To ask for a polite way to explain maternity leave is not ‘a year off’?

[TurquoiseKiss]

Returned to work this week after maternity leave of 1 year. All my colleagues are nice people so I don’t think this has been meant maliciously but a few have followed “welcome back” with “I wish I could take a year off” / “what did you get up to? Any nice trips?” / “you’re looking well, must have been nice to have a year break from work” (obviously this is what happened but the tone was as if I’d gone to lay on a beach somewhere and had ‘me time’ for 12 months!).

Suggestions please of the nicest way to say: “I birthed a baby, spent 5 fairly traumatic nights on a postnatal ward with no visitors allowed, haven’t had a full nights sleep since last April, didn’t go on any trips because y’know I took the time away from work to start raising a tiny person not seek out cheap last minute jollys…Comprende!?”

Yours,
Tired Mum

I wouldn't really explain anything. You've been 'off' from the job for a year. Even if it's maternity leave, is it now not ok to ask whether you've been up to anything interesting or have gone anywhere? I asked similar of a friend who had a baby last year - just making conversation, some people did get out and about when they were permitted to do so, pandemic or not. Would you rather they said you look like crap?

So in your mind, those are the two choices for small talk with someone who’s taken maternity leave - talking about their ‘year off work’ or their ‘break from work’; or alternatively, telling them they look like crap?

There are lots of other easy options for small talk. You can ask about the baby - its name, how old it is, what it likes to do. You can ask how the mother is. You can ask how the mother’s experience of returning to work has been. You can ask what it was like taking maternity leave in a pandemic. There are many options available that don’t involve either devaluing the last year of the woman’s life or insulting her appearance.

So if someone says the obvious that you have been off work, you're going to challenge them, and because you're senior think that's acceptable? Interesting.
I assume you're being deliberately obtuse. This poster didn't say she'll 'challenge' people who tell her she's been off work. She's intending to challenge people who say things like the OP has quoted in her posts; sexist, thoughtless things.

This is just the rules, isn't it? People say "did you have a nice maternity holiday", and you say "yes, it was good, I'm back at work for a break". It's just meaningless bollocks.

I'm on maternity leave until September and won't put up with any sniff of this bullshit. Fortunately I'm senior enough to make a point and be listened to

😂

No one is senior enough to talk crap such as 'it wasn't a year off' and be 'listened to'.

You may well be senior enough to cause side eyes, staff smiling and nodding then bitching about what a chip on your shoulder you have behind your back.

Personally I'd rather not go there and just be sensible enough to acknowledge that of course a year off work is a year off work!

I'm on maternity leave until September and won't put up with any sniff of this bullshit. Fortunately I'm senior enough to make a point and be listened to

So as you are senior you are going to tell everyone that you did not take a year off work even though you clearly took a year off work, and you expect to be listened to?
Oh you'll be listened to alright. And endlessly ridiculed for it, deservedly!

[quote HumunaHey]@leeds2glasgow You need to look up the definition of "work". Work is not just a paid job. You are working to nurture and raise a baby during maternity leave.[/quote]
Not in that context though 🙄🙄

I had a year off.
It was fab.
No work responsibilities or deadlines.
Answered to no-one (except a baby but I wanted and chose that)
Yeah, I had no sleep... but I wasn’t trying to do a job the morning after that.
I went where I wanted, when I wanted. Baby classes for my sake, not baby’s.
Lots of cake in the sunshine.

It was fucking awesome, and most definitely a holiday of a year!

@Fixitup2 I am also NHS and I only got 12 weeks on full pay, how did you get so long? (I had to go back to work after 12 weeks because I am the sole breadwinner and needed my full salary, I would have loved a longer maternity leave).

Erm, but you did take a year off...

[quote theDudesmummy]@Fixitup2 I am also NHS and I only got 12 weeks on full pay, how did you get so long? (I had to go back to work after 12 weeks because I am the sole breadwinner and needed my full salary, I would have loved a longer maternity leave).[/quote]
Depends on how long you have worked there - you need 12 months uninterrupted service with the same employer, and I think two years’ NHS service overall.

It’s also not 9 months full and 3 months half - it’s 8 weeks full, 18 weeks half plus SMP, 13 weeks SMP, and 12 weeks unpaid. You can annualise it and it works out to about half pay each month.

So as you are senior you are going to tell everyone that you did not take a year off work even though you clearly took a year off work, and you expect to be listened to?
Someone else being silly.
This poster isn't going to claim she didn't take a year off work She's going to point out when people say inaccurate, offensive and sexist things about having been on holiday etc.

I was part time before I went off so the smp plus half pay was virtually the same as full pay. I’d been NHS for 10 years.

@KarmaKarma

I wouldn't really explain anything. You've been 'off' from the job for a year. Even if it's maternity leave, is it now not ok to ask whether you've been up to anything interesting or have gone anywhere? I asked similar of a friend who had a baby last year - just making conversation, some people did get out and about when they were permitted to do so, pandemic or not. Would you rather they said you look like crap?

So in your mind, those are the two choices for small talk with someone who’s taken maternity leave - talking about their ‘year off work’ or their ‘break from work’; or alternatively, telling them they look like crap?

There are lots of other easy options for small talk. You can ask about the baby - its name, how old it is, what it likes to do. You can ask how the mother is. You can ask how the mother’s experience of returning to work has been. You can ask what it was like taking maternity leave in a pandemic. There are many options available that don’t involve either devaluing the last year of the woman’s life or insulting her appearance.

I didn't say they were the only two choices for small talk of someone who has been off for mat leave, did I? Asking if you've been up to anything nice or have gone anywhere isn't devaluing the last year of a woman's life. Get a grip. Such questions are asked whether someone has been on mat leave or not. OP was triggered by someone saying 'she looked well'. Most people would just take this as a compliment or perhaps say, 'that's nice to hear, I'm actually really tired.'

[quote theDudesmummy]@Fixitup2 I am also NHS and I only got 12 weeks on full pay, how did you get so long? (I had to go back to work after 12 weeks because I am the sole breadwinner and needed my full salary, I would have loved a longer maternity leave).[/quote]
My sister is also NHS. Her timing was quite fortunate, as she went on ML around Feb, and used her last 4 weeks of AL prior. Then she took another 4 or 5 weeks of AL the next year when she went back in Feb/March before it ran out in the April. I think it did work out about 14 or 15 months overall, but of course the ML was only a year.

@TurquoiseKiss

I’m asking for tips to change the narrative around maternity leave being viewed by some as a ‘holiday’.

But why? You wanted kids. You chose to have them. You get time off to spend time with them. And you could have gone on a holiday with the baby if you wanted to.

It's a holiday! From work. No need to change the narrative when it's true. You can't decide you want a baby, knowing that it's hard work and then expect everyone to admire that hard work.

I don't think that people who 'undervalue' - for want of a better word - maternity leave, are being sexist at all. People who say oh it's a holiday etc.

We took SPL with dc3. I had 6 months off then returned to work and dh took the remaining 6 months off.

Dh had lots of comments from colleagues about how lucky he was to be having 6 months off, how they'd kill to have half a year at home etc etc. Plenty of fairly good natured ribbing from his mates about being a lucky, lazy bastard and swanning off without a care whilst the missus worked and picked up the bills for 6 months.

He laughed it off and acknowledged that yes, having 6 months out of the office was fairly nice. He didn't gasp and insist on reminding everyone that he'd be elbow deep in shit for 6 months with sole care of a baby.

It may well be a deep-rooted societal disregard for the worth of a caring role - but not a sexist or misogynistic one. If anything, you could argue it's those that think these comments ARE misogynistic who are being sexist. Because you're subconsciously categorising care as 'women's work', so assuming misogyny plays a part - when in fact, a man would get the same comments 🤷🏻‍♀️

Incidentally, I also think dh got the shit end of the stick in having months 6-12 at home 😂. I got lovely milky newborn cuddles and the interesting stage where they play but stay in one place.

Dh got weaning 😂😂

Seriously? You had a year off work. For some of it you may well have been doing nothing depending on when you started it. And even giving birth then staying home was your choice however easy/hard you found it. It's just small talk, they don't care at all really.

It may well be a deep-rooted societal disregard for the worth of a caring role - but not a sexist or misogynistic one.
The vast majority of people who undertake parental leave are still women.
And if looking after babies wasn't seen as 'women's work' in the first place, I don't think men would get 'good-natured ribbing' about doing it while their female partner worked (as if child-raising wasn't working).

@Fauvist

I think the thing about bathing badgers that was written when someone wrote an article asking for time off for non-parents to give them equality with parents having maternity leave was a pretty good explanation of what maternity leave is actually like:

www.huffingtonpost.ca/elizabeth-bromstein/maternity-leave-without-kids_b_9811462.html

Official rules and guidelines for maternity leave without kids:

1. You must gain at least 30 pounds before you leave work. Half of people are required to gain twice that.

1. At the beginning of your leave, you must spend one night getting punched in the abdomen until you feel pain like you've never felt before.

1. A random selection of people are also required to develop a wound of some sort. A sliced opening from your vagina to your anus is one option. Another is a slice through your abdomen and into your uterus. Or just stab yourself in the eye. Whatever.

1. For the first six months, whenever you try to sleep, an alarm will go off somewhere between every 15 minutes to two hours. For the second six months, that time may stretch to six hours. But who knows?

1. No sleeping between the hours of 11 p.m. and six a.m.

1. All of your non-sleeping time must be devoted to some sort of selfless service. Volunteering for a charity doing something like building houses or bathing badgers. There are no specific instructions as to how to carry out your duties in this service, and all the advice you can find online is conflicting. One thing you will know for sure is that you're probably doing everything wrong.

1. Here's a weird thing: A bear or a cougar or something scary will be unleashed in your house and will be threatening everything you love. But you can't see it and you are the only person who knows it's there. Nobody believes you. You know you sound crazy, but IT'S THERE.

1. You must rub sandpaper over your nipples until they are red and bleeding. Once this is achieved, you are required to tug on them 15,000 times a day. You may opt out of this but you are required to feel like a terrible person.

1. You can only shower once a week, max.

10. You may wear clean clothes for 10 minutes out of the day. A bucket of vomit, pee, poop and food scraps will be provided to you from which you must splash the vomit and food on your clothes when the 10 minutes are up.

When you try to explain that it's not as easy as one might imagine, you'll be blasted with the argument that (again) you chose this, so it's your own fault, really.

11. Every task you set out to do must be performed in intervals. If you are washing the dishes, you may only wash three dishes, then go bathe some badgers or build a house. Then three more dishes, then badgers (or house).

12. If you have time to exercise off the extra weight and keep a clean house, you are not doing enough selfless service and more will be assigned to you.

13. If you have a partner, no sex for the first six months.

14. You may not leave the house to see any friends for the first six months unless you take a badger (or a house) with you. If you take it to a restaurant, people will be assigned to look annoyed, because they don't want badgers and houses in their public spaces. If you need them to move to make room for your badger or house, they will be really annoyed. You will be expected to just suck it up because you chose this and you don't deserve special treatment.

15. You may not leave the house at night in the hours during which you are not allowed to sleep.

16. An assortment of assigned strangers will come up to you and tell you how to live and bathe badgers and build houses, and that you're doing it wrong. You are not allowed to tell them to eff off because that would be rude.

17. A government official will come to your house on a monthly basis to make sure you are feeling sufficiently isolated, overwhelmed and confused. If you are not, an additional invisible bear will be released into your home.

18. A random 10 to 15 per cent of you will be selected to suffer from severe depression and/or anxiety.

19. After a few months of this you will be required to listen to some asshat talk about how lucky you are and how they deserve the same super great privileges. When you try to explain that it's not as easy as one might imagine, you'll be blasted with the argument that (again) you chose this, so it's your own fault, really. You will want to explain that people's lives shouldn't really by broken down to those sorts of judgement calls, but you'll realize that this is so outside of the other person's realm of understanding that you won't know where to start, because you might even have thought the same thing before your own super awesome MEternity live. So, you'll just sigh and walk away. Because, forget it.

20. You can actually take more than one MEternity leave. With each subsequent leave, you must do all the same things while looking after an untrained primate of some sort -- say an affectionate but obstinate adolescent baboon, adding one additional primate per leave. So, two leaves, one baboon. Three leaves, two baboons. You must not lose your patience with the baboons. (Of course, maternity is way better with actual kids because kids are better to have around the house than baboons. [Or so I imagine. I've never had a baboon in my house.] But you're the one who doesn't want the kids.)

I hate this kind of martyrdom. If it was so shit no one would have a second baby.

Rereading OP's post, I would say that people are just trying to make positive small talk? Would you have preferred it for them to be saying you looked dreadful, asked you how hideous it was having a new-born during lockdown, etc.?

I’m asking for tips to change the narrative around maternity leave being viewed by some as a ‘holiday’

I spent my first ML playing with my baby, walking, watching netflix, visiting friends, going to baby groups and having coffees and going out to lunch. It was absolutely a holiday from work, it was great!

I considered my maternity year a year off. It was fab and I am grateful for it. Of course I was looking after baby and doing stuff around the house but it isn’t like being at work and trying to do all that around your job is it? I loved my maternity leave. I can understand why colleagues might be jealous (in a nice way),

Oh and as DS didn’t sleep through the night until he was 2 (and even then not always) I can tell you it was a lot easier when I was on maternity leave!

I’m asking for tips to change the narrative around maternity leave being viewed by some as a ‘holiday’

I spent my first ML playing with my baby, walking, watching netflix, visiting friends, going to baby groups and having coffees and going out to lunch. It was absolutely a holiday from work, it was great!

That's great for you, really! In which case trying to help others to understand how hard and traumatic can be doesn't matter does it. You can just be happy knowing you enjoyed it. Many women who really struggled, had PND, had terrible birth injuries would rather it isn't just assumed that the whole thing is a jolly fucking Netflix holiday.