Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Idk why I can’t quit this but I genuinely hope this will be my last time defending myself from this level of insanity. I wish I could high five the few people who I feel like live on the same planet as I do - thank you

OP, the terrible, here.

For my previous maternity leave with my fake first born, it was during the height of COVID. I went back after six months, cried most days for a long time and sucked it up because I still got to WFH as it was the height of the pandemic.

My employer no longer allows me to WFH and the answer to that request is a definite no. And after fighting to get myself from a very dark place after my first, I know there has to be a better way for me to go back.

So again, I was looking for experiences of those who extended any amount of leave. I am unsure where i said that my grand plan was to ask for an indefinite amount of time, but many have certainly taken that and run with it.

At this point anything I say is only pouring gasoline on this dumpster fire. This has definitely been an eye opening experience. I can see now why America is the way it is. So sad.

Save us the martyr shtick. You’ve been mudslinging all over this thread and are no better than anyone else responding.


What do you want to hear? Honey, take as much time as you need, we will absolutely hold your role and keep you on benefits while you’re out. When you come back, you can slide right back into your role and we will hold down anyone who’s been busting their butt in a stretch role to keep the lights on while you were out. We’ll definitely give you a full bonus and comp adjustment too. All of this on top of an extremely generous paid leave you’ve already gotten. There ya go!

I think this is a troll/sock puppet who hijacked this thread. Just ignore them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Idk why I can’t quit this but I genuinely hope this will be my last time defending myself from this level of insanity. I wish I could high five the few people who I feel like live on the same planet as I do - thank you

OP, the terrible, here.

For my previous maternity leave with my fake first born, it was during the height of COVID. I went back after six months, cried most days for a long time and sucked it up because I still got to WFH as it was the height of the pandemic.

My employer no longer allows me to WFH and the answer to that request is a definite no. And after fighting to get myself from a very dark place after my first, I know there has to be a better way for me to go back.

So again, I was looking for experiences of those who extended any amount of leave. I am unsure where i said that my grand plan was to ask for an indefinite amount of time, but many have certainly taken that and run with it.

At this point anything I say is only pouring gasoline on this dumpster fire. This has definitely been an eye opening experience. I can see now why America is the way it is. So sad.

Save us the martyr shtick. You’ve been mudslinging all over this thread and are no better than anyone else responding.


What do you want to hear? Honey, take as much time as you need, we will absolutely hold your role and keep you on benefits while you’re out. When you come back, you can slide right back into your role and we will hold down anyone who’s been busting their butt in a stretch role to keep the lights on while you were out. We’ll definitely give you a full bonus and comp adjustment too. All of this on top of an extremely generous paid leave you’ve already gotten. There ya go!

Defending herself, maybe. Mudslinging, not sure I see it. NP here. This thread is terrible, honey.

Anonymous wrote:Idk why I can’t quit this but I genuinely hope this will be my last time defending myself from this level of insanity. I wish I could high five the few people who I feel like live on the same planet as I do - thank you

OP, the terrible, here.

For my previous maternity leave with my fake first born, it was during the height of COVID. I went back after six months, cried most days for a long time and sucked it up because I still got to WFH as it was the height of the pandemic.

My employer no longer allows me to WFH and the answer to that request is a definite no. And after fighting to get myself from a very dark place after my first, I know there has to be a better way for me to go back.

So again, I was looking for experiences of those who extended any amount of leave. I am unsure where i said that my grand plan was to ask for an indefinite amount of time, but many have certainly taken that and run with it.

At this point anything I say is only pouring gasoline on this dumpster fire. This has definitely been an eye opening experience. I can see now why America is the way it is. So sad.

Save us the martyr shtick. You’ve been mudslinging all over this thread and are no better than anyone else responding.


What do you want to hear? Honey, take as much time as you need, we will absolutely hold your role and keep you on benefits while you’re out. When you come back, you can slide right back into your role and we will hold down anyone who’s been busting their butt in a stretch role to keep the lights on while you were out. We’ll definitely give you a full bonus and comp adjustment too. All of this on top of an extremely generous paid leave you’ve already gotten. There ya go!

Anonymous wrote:Idk why I can’t quit this but I genuinely hope this will be my last time defending myself from this level of insanity. I wish I could high five the few people who I feel like live on the same planet as I do - thank you

OP, the terrible, here.

For my previous maternity leave with my fake first born, it was during the height of COVID. I went back after six months, cried most days for a long time and sucked it up because I still got to WFH as it was the height of the pandemic.

My employer no longer allows me to WFH and the answer to that request is a definite no. And after fighting to get myself from a very dark place after my first, I know there has to be a better way for me to go back.

So again, I was looking for experiences of those who extended any amount of leave. I am unsure where i said that my grand plan was to ask for an indefinite amount of time, but many have certainly taken that and run with it.

At this point anything I say is only pouring gasoline on this dumpster fire. This has definitely been an eye opening experience. I can see now why America is the way it is. So sad.

If I were your employer, I would offer you a year's pay IF you would quit and never darken my door again! Women like you are the reason so many employers do not want to hire women of child bearing age. And do not kid yourself that age discrimination against both young, and older women, is alive, well, and thriving because of you and your ilk.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I tried to do this after a 4 month leave and it did not work out. It was frustrating and I definitely ran into some of the attitudes on this thread.

HOWEVER, after I quit my job, I wound up talking to someone in our HR department and she gave me a hard time for not pushing harder. Basically she told me I should have come to her and made the request formally through HR instead of just trying to work it out with my department. I had a director in my department who was VERY opposed to it and frankly angry with me for asking (not a parent, if you're wondering) and once I made the initial request, she was never going to change her mind. But my HR friend told me that there was actually blowback about the incident in the company because they view themselves as very family friendly and part of their hiring strategy is to hire people with a lot of experience who are looking for good work-life balance. So apparently people were upset with my director for, in their eyes, forcing me out by not being willing to compromise with a month or two of unpaid leave or some kind of offer to return gradually in a part time capacity.

Too late for me to benefit from this knowledge, but you still can! If you get pushback, talk to HR and also make sure you review all your company's leave policies very closely (my company had a policy of "up to a year" of leave, combining paid and unpaid, a the discretion of your manager, and I should have pushed a lot harder on that). If this matters to you, get what you can! Good luck!

You are either inexperienced, uneducated, or both. I am a mom, extremely pro family friendly policies, and own a small business. There’s zero chance I would survive if I had to hold open a job for every single mom I employ until an unspecified end date, paid or not. I offer generous leave but the deal is that you come back and do your job after it. What you are complaining about will lead to businesses just not hiring women of child-bearing age. Wow, what a women’s-rights activist you are!!

What an unnecessarily hostile response. Your situation is not true for a lot of big businesses. You are ridiculous.

No, but it is true of big business because hiring managers are people (like the mom/business owner above) and once they get burned by something like this it's unlikely they'll be up for getting burned again. Many companies have flat budgets in FY23 and FY24 and many departments don't have excess funds to cover more than 6+ months of maternity leave or employees who are willing to pick up the slack for moms who aren't ready to return after 6 months. And for those saying that there is something wrong with everyone responding, you get 6 months in Canada and many other countries..6 months is a very reasonable amount of time. It's not as generous as many European countries but then again we don't pay the same high taxes as many Europeans.

Canada only pays $638 per week which is less than $500 USD. I would rather go back at like, 4 months and be fully paid for that time than go back at 6 months at $500 per week.

Which you would absolutely be welcome to do in Canada, where some companies do in fact offer fully paid leave and where the government funded leave system is offered as a backstop to employers that don't provide such benefits.

In the US we have no such backstop so you will never have this choice. But MANY moms would happily take the lower payout in order to take a longer leave without having to leave their jobs. And in Canada, many due. Because it turns out that not every mother is fully prepared to return to full time work at 3 months or 4 months or whatever it is, and it's actually very common for parents to want to wait until their child is walking or until they are done breast-feeding or until the kid is old enough that they feel comfortable leaving them in a daycare or whatever. And it also turns out that some moms need longer to recover from pregnancy and childbirth, that some women experience PPD and/or PPA or have more physical recovery needed from childbirth/pregnancy. These women would be so grateful for an option that took any of these things into account, but in the US we like to pretend that all women who give birth are ready to go back to work (where they will be expected to pretend like they do not even have children) somewhere between 2 and 8 weeks after giving birth. We're the only country on earth with this expectation but based on the replies to this thread, we're very, very proud of being a weird outlier in our extreme disregard for children, families, the act of childbirth, or the mental health of workers. Woo hoo, America!

None of the above are, or should be, the problem of the employer.

Idk why I can’t quit this but I genuinely hope this will be my last time defending myself from this level of insanity. I wish I could high five the few people who I feel like live on the same planet as I do - thank you

OP, the terrible, here.

For my previous maternity leave with my fake first born, it was during the height of COVID. I went back after six months, cried most days for a long time and sucked it up because I still got to WFH as it was the height of the pandemic.

My employer no longer allows me to WFH and the answer to that request is a definite no. And after fighting to get myself from a very dark place after my first, I know there has to be a better way for me to go back.

So again, I was looking for experiences of those who extended any amount of leave. I am unsure where i said that my grand plan was to ask for an indefinite amount of time, but many have certainly taken that and run with it.

At this point anything I say is only pouring gasoline on this dumpster fire. This has definitely been an eye opening experience. I can see now why America is the way it is. So sad.

you're not going to be more ready by extending your leave.

unless you are planning to quit entirely, rip off the band-aid.

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Anonymous wrote:I would ask. A job is a just a job. If you’re not ready to go back, you should advocate for yourself, whether that means asking for unpaid leave or quitting.

I took maternity leave with every intention of coming back at the end of it, but a combination of PPD, Covid, and difficulty finding childcare led me to quit at the end of it. The place I left was a toxic dump anyway. Do I wish things had worked out differently? Yes, partially because I don’t want to give moms on leave a bad name. But I had to prioritize my own well-being and that of my baby.

Can I ask why you think this gives moms on leave a bad name? I think I understand but want to clarify. It’s so hard that people think this.

PP. I think some people probably think this was my plan all along, to game the system and get paid for several months of not working and then quit. In reality, it was an agonizing decision that I only came to after experiencing panic attacks and breakdowns and realizing that I wasn’t going to be able to return to work. But for a lot of reasons, I think some people don’t give parents (usually moms) on leave a lot of grace or benefit of the doubt.

Ha! You knew from the get go that you planned to game the system I've known too many employees like you and burned too many times.

I will give PP the benefit of the doubt that she didn't know what would happen when she was due to come back from leave, but unfortunately, people like PP do ruin it for the rest of the new parents who need a little more grace in their return to office plans.

No one has ruined anything for anyone except the people posting in this forum about greed and discouraging moms from what they need after baby.

WTH literally no one has told OP to go back to work against her will. No one. She has options - she can quit her job if she doesn’t want to work which is what it sounds like. Most sane people realize employers can’t hold jobs open for moms who don’t want to work.

OP did not say she doesn’t want to work. She said she’s not ready to leave her baby. Which is totally understandable. Some of these comments are literally insane. This country will never move the needle on leave and a better life for parents/families with people like this out there. What a shame.

Every mom I have known who wasn’t ready to go back after leave, was NEVER ready to go back. They didn’t want to work, and that’s fine. Pretty much any woman in the US who has children in wedlock has the opportunity to stay home with kids. This is why we don’t have paid parental leave. We don’t need the government to put moms on welfare to stay home with their kids. American women have the opportunity to do that without requiring government assistance.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would not take unpaid leave. Does your spouse have parental leave that he/she can use? That way your baby isn't in daycare yet if you're not ready for that. Can you go part-time temporarily? That is what i would do if I felt like you do.

Thanks - partner already used leave at the beginning and has been back at work full time for months so that is not an option. Respectfully, what does part time get me if I am not ready to leave the baby?

If you’re not ready now, you likely won’t be ready in 3 months, 6 months, etc. That’s why we don’t have paid parental leave in the US. Most mothers who want to be at home with their babies want to be home for more than 6 months.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:OP, I tried to do this after a 4 month leave and it did not work out. It was frustrating and I definitely ran into some of the attitudes on this thread.

HOWEVER, after I quit my job, I wound up talking to someone in our HR department and she gave me a hard time for not pushing harder. Basically she told me I should have come to her and made the request formally through HR instead of just trying to work it out with my department. I had a director in my department who was VERY opposed to it and frankly angry with me for asking (not a parent, if you're wondering) and once I made the initial request, she was never going to change her mind. But my HR friend told me that there was actually blowback about the incident in the company because they view themselves as very family friendly and part of their hiring strategy is to hire people with a lot of experience who are looking for good work-life balance. So apparently people were upset with my director for, in their eyes, forcing me out by not being willing to compromise with a month or two of unpaid leave or some kind of offer to return gradually in a part time capacity.

Too late for me to benefit from this knowledge, but you still can! If you get pushback, talk to HR and also make sure you review all your company's leave policies very closely (my company had a policy of "up to a year" of leave, combining paid and unpaid, a the discretion of your manager, and I should have pushed a lot harder on that). If this matters to you, get what you can! Good luck!

You are either inexperienced, uneducated, or both. I am a mom, extremely pro family friendly policies, and own a small business. There’s zero chance I would survive if I had to hold open a job for every single mom I employ until an unspecified end date, paid or not. I offer generous leave but the deal is that you come back and do your job after it. What you are complaining about will lead to businesses just not hiring women of child-bearing age. Wow, what a women’s-rights activist you are!!

What an unnecessarily hostile response. Your situation is not true for a lot of big businesses. You are ridiculous.

No, but it is true of big business because hiring managers are people (like the mom/business owner above) and once they get burned by something like this it's unlikely they'll be up for getting burned again. Many companies have flat budgets in FY23 and FY24 and many departments don't have excess funds to cover more than 6+ months of maternity leave or employees who are willing to pick up the slack for moms who aren't ready to return after 6 months. And for those saying that there is something wrong with everyone responding, you get 6 months in Canada and many other countries..6 months is a very reasonable amount of time. It's not as generous as many European countries but then again we don't pay the same high taxes as many Europeans.

Canada only pays $638 per week which is less than $500 USD. I would rather go back at like, 4 months and be fully paid for that time than go back at 6 months at $500 per week.

Which you would absolutely be welcome to do in Canada, where some companies do in fact offer fully paid leave and where the government funded leave system is offered as a backstop to employers that don't provide such benefits.

In the US we have no such backstop so you will never have this choice. But MANY moms would happily take the lower payout in order to take a longer leave without having to leave their jobs. And in Canada, many due. Because it turns out that not every mother is fully prepared to return to full time work at 3 months or 4 months or whatever it is, and it's actually very common for parents to want to wait until their child is walking or until they are done breast-feeding or until the kid is old enough that they feel comfortable leaving them in a daycare or whatever. And it also turns out that some moms need longer to recover from pregnancy and childbirth, that some women experience PPD and/or PPA or have more physical recovery needed from childbirth/pregnancy. These women would be so grateful for an option that took any of these things into account, but in the US we like to pretend that all women who give birth are ready to go back to work (where they will be expected to pretend like they do not even have children) somewhere between 2 and 8 weeks after giving birth. We're the only country on earth with this expectation but based on the replies to this thread, we're very, very proud of being a weird outlier in our extreme disregard for children, families, the act of childbirth, or the mental health of workers. Woo hoo, America!

Yes, but OP wants to take what appears to be a somewhat identifite amount of time off after likely getting much more than $500 a week for the past six months. There are differences here and if you need more time because of medical reasons you can extend your disability -- you just need an actual medical reason that isn't I wasn't to be at home with my kid longer. Because that's not a medical reason.

No, OP is asking how long it would be reasonable to ask for. Here, she is asking that here. If your advice is "make sure you go in with a defined amount of extra time and a very clear plan for return so they don't feel strung along," I think that's good advice. Or if your advice is "I think asking for 2-4 more weeks is okay but any more than that you should just quit," then say that, it's useful data point.

OP never said "I intend to go to my employer and ask for an unspecified amount of unpaid leave where they will hold my job open but I never tell them when I will return. Is that an awesome plan? #goodvibesonly" but for some reason you are acting like that's what she said. You are SO ANGRY at her for not having answers to your questions even though it's very obvious from her posts that she's still in the beginning stages of figuring out IF she will ask for more leave and how she will ask and how much leave she might request. She's looking for some guidance in shaping that, but you viewed it as an opportunity to heap abuse and demand answers to your unreasonable questions because you have a psychotic chip on your shoulder about the idea that a mom who didn't feel ready to return to work at the end of her leave might ask for a bit more.

You should spend some time asking why this thread incensed you so much and exactly what it is you are so angry about. My bet is that you have some pent up anger about your own return-to-work experiences and this is who you are trying to work them out.

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Anonymous wrote:This is so obnoxious. Just quit your job and go back when you’re ready. It sounds like your employer has been generous and you’re exploiting them at that point.

Not op. You are a big problem with what is wrong in this country. GTFOOH

This is so OP. You are just frustrated with the responses because no one is saying "after I took 6 months off, I requested another 10 months and my employer promoted me two weeks after I got back. It was great being there for Larla in her first 16 months but never actually needing to leave the workforce because my company let me take as much time as I needed to be mentally and physically and emotionally ready to leave her with a nanny."

Unfortunately, our country doesn't have good maternity leave policies but OP is so lucky that her company gives employees 6 months of paid leave. She is not the person I feel bad for when it comes to maternity leave. Even some type of universal leave will likely only cover 12 weeks.

OP here. I didn’t write this. This forum is so f-ing toxic. Accusing me of lying about this being my second kid. JFC. I’m done here. This made everything so much worse.

Well then, how did it go when you took maternity leave the last time at your company? And as a mom of multiple children whose taken multiple leaves, I find it really surprising that you're having trouble going back after six months with your second...but you went back after six months with your first no problem...I'm assuming no problem because if you had trouble going back after six months with your first why wouldn't you have had a conversation about taking more than six months with your employer upfront?

And why won't you just say how much time you plan to take? Why ask about others' experiences and for advice and then refuse to answer a very basic piece of information?

What is wrong with you? (not OP here though I'm sure you'll accuse me of being OP because even though there are at least two of us on here defending OP you are convinced we don't exist).

OP does not know how much time she will take. She is unsure of how much it might be okay to ask for. THAT IS WHY SHE CAME TO THIS FORUM. She does not need to tell YOU how much time should would like, she owes you nothing. She is asking if others have asked for unpaid leave in this situation, if so how much they asked for, and what was the outcome. She is gathering information to prepare for a conversation/negotiation with her employer. I am someone who has been through this and replied upthread (where I reported that my director was a hard no on more leave so I quit my job, but was later told by a friend in HR that if I had gone through HR instead of my director, it's more likely I would have gotten leave because the company actually had a written policy that it offers up to a year of unpaid leave for new parents and I could have made an argument based on precedent).

Anyway, OP is unsure how much to ask for. I understand this because when I was in the same situation, I was also unsure -- I knew I wasn't ready and I wanted ted to (1) get my PPD under control, and (2) have a bit more time to find better quality childcare because a huge part of my anxiety about returning is that the only childcare we'd found did not feel okay to me but I was sitting on a bunch of waitlists with no idea when they'd move.

I wound up asking for 6 weeks OR to return immediately but on a part-time WFH basis because I'd found a co-working space with childcare in-house that had space and I felt I could return immediately if I could be in the same building as my kid. Both requests were denied.

So here's what I'm having trouble with: if you are indeed a working mom of multiple children, I'm assuming you've met and interacted with other moms before. Have you really never encountered another mother whose experience does not precisely mirror yours with respect to childbirth and return to work? For every one of their pregnancies? I know tons of moms and I absolutely know moms who took longer leaves with their second kids because of unforeseen circumstances (PPD/PPA, a physically tough pregnancy or a birth injury, unexpected childcare issues when juggling two kids, etc.). I also know people who took their permitted leave for each kid and no issues. I know people like me who wound up quitting when they couldn't go back at the expected time. I know people who negotiated a deal like I tried to negotiate, with part-time return or a bit of unpaid leave to bridge the gap. I know a huge variety of situations which means I'm not really judgmental of any particular situation.

So how the heck did you have multiple kids and presumably meet a decent number of other moms and not get the memo that not everyone has the exact same situation? What is wrong with you that you are this antagonistic of a situation that doesn't even concern you (OP presumably doesn't work with you or for you). Like I hate when people say this on here because it sounds dismissive but I mean it genuinely: I think you need therapy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I tried to do this after a 4 month leave and it did not work out. It was frustrating and I definitely ran into some of the attitudes on this thread.

HOWEVER, after I quit my job, I wound up talking to someone in our HR department and she gave me a hard time for not pushing harder. Basically she told me I should have come to her and made the request formally through HR instead of just trying to work it out with my department. I had a director in my department who was VERY opposed to it and frankly angry with me for asking (not a parent, if you're wondering) and once I made the initial request, she was never going to change her mind. But my HR friend told me that there was actually blowback about the incident in the company because they view themselves as very family friendly and part of their hiring strategy is to hire people with a lot of experience who are looking for good work-life balance. So apparently people were upset with my director for, in their eyes, forcing me out by not being willing to compromise with a month or two of unpaid leave or some kind of offer to return gradually in a part time capacity.

Too late for me to benefit from this knowledge, but you still can! If you get pushback, talk to HR and also make sure you review all your company's leave policies very closely (my company had a policy of "up to a year" of leave, combining paid and unpaid, a the discretion of your manager, and I should have pushed a lot harder on that). If this matters to you, get what you can! Good luck!

You are either inexperienced, uneducated, or both. I am a mom, extremely pro family friendly policies, and own a small business. There’s zero chance I would survive if I had to hold open a job for every single mom I employ until an unspecified end date, paid or not. I offer generous leave but the deal is that you come back and do your job after it. What you are complaining about will lead to businesses just not hiring women of child-bearing age. Wow, what a women’s-rights activist you are!!

What an unnecessarily hostile response. Your situation is not true for a lot of big businesses. You are ridiculous.

No, but it is true of big business because hiring managers are people (like the mom/business owner above) and once they get burned by something like this it's unlikely they'll be up for getting burned again. Many companies have flat budgets in FY23 and FY24 and many departments don't have excess funds to cover more than 6+ months of maternity leave or employees who are willing to pick up the slack for moms who aren't ready to return after 6 months. And for those saying that there is something wrong with everyone responding, you get 6 months in Canada and many other countries..6 months is a very reasonable amount of time. It's not as generous as many European countries but then again we don't pay the same high taxes as many Europeans.

Canada only pays $638 per week which is less than $500 USD. I would rather go back at like, 4 months and be fully paid for that time than go back at 6 months at $500 per week.

Which you would absolutely be welcome to do in Canada, where some companies do in fact offer fully paid leave and where the government funded leave system is offered as a backstop to employers that don't provide such benefits.

In the US we have no such backstop so you will never have this choice. But MANY moms would happily take the lower payout in order to take a longer leave without having to leave their jobs. And in Canada, many due. Because it turns out that not every mother is fully prepared to return to full time work at 3 months or 4 months or whatever it is, and it's actually very common for parents to want to wait until their child is walking or until they are done breast-feeding or until the kid is old enough that they feel comfortable leaving them in a daycare or whatever. And it also turns out that some moms need longer to recover from pregnancy and childbirth, that some women experience PPD and/or PPA or have more physical recovery needed from childbirth/pregnancy. These women would be so grateful for an option that took any of these things into account, but in the US we like to pretend that all women who give birth are ready to go back to work (where they will be expected to pretend like they do not even have children) somewhere between 2 and 8 weeks after giving birth. We're the only country on earth with this expectation but based on the replies to this thread, we're very, very proud of being a weird outlier in our extreme disregard for children, families, the act of childbirth, or the mental health of workers. Woo hoo, America!

Yes, but OP wants to take what appears to be a somewhat identifite amount of time off after likely getting much more than $500 a week for the past six months. There are differences here and if you need more time because of medical reasons you can extend your disability -- you just need an actual medical reason that isn't I wasn't to be at home with my kid longer. Because that's not a medical reason.

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Anonymous wrote:A PP asked but I didn't see an answer: how much more time are we talking? 1-2 additional months, or another 6 months?

I was asking what others may have done in this situation to try to gauge an answer to this question. But instead I got baseless accusations and almost entirely unhelpful nonsense. Just so upsetting.

I’m not sure why you’re attacking me, I was just asking a question that is relevant to what advice I would give. If you just want/need another month, I would think for a job you’ve been at 15 years, a good employer would accommodate. But if you’re looking for another 6 months or more, that puts a different level of strain on your colleagues covering for you.

Wasn’t directed at you as an attack. Very sorry it came off that way. Not my intention. Thanks for the advice. I agree.

Why aren’t you answering how much longer you want for leave?

OP isn't sure how much time she might want or could get. That's why she asked here what other's experience has been. If people came on and said "yes I got an extra month and it was just what I needed to help my feel ready -- babies change so much in a short period" that would have been informative. If people came on and said "I asked for an extra month and my employer said absolutely not and I had to go back right away and this was my experience with that" that would also be informative.

Everyone is acting like OP is asking them, personally, for extended leave. She's not. She's asking on here for feedback on experiences so that she can be more informed as she makes this decision of whether to ask for more leave and if so how much. She's the one gathering info about the landscape. No one is entitled to info about her personal life and she doesn't have to justify her interest in more leave to ANYONE on this forum.

I wonder if the responses to this would be different if OP was taking bereavement leave after losing a spouse and came on here saying "I want to ask my employer for extra time as unpaid leave because I just don't feel ready to be back in the office -- does anyone have experience with this?" For some reason our culture acts like women recovering from childbirth or making the transition to motherhood are trying to pull one over on society and that actually that's just easy and effortless and it's normal for women to be ready to return to their jobs in a short period of time. It's so weird! We were all babies once. We all have mothers. And yet we act like the act of having children and becoming a mom is a horrible imposition on other people, a personal hobby that women use to get out of "real" societal contributions like sitting in offices and sending emails and making corporations incrementally more money.

Our priorities are so f****d.

Oh, OP! It's actually really uncommon to take 6 months of leave and at the end of the leave to ask for more time. You're not getting a lot of "helpful" responses because your situation is uncommon. When people are in the place that you are in, OP, they quit or they go back to work. It's not what you want to hear, but it's the truth.

I'm the PP (not OP) and I'm sure OP is aware that six months leave is unusual in the US -- in fact I'm sure she has noted that in her comments.

But as someone who also had a generous maternity leave by US standards (4 months fully paid) I can tell you something you won't want to hear: companies that offer longer leaves are also often MORE likely to offer additional unpaid leave on a case by case basis, because these are companies that have structured solutions to having workers out on leave. They are also much more likely to offer longer leaves to fathers or to parents of adopted children, as well as paid leave for bereavement or family health emergencies.

Companies like this often also have a highly educated workforce and may know how hard it is to hire experienced people with the proper background, and therefore be more inclined to give a worker a little extra leave if the alternative is having to hire someone into a role that is currently filled by a company veteran with specific skill sets.

Also, and you won't believe this but I mean it: I wish you'd had this experience, I wish everyone did. I think it's a huge bummer that it's mostly only white collar professionals who get this kind of treatment at [some] companies. But the truth is that OP's company has already indicated that they are willing to tolerate longer maternity leaves, so she's probably in a better situation to request additional unpaid leave than the vast majority of women returning to work after having a baby.

The majority of respondents are white collar highly paid employees. I make $300K and WAH. I used my 22 week maternity leave to get a WAH job after my first was born because I didn't want to go back to the office. I wanted to work at home with a nanny. And yes, I have not taken other opportunities so I could WAH with my kids while they are young. I get all of this and I empathize with the OP for wanting to be at home. But at some point you need to decide what you want: a WAH job (if possible), to be a SAHM, or to go back to the office whether hybrid or in-office. I have been very grateful for the extended leaves that I've had and I also recognize the impact those leaves have had on my teams.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I tried to do this after a 4 month leave and it did not work out. It was frustrating and I definitely ran into some of the attitudes on this thread.

HOWEVER, after I quit my job, I wound up talking to someone in our HR department and she gave me a hard time for not pushing harder. Basically she told me I should have come to her and made the request formally through HR instead of just trying to work it out with my department. I had a director in my department who was VERY opposed to it and frankly angry with me for asking (not a parent, if you're wondering) and once I made the initial request, she was never going to change her mind. But my HR friend told me that there was actually blowback about the incident in the company because they view themselves as very family friendly and part of their hiring strategy is to hire people with a lot of experience who are looking for good work-life balance. So apparently people were upset with my director for, in their eyes, forcing me out by not being willing to compromise with a month or two of unpaid leave or some kind of offer to return gradually in a part time capacity.

Too late for me to benefit from this knowledge, but you still can! If you get pushback, talk to HR and also make sure you review all your company's leave policies very closely (my company had a policy of "up to a year" of leave, combining paid and unpaid, a the discretion of your manager, and I should have pushed a lot harder on that). If this matters to you, get what you can! Good luck!

You are either inexperienced, uneducated, or both. I am a mom, extremely pro family friendly policies, and own a small business. There’s zero chance I would survive if I had to hold open a job for every single mom I employ until an unspecified end date, paid or not. I offer generous leave but the deal is that you come back and do your job after it. What you are complaining about will lead to businesses just not hiring women of child-bearing age. Wow, what a women’s-rights activist you are!!

What an unnecessarily hostile response. Your situation is not true for a lot of big businesses. You are ridiculous.

No, but it is true of big business because hiring managers are people (like the mom/business owner above) and once they get burned by something like this it's unlikely they'll be up for getting burned again. Many companies have flat budgets in FY23 and FY24 and many departments don't have excess funds to cover more than 6+ months of maternity leave or employees who are willing to pick up the slack for moms who aren't ready to return after 6 months. And for those saying that there is something wrong with everyone responding, you get 6 months in Canada and many other countries..6 months is a very reasonable amount of time. It's not as generous as many European countries but then again we don't pay the same high taxes as many Europeans.

Canada only pays $638 per week which is less than $500 USD. I would rather go back at like, 4 months and be fully paid for that time than go back at 6 months at $500 per week.

Which you would absolutely be welcome to do in Canada, where some companies do in fact offer fully paid leave and where the government funded leave system is offered as a backstop to employers that don't provide such benefits.

In the US we have no such backstop so you will never have this choice. But MANY moms would happily take the lower payout in order to take a longer leave without having to leave their jobs. And in Canada, many due. Because it turns out that not every mother is fully prepared to return to full time work at 3 months or 4 months or whatever it is, and it's actually very common for parents to want to wait until their child is walking or until they are done breast-feeding or until the kid is old enough that they feel comfortable leaving them in a daycare or whatever. And it also turns out that some moms need longer to recover from pregnancy and childbirth, that some women experience PPD and/or PPA or have more physical recovery needed from childbirth/pregnancy. These women would be so grateful for an option that took any of these things into account, but in the US we like to pretend that all women who give birth are ready to go back to work (where they will be expected to pretend like they do not even have children) somewhere between 2 and 8 weeks after giving birth. We're the only country on earth with this expectation but based on the replies to this thread, we're very, very proud of being a weird outlier in our extreme disregard for children, families, the act of childbirth, or the mental health of workers. Woo hoo, America!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I tried to do this after a 4 month leave and it did not work out. It was frustrating and I definitely ran into some of the attitudes on this thread.

HOWEVER, after I quit my job, I wound up talking to someone in our HR department and she gave me a hard time for not pushing harder. Basically she told me I should have come to her and made the request formally through HR instead of just trying to work it out with my department. I had a director in my department who was VERY opposed to it and frankly angry with me for asking (not a parent, if you're wondering) and once I made the initial request, she was never going to change her mind. But my HR friend told me that there was actually blowback about the incident in the company because they view themselves as very family friendly and part of their hiring strategy is to hire people with a lot of experience who are looking for good work-life balance. So apparently people were upset with my director for, in their eyes, forcing me out by not being willing to compromise with a month or two of unpaid leave or some kind of offer to return gradually in a part time capacity.

Too late for me to benefit from this knowledge, but you still can! If you get pushback, talk to HR and also make sure you review all your company's leave policies very closely (my company had a policy of "up to a year" of leave, combining paid and unpaid, a the discretion of your manager, and I should have pushed a lot harder on that). If this matters to you, get what you can! Good luck!

You are either inexperienced, uneducated, or both. I am a mom, extremely pro family friendly policies, and own a small business. There’s zero chance I would survive if I had to hold open a job for every single mom I employ until an unspecified end date, paid or not. I offer generous leave but the deal is that you come back and do your job after it. What you are complaining about will lead to businesses just not hiring women of child-bearing age. Wow, what a women’s-rights activist you are!!

What an unnecessarily hostile response. Your situation is not true for a lot of big businesses. You are ridiculous.

No, but it is true of big business because hiring managers are people (like the mom/business owner above) and once they get burned by something like this it's unlikely they'll be up for getting burned again. Many companies have flat budgets in FY23 and FY24 and many departments don't have excess funds to cover more than 6+ months of maternity leave or employees who are willing to pick up the slack for moms who aren't ready to return after 6 months. And for those saying that there is something wrong with everyone responding, you get 6 months in Canada and many other countries..6 months is a very reasonable amount of time. It's not as generous as many European countries but then again we don't pay the same high taxes as many Europeans.

nonsense. They retained a senior employee for 15 years. They made out great. Frankly if they gave her another year of unpaid leave and hired a temp for a year and got her back for another 10 year that would great for the company. What you are saying makes no business sense. You just want to punish her for no reason I can see except maybe sour grapes.

But this isn't her first maternity leave. According to the OP she has other children or at least one other child. Did she take maternity leave last year? We have no idea. Why would I have sour grapes? I'm not OP's manager? It's just the reality that most people with 15 years of tenure at one company understand that being out for a year is not easy on their team. Gosh, with 15 years of tenure I would expect her to have a team!