has to be approved by the boss. The boss has a responsibility to the organization to make sure there's enough coverage. Just because you ask for vacation time doesn't mean it gets approved. It's summer time, which is when many folks like to use their vacation time. If this employee wants to share that she is struggling with childcare or postpartum depression and that's why she needs to use her vacation, she can certainly do that and her boss can take that into account when making a decision whether to approve or not. But it's not okay for the boss to be expected to make guesses about that. No one here knows why this employee is asking for vacation time.

Because she just had a BABY. She created life. She went through a traumatic experience and has hormones making her attached to the baby. Gosh, I hate men.

So what?! There are 4 other employees who also deserve to go on vacation and not cover for her lazy ass.

Let me guess...you're a man.

I agree with PP and I'm a woman. SHE. MADE. A. CHOICE. Her co workers, without a choice, covered for her. Now they are CHOOSING to take a vacation they have rightly earned. She can come back to work or find a new job. NOT HARD.

Can you hire a temp? Why not do that to cover a mat leave, essentially if it's unpaid although I know that was not your case.