To think it's sexist to complain about women taking maternity leave?

[novemberblue]

Name changed.

I'm a teacher. Quite a few women have gone off on maternity leave.

I'm shocked by the responses colleagues make! They regularly complain and say things like, she's only just had one, wish I got paid to be off for a year and one woman has four children and they say she's out more than she's in.

Aibu to think it's sexist and out of order?

From April 2015 parents will be able to share the leave, meaning the men will no longer have anything to moan about. It will be interesting to see how many partners take up the offer - not many of them, I bet.

A ballot at work, probably, so all employees can have a say.

Parents have been allowed to share the leave since 2011 but with less flexibility. Most companies keep pretty quiet about it though!

The trouble with comments like 'only 3 months into the year' is that it assumes people are able to control their fertility - many assume it'll take some time to conceive and it happens quickly, and some think it will happen quickly, especially if it has for previous pregnancies, and it takes for bloody ever a long time.

Taking any maternity leave also hugely disadvantages a woman's carreer which is a high price to pay. You may get a year off, a couple of months of which may be paid, but you spend a lifetime making up for it and usually never catch up carreer-wise.
Sexism.

To a certain extent, the respect you give to your employer depends on the respect they give you. My current boss is excellent and very keen on ensuring everyone has a work life balance and that life comes first (he happily gives me time off if dd is sick etc). He recently employed someone who was 5 months pregnant because he wanted the right person for the job. I have just told him I am pregnant and his response was to open up a discussion about ensuring that work can be flexible around any appointments and reminding me that my health must be top priority.
Because of this, people wouldn't plan baby after baby while working for him just to squeeze out as much money as possible.
This is how it should be.

However my last employer was the opposite. When I told them I was pregnant, they offered absolute minimum but also hinted at "of course if you're not planning to come back afterwards, you can just leave now and forfeit any maternity pay".
So given the chance, I would have happily taken every penny with no thought for the repercussions for them.

I'm struggling to see how, in teaching, a teacher's absence on ML has an impact on colleagues. In every case I've encountered, a supply teacer is employed to cover the timetable. This includes planning and marking and this what they do.

echt

Not all supply teachers are made equally/experts in what they are asked to cover.

It does make a difference to GCSE and A Level age pupils, less to younger children.

Alis, then the employer is recruiting the wrong sort of supply teacher.

I can see how that could happen, but have not encountered it.

The system is inherently sexist. It's not new for humans to reproduce. It's not new for tiny babies to need round the clock care. And yet despite this all not being news to anyone the system STILL disproportionately disadvantages women (career impacts, financial sacrifice etc) and places the bulk of the burden for continuing the species on them.

SMP and unpaid maternity leave are a small offset to this in the grand scheme of things but still entrench disadvantage (companies not hiring women of childrearing age in case they have babies etc). Shared parental leave will be better but a cultural shift to get men to take it is a long way off.

Blaming women for taking mat leave rather than blaming the system is unfair and quite selfish.

Quite true scurry. Just speaking from my experience of being a pupil in fairly recent history in terms of the issue which can be caused.

Isn't the fault of the teacher on maternity leave though.

Goes back again to what someone said upthread about poor management.

I received nothing but respect and happiness when I took maternity leave (they knew how long it had taken), which is one of the reasons I went back at 6 months. My DH, on the other hand, was treated like dirt when he announced he wanted to take additional paternity leave. So I think both genders can experience sexism when exercising their family rights.

However, I can understand how disruptive it is, when a women take maternity leave only a few months after returning.

In my company we get 9 months full pay. We have had a few that have 3-4 in a row barely coming back for 6 months. It does impact everyone.

Makes me so angry when people complain about this.

Sometimes babies aren't planned, sometimes you can't predict when your fertility will kick in and give you another child. And in teaching it isn't ever a whole year off paid- such utter bollocks.

And a strong head nod to those unthread who have said it is poor management- shocking how awful schools are at dealing with mat leave, especially given the high number of female staff in education, you would think they would have got better at this by now!

I don't think people are saying it's selfish and that women are audacious for having another baby quickly - only acknowledging that yes, there is an impact on other staff, businesses, children (if a teacher). Surely acknowledging this is for the best and will start an open and honest dialogue about what is best for everyone?

This attitude does annoy me. You work to live. You know, live your life. Why should women be expected to put their job/colleagues above the rest of their life?

I really hope it becomes a lot more common for men to share parental leave, it will be fairer on everyone, including employers.

It's not related to anatomy. Giving birth and recovery is a about 2 months. After that it could be men taking care of the child at home. But they don't. It is expected of women. It's a given. And then they get judged for taking the maternity.
Nursery is hugely expensive and it's not unreasonable to not want a tiny baby in full time care.
Someone has to look after children. Don't blame women for being the ones who actually do it. Try and change it so men step up.

only acknowledging that yes, there is an impact on other staff, businesses, children (if a teacher)

But that's not the responsibility of the woman taking maternity leave, that's the responsibility of the person who is paid to resource staff and is doing a bad job. Maternity leave should be an easy one, too. They get months of notice to sort out adequate cover. Their failure to do their job is the problem.

I suppose it depends on what kind of complaint it is.

Is it

this shouldn't be allowed

or is it

this is annoying and inconvenient

I sometimes might complain about someone being ill or on holiday and having to cover their work or not being able to get something done without them, but it doesn't mean that I disapprove of taking holidays, or think they are faking being ill, it's just ANNOYING for me at that moment.

YANBU. People have a right to have children. Maybe WOHMs should leave work when they go into labour and go back when the baby's born?

I don't think anyone would say that taking ML is unreasonable; but some women - the ones who play the system, come back from one ML pregnant, take another year off a few months later....plan their pregnancies to do that; then yes, they are having an impact. I have 2 DD - 2 years age gap so yes, I probably pissed off some of my colleagues as I went off on ML for my second early due to ill health. I was only off on ML for 6 months for each one though. I still think that it's not unreasonable for women to acknowledge that maybe their absence does have an impact on their employer and that it is not just a case of bad management.

but in the case of teachers, realistically, assuming the best case scenario that the pregnancies do occur roughly when planned, you can think a bit about the impact on the students. My 2 were roughly planned so that I only missed the last part of one term which was all revision and my colleagues covered my exam classes so they had specialist teaching. When we have got mat cover in the past it is not always possible to recruit really good quality, subject specialists who can teach up to A level - when posts are of relatively short duration, there is a small pool of candidates - its not always poor management, just reality. When I returned, I did so when DD was about 5 months because t made sense to go back at the start of the year instead of having the students start off with someone random for the first 6 weeks of their GCSE / A level courses. If you are going to be a professional, there has to be a balance between the needs of work and home - you just can't have it all - 100% flexibility and doing what perfectly suits you as well as keeping a professional role. It will help that men can now take more leave and it will take time for employers (and some men) to get to grips with that, but whether its men or women taking the time, I don't think it is unreasonable for employers and colleagues to expect that an employee is giving SOME consideration to the impact that their choices will have. When timing isn't ideal, that can't be helped, as others have rightly said, but its all about attitude. One of my friends is a Head and had a nightmare with one colleague who refused to say in Feb /March when the next year's timetable was being drawn up what % of a full timetable she wanted to return to in Sept as she "didn't have to, by law, until June". That made timetabling her role very difficult as they didn't know if they needed to recruit a p/t person, if she would take exam classes etc. I told my head right away what my intentions were with regard to returning so that they could plan around it. In return, they have been great in terms of accomodating my requests in subsequent years for specific hours / days etc. There will always be employers and employees who take the piss and work the system in all sorts of ways. I do think "sexist" is not quite the right term though.

why does it matter how long you have between babies? If I have 2 mat leaves of one year each, why does it matter if I am only back a few months between them? Maybe it actually matters less, because if you come back to work pregnant and inform your employer, they can try to keep the cover arrangements they had in place before, if not continuously they can at least inform the person that a new contract will be coming up soon and that way they can perhaps retain the acquired skills of the contractor within the business.

Many companies, including schools, I suppose, try to do maternity cover on the cheap and then work will fall to colleagues. That's not fair, not because someone went on maternity leave, but because other people were given extra work with no reward.