Am I out of practice or was this a weird discussion with manager?

Poor managers won't make it as obvious as that because it will start as conversations. It will be minor things to unsettle you and make you doubt yourself. It will move onto a proper meeting then performance management.

Please start to document every conversation.

This is silly. Documenting everything shows firstly and most obviously she won’t be a push over if they turn it into performance management, which is a very useful message to send. If they haven’t a leg to stand on facts wise they need to pull their heads in. She can’t just ‘improve’ without having established how, nor is it right for her to feel like the only employee who has to work extra hours and exceed not meet targets because her manager has made some vague negative comments which are completely unsubstantiated but clearly flag they have an issue with her. A sex discrimination claim would be pretty hard to get up and running here, and not at all what I would think of first.

Maybe my company culture is terrible (big three strategy consultancy) but when those words are used here, it’s generally a path to performance management. Even if there were some good points in the feedback (there HAS to be some) if you still came away with these feedback points ringing in your head then that’s the main message they wanted you to get. Every manager I know does not risk giving that kind of (potentially discriminatory) feedback unless they feel they have a strong case to show how your work/life balance / double checking affects your performance.

it’s awful really and I am sorry you are going through this

So what time if your normal leaving time? As you said previously about leaving to get your child which manager said was fine, I assume you get your child, drop them with someone, and then go back to work? I assumed you meant something like 3pm, 5pm is standard corporate leaving time isn’t it?!

OP please don't do this in you want to stay in this role and progress at this company.

I agree that this could be the very early stages of something that turns into a sex discrimination claim. Keep a diary of what was said, send yourself contemporaneous emails recording conversations. Do what ever you want to do to make sure you have a record.

BUT whilst your manager may be a misogynistic arse, assuming he's an idiot is also a bad idea. Starting to need to document everything in writing is clearly someone who is preparing for this to be escalated and it doesn't take half a brain (particularly if you are in law) to see this as preparation for a sexual discrimination claim.

At the moment you have a manager who raised a concern. Yeah we all know that he wouldn't have said the same thing to a man. Yeah that's shit. But it is also the reality of the world that a lot of us work in. You would be completely in your rights to decide fuck this, I won't stand for it, but time and time again the outcome for the woman is not great.

You have the opportunity to address the concern yourself and in a totally professional manner, without a risk of seeming defensive or that you're going to try to 'pull the discrimination card'. Try that first. Bite your tongue and do what you need to do to show that you are not slacking off, the fact that you have recently pushed a baby out of your foof is not in any way relevant to your ability to contribute to the workplace. Honestly most of the time this works.

This may not work with this company, or with this manager, and you may have to go there, but then if you do escalate, you will have a whole long list of all of the things you have done to show that you absolutely are a top performer and it will be much harder for both your manager and your employer to badge you as 'difficult'. If you start making obvious moves towards a discrimination claim now based on a fairly vague statement (we all know what he meant but he didn't actually say anything that objectively was that bad) you're making it easy for your employer to pick the manager over you, and easy for a narrative to be spun that you blew up an innocuous comment and were trying to cover for your own poor performance.

I have confidence from what you've said you can manage this and come out of it smelling of roses and what will be remembered is a manager who was an arse and how well you dealt with it. I'm sorry that you're in this position, but you can do this.

Some people have difficulty aligning articulate, honest and open-hearted talk with professional standards. This is because they're wankers

This is so true! And if the public sector legal dept I once worked in was anything to go by, the more they could obfuscate things, the better.

OP, lots of good advice.
My advice would be treat this manager as hostile and watch your back.
Tell them nothing.
Keep excellent notes.
They sound like a misogynistic twat.
Detailed notes are very useful when dealing with people like that.

@pensandpapwrs everyone makes the occasional mistake. Don’t see what it's got to do with having kids or not, etc. Different if you were exhibiting signs of stress at pick-up time e.g. flapping, making specific mistake regularly around that time and so on but that clearly is not the case. I would maybe have a talk and actually ask what the connection is! Don’t tell him you did anything re childcare, that’s like admitting there was a problem when it looks like there is none to me. You can be blunt and say, there is no connection here. Maybe he has held off on giving you stuff so you could say ‘from my side I am getting everything done on a timely basis without issue, but if, for example, that is because I’m at 80% workload compared to others, then that’s on you for not giving me the info or suggesting a timeline for ramping up
to 100%. Please don’t treat me differently; it’s not helpful and without the full story, I can’t address any issue”.

forgot to say above, that if the employee was performing well, the improvement goals would often be agreed up front between employee and manager and they would often involve more training.

IN the company I worked for, the managers had to give some improvement goals which could also involve more training in the performance review documentation.. There was a special section for this and whether it was achieved or not was taken into account and discussed in the next performance review. This was also a criteria in the amount of pay raises the following year. i.e failure to complete the improvements normally resulted in a smaller percentage of the pay raise.

I am finding that "robust" is a new angle in people management, taking over from the caring about everyone's life outside work. Very productivity focussed after the slacking off of Covid. I get it, in general the pendulum swung very far from the level at which businesses can be run effectively.
From the information you give, it is very hard to judge whether your manager was being fair or whether he was just following the new trend of focussing on "robust" (or call it resilient, productive under pressure, etc.).

Personally, I wouldn't want to work for an organisation that doesn't have flexibility and doesn't value the working mother. I understand the need to put the work in and not leave work for other members of the team but it doesn't sound like you're doing that. It sounds like discrimination and I'd be logging all my work hours on a timesheet (if you don't already) and joining a union. Ask your boss for clarification first though.

I agree with those posters who say ignore everyone who says this is them gearing up to get rid of you.

You’ve mentioned many things which were positive and which indicate they expect you to continue in your post. It’s typical of the anxious over thinker (your phrase) that you are finding it hard to give the positives their full weight.

I think the two points this manager tried to raise were made poorly, as it is hard to figure out what actions and behaviours of yours he was really talking about.

You can ask him for a follow-up conversation to help you understand the feedback you received at the performance review. Remember though he may worry he got himself onto thin ice and that you may be preparing to complain.

If you have this conversation make sure you are highly professional - repeat the two points he made and say that you would like him to give you concrete examples of the behaviours that he thinks need to change. Emphasise this is because you want to be able to take the feedback on board and address it. Try to strike a diplomatic balance - don’t make it his fault for not explaining but don’t take the blame on yourself for not understanding.

If I was to read between the lines and guess. The tipping too much towards home life is likely to be what various posters suggest. I’d add: Are you by any chance underestimating the stress that others in the team are under who are not the parents of young children? When you are rushed do you make comments connecting the pressure you are feeling to you being a parent of a young child? As an “anxious over-thinker” did you used to work long hours to do the work in a way that made you comfortable, and you are having trouble adjusting to the constraints you now face?

You are adamant that you don’t talk about DD - firstly, in some workplaces the tolerance for women speaking about their children, childcare and so on is still unbelievably low, secondly, some people think they aren’t talking about their child or making references to their role as a parent but colleagues experience it quite differently.

The comment about robust is not unclear, it’s just not possible to tell from the post and your answers whether it’s fair or not.

I think I would ask yourself whether this manager is not great at managing a returner, or whether there is some truth in what he tried to say. I’d also ask myself whether some of what he said could have come from comments from others in the team, whether fair or unfair, and if so, what and why?

It sounds to me like they rate you, and as someone else said, they think it’s six months in and they want you to have fully adjusted to your new reality.

One hard nosed piece of advice. Always blank every comment and question that might be trying to sound you out about whether you are going to have another child soon (and go on mat leave again). Graciously respond to assurances that they see you as part of the great future of the team “that’s brilliant, thanks, I love being part of this team.”

I am not quite sure why everyone is piling up in the OP and thinking that her employer is necessarily right....

To me it sounds instead like they are trying to find a way to get rid of her now that she has a baby and to try to avoid a claim of discrimination they are slowly trying to undermine her and suggest her performance has dropped without providing concrete evidence.

OP, you need to email your manager and state that you like in writing a list of the concerns and clear details of what they would like you to do to address them.

But I must say in reality you need to prepare yourself for having to find a new job sooner than later because it sounds like they are trying to get you out.

Get everything in writing and get legal advice.

Honestly it’s none of your employers business, home life is just that. Who are they to even comment on that. Personally I’d reaffirm the boundaries and not let them drag you into working more (if you don’t want to).

Totally agree with all this post, especially the second paragraph. Nails it, in my opinion.

Btw, @pensandpapwrs, you can take it as a massive compliment that someone who writes as well as @Garlicbest comments favourably on your communication style!

I think you need to get everything in writing.

Id also suggest there’s potentially grounds for sex based discrimination if this goes further. Would a man doing exactly the same as you be told that his WLB wasn’t skewed? Absolutely not.

I agree with @BadSkiingMum, and I’m glad to see you picked up on her post. When you said that you had just commented on your work-life balance in a chatty way, my heart sank a little because I’m sure that’s when the manager latched onto that particular issue. It may even be that they are patting themselves on the back for ‘listening’ and telling you at the end of the meeting that you should work on this…

I also agree with PP who said that the impression you may give with the double-checking and appearing in a rush etc is probably where any issues with colleagues comes from. Think back - when you have double-checked in recent weeks, has anything you’ve done been wrong or needed adjustment? If not, maybe worth really trying to break this particular habit. That may be all you need to do to appear more ‘robust’. From everything else you’ve said it doesn’t sound like they have a long list of examples of your work not being up to scratch, so it’s likely to all be (incorrect) perceptions. This means you are correct to consider yourself to be doing a perfectly good job.

It sounds a bit, based on your post and updates, like they are trying to ensure you’re not planning a second child any time soon! Is your manager male by any chance? Does he have children?

As a previous PP lawyer I also assumed that was your job from the OP (not sure what that says about the profession..!) but aside from the fact that you definitely won’t have a union in that case (which is always trotted out here as an option), I agree with this PP that I wouldn’t go to HR unless this escalates a lot. I don’t think you’d recover from it in practical terms with this manager. Genuinely wish you the best of luck with this, it’s not easy and I’ve watched many colleagues do bedside stories from glass meeting rooms to stay in the office showing face. It’s not worth it!

I'd be concerned that this new manager has a vision for what his team looks like going into this "exciting new phase" and you're not in it. They might have liked how it worked while you were on mat leave and now you've come back and messed up their plans.
So obviously when you ask what you're doing wrong they have nothing. Because it's not you, it's them. Be very careful around people like this. They do not have your best interests at heart.
Hopefully this isn't the case, but it's just as well to protect yourself in case it is.

I love the way you write on here, OP. You come across as lively, open, straight to the point and honest. I'm guessing this is your natural style so you give that kind of impression when talking.

Some people have difficulty aligning articulate, honest and open-hearted talk with professional standards. This is because they're wankers, but it would be more helpful to view them as insecure - needing things to be done right, in their eyes, because they fear failure.

I agree with replies suggesting you lick the corporate arse a little more obviously! (Well, nobody's put it quite like that.) Show How Much You Value His Feedback by tweaking some things which you can then explicitly show as evidence that you take his comments seriously and he's successfully made you a better team member. Stop double-checking as much. Sound more definitive. Also bear in mind that somebody else might be trying to undermine you by exaggerating your concern for DD while at work - when colleagues invite you to talk about her, or about parenting, shut it down as non-commitally as you can.

Others are offering good suggestions; I just wanted to highlight the aspect at looking at this from the point of view of what your manager/colleagues need, rational or not.

Personally I think it's massively jumping the gun to interpret this as a first step in managing you out. It could be, of course, but it's by no means inevitable.

I've found that there is a certain type of manager who just cannot bear to not include something negative in any kind of review or appraisal meeting. It's a power thing I think, like they think they need to keep employees on their toes to stop then being complacent. I think it's just as likely that this is what's happening here, based on what you've said.

Not everyone is on your side. Not everyone will explain. When you query things they'll say it's fine because that's what everyone else does but 10 minutes later you are being pulled up about it.

You would be very naive to assume this manager has your back based on what you've said here.