AIBU about being treated unfairly after maternity leave?

yeah I could barely get past this either

I don't think they've been overly accomodating. I think it sounds like the bare minimum I'd personally expect. You've given them 10 years of (presumably very good, if you've risen to senior level) service. 3 months part time is not a lot of time to get settled and adjust into a role and establish if its working or not. Sometimes (poor) senior managers can be quite short-termist.

I have worked 3 days per week for 2.5 years since having my first DD. I have just gone off on mat leave again to have DC#2.

I have to be honest I have had the opposite problem where I am generally expected to get through an almost full time workload in 24 hours per week and it's hard. I end up working unpaid over time to keep on top of it. Which just hides the issue. I have had 2 jobs in that time (changed around 16 months ago). The 2nd employer is slightly better with regards to this.

As I only work 3 days but husband works 5 in a less stressful role if our daughter is ill he tends to take time off and we have also been lucky to have support from grandparents.

It's very hard being a working mother in terms of actually trying to maintain a decent career. Can you try talking to them again. The Autumn of the first year in nursery is the worst for bugs so likely the amount of illnesses will start to reduce x

If you've taken a full year off for maternity your employer doesn't have to give your original role back to you buy they have to give you a similar role. It could be that you constantly playing catch up is affecting the business and they have to act on that.
I know how shit it is returning from maternity leave, I recently returned after a year off and my 25th anniversary of working for the company passed a couple of weeks before I returned, nothing has been mentioned, no thanks, card etc, yet my team mate recently got £1000 for 10 years. Bitter pill to swallow.
I actually feel like an outsider looking in now.
I wasn't invited to the Christmas meal last year either 🤷‍♀️

4 times in 3 months is a lot - how many days in total?

I’d give the charity ‘pregnant then screwed’ a call. They’ll have a much better understanding of what is reasonable and what isn’t than most of us on mumsnet. They’ll be able to help you navigate it all too.

Returning from maternity leave is a funny time. You’re trying to get into the swing of things and so is your baby.

Personally I found a new job whilst on maternity leave as I knew my old workplace would be unsuitable regardless of how much they would talk the talk about being supportive. It was fast pasted and excessive out of hours working was often required.

My new job has higher pay, doing work I enjoy in a business where work life balance is valued.

A change in your work to better suit your new lifestyle doesn’t need to be a step back or a step off the career ladder as PP have suggested.

You do need to decide which is your priority as it’s really not possible to have it all in these circumstances.

if you want to keep on the same career trajectory without any hiatus, then as others have said, your child’s father needs to do a significant proportion of the sick days, you need to keep an eye on emails on non working days and answer those which will help your colleagues keep their own plates spinning, and you absolutely cannot miss deadlines. So if the child is sick, you’ve left work early or taken a day off and a deadline is looming, you need to work after the child has gone to sleep to meet your deadline even after if you have taken the day as annual leave.

The alternative is that you accept that your career will stall for a few years because your top priority is to be there for your child and enjoy these early years of parenthood. So you continue to do the bulk of the sick days, only work your paid hours, leave on the dot to pick the child up from nursery and can’t be relied upon to hit a deadline. Best case, you stay in a dead end role but don’t get promoted. Worst case, as you r seen, you get sidelined to a less prestigious role and in the future may find that your role is marked for redundancy.

The good news is that the early childhood years go past quite quickly and once all your children are in school, assuming you have decent childcare particularly over school holidays, you can pick your career back up (often by moving to a new company where you don’t have the baggage of being that work to rule mum) and start to progress again. There are loads of women in senior positions in interesting jobs who have a family. There are fewer of us in those positions who have pre school age children though!

You've not been treated unfairly. They've accommodated you as much as they can. As long as your new role is on the same grade.

@CluelessToddlerMum i could have written this. I left work about 6 weeks ago due to being managed out and whilst they make the right sounds they actually aren’t giving you support to do the role. The fact you had no workload shows you are an excess really to the team but they have to keep you on. Literally the exact same happened to me; and whilst they allowed me to go part time, I had no client base allocated so literally had nothing to do. To top it off, they underpaid me in my final paycheque so they now owe me money.

I have resigned myself to having another year at home, keeping a part time nursery place, doing some other projects and going back to work at a later date.

I don’t know know of a single woman in real life who hasn’t had a shit time in one way or another going back to work after maternity.

If you have a partner who dies shy work away, you should start sharing sick days with them.

Actually quite disgusted by the percentage of people voting YABU

It's fine and normal for people to have a well reasoned and opposite point of view, particularly if based on practical experience of this situation from either side.

That's not similar to OP's situation at all

I have a line report not long back from mat leave working compressed hours. As with many parents in autumn she's had to make unexpected trips to nursery to collect her little one who has been ill, go to GP etc. I always make it clear I don't need her to make the time up because her work is high quality and she over delivers in my view. And that's the point, she's getting the work done.

It seems fair to me; what do you want to prioritise career or family? If you want to prioritise career you need to go back full time and find a nanny.

If you want to prioritise family, be happy for the part time position, slow down for a few years. Enjoy your little one, they grow up quickly and go back full time when they are in school.

My female boss has a young child and I don’t remember she taking any time off for her child or herself but she does work from home and work around it I guess.

Everything has a price. Which one you want.

I worked part time and put my career behind until youngest one was in year 5. I don’t regret it at all; I love being around to my kids, spending time with them on the holidays. They are very close to me. Now they are olde I work in a full time, fast pace job.

Something else to consider is the type of childcare. DC1 went to a childminder. She was able to be a lot more flexible about taking DC when poorly.

Employers do tend to make a lot of assumptions about women returning after maternity leave.

When a woman becomes a parent it is assumed she is less interested in her career. She will be given less interesting and career advancing projects. It is assumed that she will be the default parent if child is ill. If she asks for a half day to go to school sports day/special assembly/whatever eyes will be rolled and this will be seen as evidence of her lack of career commitment.

When a man becomes a parent it is assumed he is more interested in his career. He will be given more interesting and career advancing projects. It is assumed the other parent normally deals with child being ill. If he asks for a half day to go to school sports day/special assembly/whatever he will be applauded.

Seen this and experienced it many times. These assumptions are made even when the evidence in front of the employer contradicts them.

They gave you P/T hours and you complained you didn’t have enough work. Then when they gave you additional work you couldn’t complete it and took days off.

When I went back after MAT leave, I shared all sick days with dp, and was lucky to get two promotions within the first 12 months. Honestly if I’d taken all of the sick days I don’t think that would have happened.

When my kids were v small, I was PT and we had an arrangement that if the kids were sick, my husband would take the hit if possible. To not go in on a 3 day week is bad, on a 5 day week it’s more manageable so we protected my days at all costs. Can you and your DH do that?

Another woman returned on the same arrangement as me but she did equal or more sick cover. They saw it as protecting her husband’s job which had got more important to them. She was pushed out, his soared (same company).

This is the long haul so try to come to an arrangement now with DH that works.

I see you have taken annual leave. But it just isn't working. You will need to have a long hard think about whether it's worth fighting to keep your old job which seems to have changed anyway.

If you have had a lot of time off then I'm not surprised they are reluctant to give you more responsibility. You need to make arrangements for child care when your child is ill. I don't think you have been treated unfairly at all. Some places might have sent you a warning re your absences.

You and your husband need to decide if you are prepared to sacrifice your career to allow his to continue or if you will share this burden. You already suffer the disadvantage of being female, have had a pregnancy, maternity leave, reduced days and now are taking time off work on top of those two days. Regardless of what it feels like to your husband, his career and future earning potential is much more robust than yours. He could and should negotiate flexibile working arrangement where he guarantees tobe at work the two days you are off and works flexibly the other three, making time up in the evening / weekends or simply drops down to 3 or 4 days for 6 months while your child settles into this cycle of illness.. or.. you get a nanny.

Employers see this all the time.. successful women, great career prospects, but parenting falls on them and not their husbands.. the impact of the odd day off here or there is proportionatly higher on part time workers. Your DH may have shared the sick days... but her hasn't.. because you have 2 days out of work every day.

I do not believe that we go into parenthood fully understanding the impact it will have on our lives. We ignore the evidence of women in old age, in low paid, part time jobs with minimal pensions and we say.. that won't be me.. I am worth more to my employer.. they will not throw away my experience.. ignoring the fact that there is a new wave of people only too ready to step into the gap that we open up.

We also completely underestimate the impact becoming a mother will have on our sense of self and sense of obligation to our children. What proportion of this is socially imposed on us and what is driven by the hormonal coding of our responses as a result of the biological imperatives associated with the human design which compels us to keep our babies safe... we will never know.

It is possible to have a career and a family, but unless you choose to share that burden equally with your partner, your career will suffer. Equal means he takes fays off until he has had 9 months or a year off.. I would wager than the impact on a mans career of taking short notice unpaid leave to look after children when they are ill, totalling 9 months, would be equal over their entire career as maternity leave has on a woman's career. (On average... he would eventually find another job if he lost his.. whereas many women end up having a complete career shift that reduces their entire lifetime earnings).

Is it worh husband having a six figure salary and you not working.. compared to you both earning half that each.. it is impossible to truly assess all of the factors that go to evaluating this.

3 days per week for 3 months is 36 working days… how many of those have you had off for a sick baby?

We all know how hard it is. My team have kids, I have a kid. Been there, done that! However it’s impossible, at least in my business, to do a good job when you are part time and taking a lot of additional time off.

I don’t think you are being completely unreasonable. It’s sad that still a man and a woman can have a child but it is the woman’s career that is affected the majority of the time.

More often than not, it's the woman who decides to go back PT, though, not the man.

If you were a new hire then 3 months would be your probationary period, after which they’d decide if you stay or go completely. If you’re not performing and able to carry out the role as required then you go. I’d say you’re fairly lucky they’ve found you an alternative role.

Employers need to make reasonable adjustments. We are all human.

I think they have been made though.

OP, I do understand but there are times you just have to tread water. Give yourself a year for your DS to get over the constant nursery bug churn and see where you're at then.

I think it's logical for work to feel a little frustrated: they've been incredibly accommodating, then you haven't even been able to work the three days a week they've allocated. It must be very hard for them to progress with projects with someone who's only there a couple of times a week on random days.