s/o does anyone offer maternity leave to nannies?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would never offer maternity leave to my nanny. If you get pregnant we part ways. I am not subjecting my kids to a revolving load of nannies to cover you for 6 months so you can come back, work another year and then be pregnant again.

Yet you scream about not getting 6 months paid maternity leave, don't you?

I understand how you feel, however, asI feel the same about hiring women under age 50.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don't have a nanny yet why are you worried about maternity leave ? Higher someone older then 40. Make it a rule that the nanny can not have relationships with men. Yes that is possible, she would be your employee and you control what she does if she wants to be your nanny.( have you thought about a live in nanny? They are much easier to control) By having such rules you will eliminate party girls and you will find yourself a serious nanny who values her job and makes it her # 1 priorty.

That is insane. MB here.

Anyway, the answer is no with the exception that there are always crazy people with special circumstances.

There is never paid leave. Even companies have to have a certain number of employees (can't remember, maybe it is 20) to be obligated to offer UNPAID leave. Even at my company that is often listed in "Best places to work" as well as the Federal Government, you usually get 6 weeks of paid leave only, not 3 month or anything like that. These are for the cushiest jobs. For nannies, the answer is no paid leave.

For unpaid leave, it is a very risky situation for the employer because mothers may decide to not come back to work. It is always a very emotional decision and there is never one universal best answer. People often decide to have their baby first, then decide if they want to continue working or not.

THEN, if a nanny decides to come back to work, what is she going to do with a newborn baby? Bring it back to work? Newborn babies are hard enough as it is to watch when you have no other kids. You can barely take care of yourself. So, how are you supposed to take care of a newborn baby, plus your charges, and do a good job enough to be paid for it?

It really doesn't make any sense.

But I would imagine that there may be some special situations where unpaid leave may be offered. Perhaps mom has a flexible job and wants to play SAH mom for 2-3 months. Maybe there is a family member who can take over but not permanently and they are reasonably sure that the nanny would come back. Or, maybe they think of as "I have to do a nanny search now, or in 3 months. I'll give the benefit of the doubt to the nanny and just put off nanny search for 3 months since I can arrange temporary childcare easily."


Why are you asking if you don't even have a nanny yet?

Federal gov gives you ZERO paid maternity leave. I'm pregnant. I will be using two weeks of vacation + sick I've accumulated over the 1.5 years. I can get 16 wks of unpaid leave under the FMLA because the gov has more than x number of employees and that's the law. Isn't it shocking even the gov doesn't give paid mat leave?

It is shocking thst you would expect the taxpayer to subsidize YOUR CHOICE to procreate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don't have a nanny yet why are you worried about maternity leave ? Higher someone older then 40. Make it a rule that the nanny can not have relationships with men. Yes that is possible, she would be your employee and you control what she does if she wants to be your nanny.( have you thought about a live in nanny? They are much easier to control) By having such rules you will eliminate party girls and you will find yourself a serious nanny who values her job and makes it her # 1 priorty.

That is insane. MB here.

Anyway, the answer is no with the exception that there are always crazy people with special circumstances.

There is never paid leave. Even companies have to have a certain number of employees (can't remember, maybe it is 20) to be obligated to offer UNPAID leave. Even at my company that is often listed in "Best places to work" as well as the Federal Government, you usually get 6 weeks of paid leave only, not 3 month or anything like that. These are for the cushiest jobs. For nannies, the answer is no paid leave.

For unpaid leave, it is a very risky situation for the employer because mothers may decide to not come back to work. It is always a very emotional decision and there is never one universal best answer. People often decide to have their baby first, then decide if they want to continue working or not.

THEN, if a nanny decides to come back to work, what is she going to do with a newborn baby? Bring it back to work? Newborn babies are hard enough as it is to watch when you have no other kids. You can barely take care of yourself. So, how are you supposed to take care of a newborn baby, plus your charges, and do a good job enough to be paid for it?

It really doesn't make any sense.

But I would imagine that there may be some special situations where unpaid leave may be offered. Perhaps mom has a flexible job and wants to play SAH mom for 2-3 months. Maybe there is a family member who can take over but not permanently and they are reasonably sure that the nanny would come back. Or, maybe they think of as "I have to do a nanny search now, or in 3 months. I'll give the benefit of the doubt to the nanny and just put off nanny search for 3 months since I can arrange temporary childcare easily."


Why are you asking if you don't even have a nanny yet?

Federal gov gives you ZERO paid maternity leave. I'm pregnant. I will be using two weeks of vacation + sick I've accumulated over the 1.5 years. I can get 16 wks of unpaid leave under the FMLA because the gov has more than x number of employees and that's the law. Isn't it shocking even the gov doesn't give paid mat leave?

It is shocking thst you would expect the taxpayer to subsidize YOUR CHOICE to procreate.

NP here, but would you have the US end up like Japan?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don't have a nanny yet why are you worried about maternity leave ? Higher someone older then 40. Make it a rule that the nanny can not have relationships with men. Yes that is possible, she would be your employee and you control what she does if she wants to be your nanny.( have you thought about a live in nanny? They are much easier to control) By having such rules you will eliminate party girls and you will find yourself a serious nanny who values her job and makes it her # 1 priorty.

That is insane. MB here.

Anyway, the answer is no with the exception that there are always crazy people with special circumstances.

There is never paid leave. Even companies have to have a certain number of employees (can't remember, maybe it is 20) to be obligated to offer UNPAID leave. Even at my company that is often listed in "Best places to work" as well as the Federal Government, you usually get 6 weeks of paid leave only, not 3 month or anything like that. These are for the cushiest jobs. For nannies, the answer is no paid leave.

For unpaid leave, it is a very risky situation for the employer because mothers may decide to not come back to work. It is always a very emotional decision and there is never one universal best answer. People often decide to have their baby first, then decide if they want to continue working or not.

THEN, if a nanny decides to come back to work, what is she going to do with a newborn baby? Bring it back to work? Newborn babies are hard enough as it is to watch when you have no other kids. You can barely take care of yourself. So, how are you supposed to take care of a newborn baby, plus your charges, and do a good job enough to be paid for it?

It really doesn't make any sense.

But I would imagine that there may be some special situations where unpaid leave may be offered. Perhaps mom has a flexible job and wants to play SAH mom for 2-3 months. Maybe there is a family member who can take over but not permanently and they are reasonably sure that the nanny would come back. Or, maybe they think of as "I have to do a nanny search now, or in 3 months. I'll give the benefit of the doubt to the nanny and just put off nanny search for 3 months since I can arrange temporary childcare easily."


Why are you asking if you don't even have a nanny yet?

Federal gov gives you ZERO paid maternity leave. I'm pregnant. I will be using two weeks of vacation + sick I've accumulated over the 1.5 years. I can get 16 wks of unpaid leave under the FMLA because the gov has more than x number of employees and that's the law. Isn't it shocking even the gov doesn't give paid mat leave?

It is shocking thst you would expect the taxpayer to subsidize YOUR CHOICE to procreate.

NP here, but would you have the US end up like Japan?

Given our incredibly liberal immigration policies, how could that ever happen?

[Anonymous]

Are you kidding? 95% of nanny employers have a fit when their nanny takes off does now day.

[Anonymous]

Snow days not does

[Anonymous]

I am not sure what I was thinking but I gave our nanny 4 weeks paid time off. I had a very difficult time finding temporary nanny so I ended having to take 4 weeks off unpaid! Never again. The nanny had just worked 3 months and was 3 months when she announced! Again, never again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am not sure what I was thinking but I gave our nanny 4 weeks paid time off. I had a very difficult time finding temporary nanny so I ended having to take 4 weeks off unpaid! Never again. The nanny had just worked 3 months and was 3 months when she announced! Again, never again.

A lot of businesses only offer any kind of maternity leave (paid or unpaid) after a year. Now you know why!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These same MBs would jump at the offer of paid leave for themselves with employers of over 50 people, but would fight against legislation that extended to us.

MB here. I support DC's proposal for city funded maternity leave for everyone and would happily pay higher taxes for it. I do not in any way begrudge nannies or anyone else maternity leave - as a mom, I get how important it is. As I posted earlier on this thread, I offered my nanny as much time as she wanted provided she gave us a date up front so that we could arrange for interim care. However as an individual employer, I cannot afford to pay a nanny for that time as well as pay another nanny at the same time. In fact it was tight to double pay for even a couple of weeks as we ultimately did in that situation (and it's not the same as covering vacation or other PTO which tends to be more spread out and can be covered by families in a lot of ways). If this was a cost I had to factor into childcare (double paying childcare for weeks/months), I wouldn't be able to choose having a nanny - and I think a LOT of other families are in the same situation. It's not apples to apples comparing large employers (many of whom also don't offer paid leave anyway) and individual families.

[Anonymous]

I could never afford paid maternity leave plus paying for a temporary nanny. Get real.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These same MBs would jump at the offer of paid leave for themselves with employers of over 50 people, but would fight against legislation that extended to us.

MB here. I support DC's proposal for city funded maternity leave for everyone and would happily pay higher taxes for it. I do not in any way begrudge nannies or anyone else maternity leave - as a mom, I get how important it is. As I posted earlier on this thread, I offered my nanny as much time as she wanted provided she gave us a date up front so that we could arrange for interim care. However as an individual employer, I cannot afford to pay a nanny for that time as well as pay another nanny at the same time. In fact it was tight to double pay for even a couple of weeks as we ultimately did in that situation (and it's not the same as covering vacation or other PTO which tends to be more spread out and can be covered by families in a lot of ways). If this was a cost I had to factor into childcare (double paying childcare for weeks/months), I wouldn't be able to choose having a nanny - and I think a LOT of other families are in the same situation. It's not apples to apples comparing large employers (many of whom also don't offer paid leave anyway) and individual families.

That is a reasonable position. What is unreasonable are all of the posters on this thread acting as though a nanny is out of their minds or entitled to desire the same (measly) benefits that other women receive. I would be happy if we were simply afforded the same 12 weeks of job protection! No one was asking for months and months of paid leave. How about just not getting fired because we're pregnant. You know, the same rights women in every other industry have?

[Anonymous]

For the federal protection that enables an employee to have a job held for up to 12 weeks of leave, an employer needs to have a minimum of 50 employees.

If you work in DC you have greater protection, but the employer still needs to have at least 20 employees.

The FMLA and DCFMLA are more complicated than those basic statements of course, but the point is that millions of people do not have the parental leave options enjoyed by citizens in most other modernized countries.

This is hardly a nanny issue, and as a PP said, were this kind of leave to be mandated for employers w/ a payroll of 1 or 2 employees, the scope of the job market for that profession would be immediately decreased by virtue of costs and practicality.

It would certainly be a boon for daycare providers though.

[Anonymous]

I gave my nanny 12 weeks of unpaid leave. She knew the job was hers when she was ready to come back. Meanwhile, we hired a temporary nanny at the same salary as our regular nanny. Our regular nanny came back at 10 weeks and brought baby with her. My kids loved her baby and she managed to do a fantastic job with all of them.

Granted, my nanny had a husband with a good job and good insurance. If that hadn't have been the case, I don't know what we would have done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These same MBs would jump at the offer of paid leave for themselves with employers of over 50 people, but would fight against legislation that extended to us.

MB here. I support DC's proposal for city funded maternity leave for everyone and would happily pay higher taxes for it. I do not in any way begrudge nannies or anyone else maternity leave - as a mom, I get how important it is. As I posted earlier on this thread, I offered my nanny as much time as she wanted provided she gave us a date up front so that we could arrange for interim care. However as an individual employer, I cannot afford to pay a nanny for that time as well as pay another nanny at the same time. In fact it was tight to double pay for even a couple of weeks as we ultimately did in that situation (and it's not the same as covering vacation or other PTO which tends to be more spread out and can be covered by families in a lot of ways). If this was a cost I had to factor into childcare (double paying childcare for weeks/months), I wouldn't be able to choose having a nanny - and I think a LOT of other families are in the same situation. It's not apples to apples comparing large employers (many of whom also don't offer paid leave anyway) and individual families.

That is a reasonable position. What is unreasonable are all of the posters on this thread acting as though a nanny is out of their minds or entitled to desire the same (measly) benefits that other women receive. I would be happy if we were simply afforded the same 12 weeks of job protection! No one was asking for months and months of paid leave. How about just not getting fired because we're pregnant. You know, the same rights women in every other industry have?

I am the PP you are responding to. I actually don't disagree with you but I think this is a more complicated issue than you are suggesting. For one, not all women get this protection. Should they? I would like that to be the case. But do they? As others have pointed out there are a lot of additional requirements (over 50 employees, employee been there for more than a year) and that is because smaller employers need the same protections families do since they cannot always cover that time off. Secondly, and I think this is the tough one, it puts the family in a really bad situation. Having actually been there I can tell you, long term temporary reliable good childcare is either exorbitantly expensive (usually through an agency that charges you a large fee for the privilege of the service, which is not in everyone's budget) or frankly, not good or not reliable. It's not like finding coverage for a week's vacation or a sick day - it's not so easy to cover the maternity leave period. And at the end of the day, if I don't have reliable child care, it puts my own job at risk. And if I don't have a job, I don't need a nanny. But the biggest problem was - at least for us - it was really really really tough on my child. I don't want to go into all the details because - as I said - I believe every woman deserves maternity leave and I do believe everyone's interests have to be balanced here. But after the whole thing blew up rather spectacularly in my face, I discovered that doing the right thing for my nanny meant I had done completely and totally the wrong thing for my child. Not great.

Despite this, I still would never suggest nannies or anyone else do not deserve maternity leave. Of course they do. And I could not imagine firing a woman because she is pregnant in any context (despite basically getting forced out of my own job while pregnant, FWIW.) But this is a much more complicated issue than you and others are painting it to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These same MBs would jump at the offer of paid leave for themselves with employers of over 50 people, but would fight against legislation that extended to us.

MB here. I support DC's proposal for city funded maternity leave for everyone and would happily pay higher taxes for it. I do not in any way begrudge nannies or anyone else maternity leave - as a mom, I get how important it is. As I posted earlier on this thread, I offered my nanny as much time as she wanted provided she gave us a date up front so that we could arrange for interim care. However as an individual employer, I cannot afford to pay a nanny for that time as well as pay another nanny at the same time. In fact it was tight to double pay for even a couple of weeks as we ultimately did in that situation (and it's not the same as covering vacation or other PTO which tends to be more spread out and can be covered by families in a lot of ways). If this was a cost I had to factor into childcare (double paying childcare for weeks/months), I wouldn't be able to choose having a nanny - and I think a LOT of other families are in the same situation. It's not apples to apples comparing large employers (many of whom also don't offer paid leave anyway) and individual families.

That is a reasonable position. What is unreasonable are all of the posters on this thread acting as though a nanny is out of their minds or entitled to desire the same (measly) benefits that other women receive. I would be happy if we were simply afforded the same 12 weeks of job protection! No one was asking for months and months of paid leave. How about just not getting fired because we're pregnant. You know, the same rights women in every other industry have?

I am the PP you are responding to. I actually don't disagree with you but I think this is a more complicated issue than you are suggesting. For one, not all women get this protection. Should they? I would like that to be the case. But do they? As others have pointed out there are a lot of additional requirements (over 50 employees, employee been there for more than a year) and that is because smaller employers need the same protections families do since they cannot always cover that time off. Secondly, and I think this is the tough one, it puts the family in a really bad situation. Having actually been there I can tell you, long term temporary reliable good childcare is either exorbitantly expensive (usually through an agency that charges you a large fee for the privilege of the service, which is not in everyone's budget) or frankly, not good or not reliable. It's not like finding coverage for a week's vacation or a sick day - it's not so easy to cover the maternity leave period. And at the end of the day, if I don't have reliable child care, it puts my own job at risk. And if I don't have a job, I don't need a nanny. But the biggest problem was - at least for us - it was really really really tough on my child. I don't want to go into all the details because - as I said - I believe every woman deserves maternity leave and I do believe everyone's interests have to be balanced here. But after the whole thing blew up rather spectacularly in my face, I discovered that doing the right thing for my nanny meant I had done completely and totally the wrong thing for my child. Not great.

Despite this, I still would never suggest nannies or anyone else do not deserve maternity leave. Of course they do. And I could not imagine firing a woman because she is pregnant in any context (despite basically getting forced out of my own job while pregnant, FWIW.) But this is a much more complicated issue than you and others are painting it to be.

Very well said.