To think maternity leave will impact employment opportunities

[Parpulous]

I'm sure that legally employers aren't allowed to discriminate against women reentering the workforce after maternity leave, but I can't help but be suspicious that it would be harder to re-enter the workforce after taking being a SAHM after 6-12 months than if a woman were to move straight from one job to another?

I'm in the lucky position to start thinking about starting a family. However I've only been in full time professional employment for 1 year. Prior to this, I've been a student, holding down numerous part-time jobs throughout my studies and now hold a Masters.

I'm currently living abroad and am in steady employment. However husband's contract runs out in December 2020 so we'd be moving back to the UK soon after my maternity leave would finish. I'm just nervous that employers may be offput by my short industry experience followed by mat leave, and might guess that I would soon want to try for a second child whilst working for them and discretely count this against me.

Anyone with similar experiences who can give me advice? Should I postpone TTC until i have more industry experience under my belt or will this not realistically make a difference? Any HR professionals out there who secretly would hold this against me?

Bump.

I'm not HR but I can comment from my experience

The reality for me was , rightly or wrongly that yes two maternity leaves set back my career ,it's only now back on track

However , I realise this will be unpopular but I expected it , for whatever reason at all if you have 6 to 9 to 12 months out of the workforce you have definately got some catching up to do.
I don't entirely agree that it's all about the employer being responsible I worked for third sector and charitable and the reality was that they were impacted by having me off and couldn't leave the post open.

The first one I returned at part time and in time the reality was I struggled at the same grade. A very large part of that was that my Exdh was not helping with child care etc.

I was very established in my career and actually it didn't really help but I do believe it has helped me return to my senior grade in general but bear in mind my DC are 6 and 3

Everyone will have different e experiences, from my point of view I needed current experience to stay at my level but if I had a trade so to speak like a nurse pin number it may have been simpler (although then of course shift work which is a bugger to cover)

My advice would be ,be realistic , I personally think it's irrelevant the views of HR as they don't often make the decision to hire. And if your prospective line manager has an issue you don't want to work for them anyway

With ds2 I accepted my career would stall and that was ok , I always worked but I had to accept promotion wasn't likely to be an option for the first year

So I accepted it and when they got older geared up again (I'm the higher earner in the family so staying at home for me was not an option)

Make sure your DP or DH understands the impact properly and will help ,not doing that killed my marriage and God knows doing a senior management role as a single parent to two under 5 pretty much nearly killed me

Be realistic and accept it but don't try to work for anti family companies if you can help it it's not worth it...the stress would be horrendous

Don't know if any of that helps purely my experience

Its not right but only a fool would think it will have no impact

You are asking a few different things of yourself here.

1. Do you work a bit longer in your industry to gain experience before taking a break for mat

1. Will you be penalised for being fresh from mat in an interview for a new job.

The first is up to you - but there is never a perfect time and you can’t time babies either.

I am 31 and post masters spent 10 years in my career before getting pregnant this year. I am ready. But does that tenure make me feel more secure in my role, or more certain that I will be considered for promotions etc while I am out on mat? No.

The thought of discrimination sucks yes - and I raged against it a lot when I first found out I was pregnant. But you do what you can, show commitment etc. And who knows what your life priorities will be once your family starts to grow.

Good luck.

@gettingbackonmyfeet - precisely put. I know my OH (same field) will likely get promotion and pay rise in the time I am out on mat. I’m not there - so unless they’re feeling particularly generous, I won’t.

In my experience, maternity leave does negatively impact your career. It’s not right, it makes me really angry, but I don’t know any women (myself included) who hasn’t found that to be the case. I’m not saying there aren’t women who it doesn’t happen to. I just don’t know any.

Any chance you could wait until you're employed in the UK before having a first child? In the UK you could look at shared parental leave, if you think that might work for you and your DH.

Bear in mind that all women of childbearing age will face the same discrimination whether or not they ever intend to have children. No escaping that, unfortunately, at the present time.

Totally depends on your role and value to the organisation/ industry. I found the opposite because my employer were worried that I wasn’t going to come back (don’t forget, mat leave is also x months paid leave to look for another role, or just decide not to come back at all) and promoted me before I came back.

I’ve had 2 further jobs as a mother of 1 (not that they knew- how would they?) that didn’t affect my chances of getting the role. But I’m fairly specialist in an industry where there is a bit of a shortage of good candidates

I had no problem finding decent, professional, part time work in my chosen profession in which I was recently qualified when I started looking for work after I had my first baby, my previous job having ended when I was pregnant. I appreciate I was lucky though.

It depends where you work really, big organisations can soak it up financially but small self employed businesses still practice discrimination by the bucket load. I work for small businesses and find many of them only employ old women and young men. Great for me I am employed non stop as I'm well over 50. A couple have said outright when I've gone for the job they don't employ women of child bearing age.

Best thing to do is wait until you’re employed in the UK (with a family friendly employer) and go on maternity leave when you will have a job to return to. But it all depends on your age. If you’re nearing 35 then you’d best just start TTC now and take your chances. If you’re around 25 then you’ve got plenty of time.

I think a lot depends on the sector you work in. I work in HR in the public sector. Yes, if you're physically out of the work place for a year or so you have a bit of re-adjustment to do when you come back and you'll miss out on stuff that's going on while you're away. However, ime, having a maternity leave absence won't make any difference to how attractive you are as a candidate in a recruitment process.

I had 12 years out as a SAHM and didn't have a major issue finding work again. I've gone back at the same level I was when I left (I did make strenuous efforts to keep up to date). Obviously my peers who didn't have time out are have now overtaken me by a long way in terms of career progression.

I imagine there are sectors out there that are more ruthless but that's my experience.

I didn't acknowledge my maternity leave on my cv - I'd been employed by that company for the duration so rightly or wrongly absorbed into the duration of employment field.

I ended up looking for a new job after being back a couple of months. And yes it does impact, as my 'redundancy' situation bore out.

Why would you even tell a potential new employer you'd been on maternity leave? I'd be saying for example "NHS 2012-2018" not "NHS 2012-2015, 9 month's maternity, then until 2018"

Sorry one more point though , do your research well on companies to see if they are family friendly. Find comments from past employees and look as hard into it as you can

I worked for one employer who were famously family friendly in my industry ,they was lyrical about it as much as possible , they were horrendous , expecting emails to be returned at 2 am , expecting the most horrific hours,for example I worked from 7 am to 7pm , put the kids to bed then worked 8.30 to 1 am and they considered that absolutely standard.

Another company I worked for actually didn't advertise family friendly behaviour but it was because they considered it basic courtesy and were amazing in regards to time off etc

The right company males a world of differenc

Why would you even tell a potential new employer you'd been on maternity leave?

I wouldn’t tell them about maternity leave taken within a job, but when I had my first child I had a gap in employment as my job had ended so I needed to explain that on my CV

Maternity leave doesn’t put a gap in your CV unless you leave- in which case it’s the same as explaining any other gap. As an interviewer I see gaps a lot and as long as you can explain them (hell, even if it’s - I wanted some time off to redecorate my house) they’re fine

It's always easier to return to a role where you're known than start from scratch. I'd also think about whether you want to go part time, if so then it's usually easier when you've already been employed rather than trying to find a part time role

There is no right time though, some people have kids earlier then can start and build a career without any interruptions. And some wait til their career is well established first

Having my maternity peave of 11 konths hasn't negatively impacted my career. I wotked hard prior to leaving and have had confirmation of bonus and payrise i will get this month.

I have used all 10 KIT days, and have already confirmed with senior managers my work packages for when i start, most are my projects i was working on prior to going on leave, and i have picked up a couple extra that i have requested.

I will be ready to go for promotion in the summer, as was always the plan.

Thank you for all your answers, really interesting reading some real-life experiences.

Why would you even tell a potential new employer you'd been on maternity leave? - you make a fair point, however the country I'm now living in only has 42 days maternity leave which I think would be far too little. I'd ideally have at least 6 months to bond and adjust to my child (if it should work out). So, realistically I would have to leave my employment (pretty sure my company would not continue my contract even if it was unpaid maternity leave). Therefore, I would almost definitely need to explain this gap to a potential employer.

I know that there's no ideal time to have a child, however I feel like I would possibly find the process less frustrating if I took some years out in the beginning of my career rather than in the middle of it (so that it wouldn't feel like I was taking a step back). I was hoping to gauge whether this is a good idea or not!

Probably waiting until I'm back in the UK would be the best option as maternity and paternity rights are stronger, but I'm so broody and (perhaps selfishly) would prefer not to wait another 5 years to have a child (2 years contract here, plus at least another 2 years working in the UK to be eligible for full maternity benefits from employer (?)).

I guess I'm not sure to what extent I'm being naive and to what extent I'm overthinking this whole thing! Obviously there's a chance that I may not be able to have a child at all... but I do think that being armed with other women's experience of re-entering the workforce and the realities of post-maternity employment is helpful.

Sorry for rambling!

Maternity leave is part of continuous employment-so it needn't go on the CV. However if you leave your job then that's different.
Do not ever mention maternity leave unless you have to. Only a year proper experience will go against you in some professions, regardless of maternity.
Mine needs 1 year only to be considered for higher level positions.
Hope it works out x

If we were to start TTC in March (which is the soonest we were considering), then I would have racked up 2 years at my current company as a data analyst. I'm hoping that since it's a somewhat technical field, it would play in my favour.

I don't know why, but in my head it seems logical to time the end of my maternity leave with us relocating to the UK so that it would be a 'fresh start' with new employment and leaving the old life behind. But realistically I know it wouldn't be easier at all since I'd have to be juggling around new baby and a house move, along with the new job!

If you’d prefer to take a break from work to look after your kids for the first 3 - 4 years of their lives and want your children close together AND your husband can support you financially then you’re probably better off having them now. If you take a gap later on in your career you’ll only find yourself having to start from scratch anyway which will be harder if you’re in your forties. Waiting to take maternity leave in the UK is only useful if you want to (or must for financial reasons) continue to work as soon as you return from leave.