Curious about (lack of) mat leave in USA. How do women cope?

[Ed1n]

Reading another thread about WFH with a newborn which got me thinking. I’m on mat leave and cannot imagine returning to work at twelve weeks, which is I understand, fairly typical (even best case) in US. Any stateside mumsnetters able to give insight into how long most women really take, what is childcare provision like etc?

It seems such a different set up! How do you breast feed, cope with sleep deprivation and decision making.

Googling suggests Estonia is the generous country for paid mat leave. USA the worst.

@BoredZelda My daycare costs $2900 per month for an infant and $2600 for a toddler.
Not sure what it would cost in the UK?

A nanny runs you about $3k a month off the books here, so it's almost a wash with one child.

Without insurance it would have cost $140,000!!! With insurance it cost her $5,000

Well no one is paying that sticker price. There are steep ‘discounts’ for cash payers. Honestly the hospitals have no idea what any particular service costs and they LIKE it that way. Better to rip off insurance companies (who in turn rip off their customers).

With mat leave, it varies a great deal by company. No federally mandated paid leave doesn’t equal no paid leave. Anecdotally it seems to be roughly between six to twelve weeks paid leave.

Yeah it’s not a lot by European standards, but if you want to climb up the greasy pole, you really can’t take long leaves. American feminism unfortunately has tended to care more about getting women into the board room rather than allowing them to get more time with their families

@Ed1n

Thanks for the insights so far. It must be hard to breast feed/ express. We’re very lucky in the uk

Yet the US still has better breastfeeding rates than the UK.

In the UK, 81% of mothers had tried breastfeeding at some point, but only 34% were breastfeeding at six months and 0.5% at 12 months.

In the US, 79% started, 49% were still going after six months and 27% after a year.

From BBC article

Yet the US still has better breastfeeding rates than the UK

Got to be partially the pumping thing (easier for most than you think as the home machines are really very good) and the popularity of combi-feeding (ie using formula at nursery but breastfeeding when home)

I guess exclusive formula feeding is seen as kind of low class too, which is a bit unfair as the state-funded WIC programme only very recently started supporting breastfeeding.

@jiggeryjaggerywoo

Don't US workers only get a couple of weeks annual leave a year too??

The USA is one of only a few countries that doesn't have mandatory leave, it's up to the employer.

There is also a trick employers can use where benefits are only for full time employees so they employ people on 90% contracts with guaranteed overtime, but because you are not full time you don't get the benefits.

@Bunnycat101 I have LOADS of sick leave. I get the NY state mandated 56 hours PLUS another 20 days from my employer. Technically we have unlimited sick leave, but for that you need to be signed off by a doctor and seriously ill.

That's not really 'loads', before I was diagnosed with arthritis and was off work for pain, physio, tests etc I could have taken 6 months fully paid leave and a further 6 months on 50% pay.

After that I would have had to go onto statutory sick pay.

Breastfeeding in the US is very much a MC and UMC thing.

This coincides with the sort of work mothers do and the sort of facilities and accommodations employers make.

It also coincides with the 6 weeks unpaid mat leave vs much more time divide.

Women who are facing the prospect of going back to work (and not necessarily to the position they had before giving birth, incidentally) really, really want to get their baby to start sleeping through the night or to be able to share night time feeding duty with a partner or someone else in the household. Hence formula.

@Megalameg

Is the US really “the worst”? Worse than Afghanistan say?

But anyway perhaps it’s a good thing, why should the rest of society pick up the slack both at work and financially for the women who want to play SAHM when it suits them, then just have the rest of the country pay up and provide them with the job they left back when it suits them?
It’s not practically efficient and is basically entirely selfish on those women’s part and revolves all around what they want without a thought for how it’s provided for them. Which is at everyone else’s expense.

Real talk - SAHM mother’s provide more care for less and are less of a burden on society than working mothers who live subsidised by state welfare (which is what long maternity leave is).
Yet we’re a totally undervalued group.

"play sahm" is that what taking maternity leave is to you? How disgusting and judgey.

Nothing wrong with allowing PARENTS (not just mothers) to work AND have families.

And, if you want to look at the economics of it, working parents pay a ton more in tax than they get back from maternity/paternity leave than a SAHP. You're not subsidising them, you just don't pay in as much. It's your choice but don't judge others for theirs.

@PurpleOkapi

Most employers are required to offer 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Some employers and a few states offer paid leave. There are also optional short-term disability programs that cover pregnancy.

Intelligent women (and men) factor this into their family planning, and ensure they've saved enough to cover whatever leave they want before having a child. Less intelligent ones do whatever they want with nary a thought for the practicalities, same as everywhere else, and then whine about it and expect everyone else to bail them out when they can't afford it, same as everywhere else.

Do you have any idea how hard life is in the US for working class folk? Minimum wage is not a living wage and the lack of benefits mean people live on a knife edge.

This is nothing to do with intelligence. It's in the interest of the state to ensure that children get off to the best possible start.

Basically, what you're saying is taht poor people should not have children. Because someone working at Walmart, without benefits, will not be able to afford 12 weeks off, plus rent/mortgage, plus health insurance, plus daycare. It's not possible, not even on 2 salaries. Do the math.

In the UK, 81% of mothers had tried breastfeeding at some point, but only 34% were breastfeeding at six months and 0.5% at 12 months

Yeah it really doesn’t seem correlated much with maternity leave length when you compare US and UK wrt breastfeeding. Not that maternity leave isn’t beneficial in other ways of course!

Not the US but another country where maternity is by law 12 weeks. However this is paid by the company with no help so in reality people are pushed to come back sooner particularly if they work for smaller family businesses rather than public sector or big organisations. As a developing country the rights are not hugely well enforced and as a result less senior workers who don't know their rights or have the resources to fight for them are treated badly.
My employeer is seen as generous because we get the full 12 weeks and can add on an extra 4 weeks of annual leave. DPs employer begrudgingly gives the 12 weeks but pressures people to return after 6 weeks and any leave for the year is removed as they're considered to have taken it while on maternity

I'm in the UK but I'm self-employed so when my baby arrives in April, I'll only be taking about 6 weeks maternity leave. It's all I can afford really and I can't leave the business to just flounder for a year while I'm on mat leave else there won't be a business left to go back to.

6 weeks is paltry but I also (personally) think a year is far too long and does women no favours in the workplace, especially if they go on to have more children. I think 6 months is perfect. Plus it's easier to put a baby in nursery at that age than when they are that bit older.

The key is not cut back on parental/family leave but to allow and encourage men to take it as well. Benefits all around.

@HyacinthsHydrangeas

Re: breastfeeding/pumping, this is actually a right that is protected by US federal law for breastfeeding mothers. Workplaces have to provide a private space for nursing women to express milk, and the place cannot be a bathroom. (Like other rules mentioned by PP, this mandate only applies to employers with more than 50 employees.) I breastfed for 15 months but returned to work after 3 months and found it very doable to express milk at work.

Presuming you're at work for at least 8-9 hours, how do you get the expressed milk to the baby during that time?

‘The American Dream’ -a masterpiece of gaslighting.

Thanks for the insights so far. It’s interesting reading. Just to clarify

In the uk your job is protected for 52 weeks but not on full pay. Legally I believe 6 weeks of 90% pay and 33 of stat mat pay which is £152 ish a week. In the nhs it’s 8 weeks full pay, 18 weeks half pay, 13 weeks stat mat pay, 13 weeks unpaid.

I’m not sure a year mat leave is typical in the uk but the option is there.

I’d thought about the UK low breast feeding rates despite relatively good maternity benefits. It’s an interesting one. As is the provision/quality and cost of childcare.

The USA situation still seems extremely hard for low earners as does the healthcare/welfare in general.

@Ajl46 You're expressing for the next day's daycare feeds. So you store it in the fridge/coolbox at work and take it home and that goes with baby the next day.

Like lots of other people have said, if what you're doing is 'the norm' in the time and place where you're living, you just get on with it. When I had my eldest dc I returned to work when she was 12 weeks because that's was the norm in the U.K. back then. There was no paternity leave at all.

Physically it was hard work but tbh perhaps easier in a couple of respects: I didn't feel out of the loop at all with work whereas I can imagine after a whole year out, it might knock your confidence and going back would feel like a much bigger step. Also, with a 12 week old there's no separation anxiety whereas I've noticed some of my young colleagues who start leaving their baby when they're about a year, have a far more difficult time getting them settled in childcare.

Also interesting that a couple of people have raised bf and wondered if the shorter ML affected bf rates. I haven't seen any evidence that it did; I believe the factors that determine the likelihood of mothers bf are different things than whether the mother works or not. I was going back to work in a professional role and continued bf as did my friends who returned to work after 12 weeks.

[quote Starcaller]@Ajl46 You're expressing for the next day's daycare feeds. So you store it in the fridge/coolbox at work and take it home and that goes with baby the next day. [/quote]
Thanks - I guess at some point you have to express enough in advance to cover a full day. I would have really struggled with that as I had low supply (hence I was curious as to how it works).

@ODFOgrinch

When I had my babies (uk) we had 3 months stat mat pay, topped up by employers if lucky, but if we wanted longer we topped up with annual leave or went unpaid. No one took more than 6 months. Plus if you had a career there was an expectation to get back to work. Babies started weaning at 12 weeks and usually slept through the night by 16 weeks. Nurseries were geared up to take babies from 8/9 weeks as standard. We didn't think we were missing out because everyone was in the same situation. I guess it's the same for those now who have less lengthy maternity leave than in the UK.

When was this hallowed time where babies slept differently?

I have a few friends who went back this early - all in surgical training. Most had nannies, some had dad stay at home, some had parents live with them.

I laughed so hard at the poster who was all ‘imagine not doing any night feeds’ hahahahaha you mean like half the husbands of mumsnet mums? The double standards are breath taking.

FTR my friends still got up in the night, as did I and every other dr/mum I know. It’s only men who can’t get up in the night bc work.

@Igneo
I have a child the same age, 2004, and only had 6 months paid leave... it was maybe a discretionary benefit that your employer chose to offer anything over 6 months. My employer did not offer more than statutory so if i recall correctly it was 6 weeks full pay, and then the next 4.5 month SMP

I had exactly the same - my son was born in 2004.
I worked up until 2 weeks before my due date (i wanted to work up to 40 werks but wasn't allowed) but as he was 2 weeks late, I only ended up with 5 months mat leave with my baby.

@FATEdestiny That mat leave was very generous for 2004!

I went back to work here in UK at 12 weeks for both children, albeit part time. I was self employed in a professional partnership so it was very much like employment.

Our babies were dropped at a childminder for 9 and collected at 1. I breast fed them there when I arrived back. Your body adapts but its uncomfortable at first and if you get caught in traffic! I breast fed each until about a year old.

I stopped work the day before my first was born! Although I'd not arranged client appointments for two weeks.

For my second I did have two weeks off because he was two weeks late. I still worked up to the due date, again with fewer appointments.

I had both of mine in the Netherlands where it’s 16 weeks at full pay. I was delighted to go back to work as was bored witless at home. Everything “done” by 9am and just another 12 hours to kill.

I’m not convinced 12 months does a mother’s mental health any good - we see it all the time on MN that women can’t face going back to work.