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’m a teacher. I used the phrase ‘a year off’ to describe my maternity leaves even my second when I had a toddler and a baby who didn’t sleep through until he was 3 - not months, years! Even with that it wasn’t as hard as my usual working week.

@georgarina

*I also think it's definitely something that should be challenged. It goes along with other toxic workplace phenomena, like seeing people with children going home on time as skiving, judging people for having children, pushing people out while on maternity leave, etc.

I can't imagine why you'd need to challenge someone for asking whether you enjoyed your year at home.

Tell them it's all hard work and you'll get one of two responses - those with kids will already know, those without will die of boredom while you 'educate' them.

Similar to childbirth, the hard work of raising a baby is not fully understood until it's experienced imo.

I’m going off in July and have been constantly referring to it as a ‘year off’ as did/do all my colleagues when they’ve gone but we also say ‘mat leave’ sometimes. It personally doesn’t bother me at all as a year off is what it is surely?

@sunshinesontv lol die of boredom? I'm not talking about making a powerpoint presentation, I'm talking about making a short nonconfrontational comment that challenges an inaccurate idea.

As a single working parent I have a lot of experience in how these things need to be challenged instead of just accepted, and how so many people are working off misinformation especially when it comes to maternity leave - thinking it's a year of full pay, thinking childcare is a relaxing holiday, etc.

Christ. My DM once tried to persuade me that I was “better off” in a low-paid job that I hated, than my SIL who was “at home all day with a baby”. Until I pointed out that she could; wear what she wanted, eat when she wanted, sit where she wanted, go where she wanted, didn’t have to beg for cover to get a day off, read when/what she wanted, have the TV/radio on (not allowed in my workplace). My DN was an easy baby TBF.

It is a year off from doing all those things; having to be somewhere/do something/dress how someone else tells you to. I know many, many parents who have loved their mat leave and ‘time off’.

You were off work though as in not going to your paid employment. You were at home with your baby, which can be hard work, but also not having to do any of your paid job as well.

It is really hard to go back to work after a baby, there are lots of emotions surrounding that. It is possible that you are feeling sensitive to that and projecting your feelings into this situation.

For lots of people, being in work in the last year hasn't been easy either. Worrying about catching covid, protecting families, coping with being in the workplace while stressing that your children aren't in school etc.

It is also possible your colleagues have picked up parts of your job whilst you were off and are glad you are back so they can pass them back to you.

@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.

You have had a year off work though.
The trips comment is weird, considering it’s fairly obviously that we’ve been in a lockdown.. and you’ve had a baby.

I wouldn’t bother correcting them.. just answer with “it was lovely, night feeds were probably the biggest shock to the system but once we’d gotten used to running on no sleep it was fine. Baby’s doing great ect.”

They’ll get the jist that babies are hard work.

In my experience, pointing out that noone thinks its not work when a nanny is doing it, yet when its your own child suddenly its work helps.

I went with phrases like "oh god this is a rest compared to being at home, dont know how nannies do it for years!" "It's so much easier being here than home, i'm not cut out to be a nanny."

all you have to say is - oh god I wish, I had NO idea how hard it would be to look after a baby - I’m so pleased to be back at work!

That makes your point without being rude to people who are just making small talk, or inflicting grim details, or acting like taking a year off from work to look after your baby wasn’t something you chose.

I do get your point, and I think it’s right to push back, but I don’t think you need to overdo it - they know childminders etc get paid to look after kids - so all you need to do is remind them that babies are a handful.

but a year off with a baby must have been lovely

@Marchitectmummy

Goodness, your colleagues are making light welcome back conversation with you, they really won't be wanting tbe details of parenting from you. Can't you just answer 'I had a lovely year off thank you" and move on.

It really isn't special or heroic to have your own child and spend the year with it. You choose to have a child, reap the benefits of having thst child and yet seem to want sympathy from your colleagues and appreciation for it.

Read this thread when you have your next child pretty sure you will cringe at your posts.

Would you have used those exact words in a face, to face conversation?

I don't see anywhere OP expecting sympathy. She is just (understandably) feeling a little sensitive about her colleagues choice of words which, to her, imply she had a lovely holiday, which it is not for most people. Anyone with any empathy would realise that.

Just let OP vent FFS and, if you disagree, it costs nothing to use a little tact in your response.

While it may not correspond to how you imagine a year off should look like - it was technically still a year away from work. Sure, you had other stuff to deal with, but you didn't have to commute, do 9-5, deal with projects, colleagues, office politics - all that stuff.

Nobody made you have the baby. You took a paid year away from your place of work and paid responsibilities to pursue a personal dream, albeit one that involves a bit of effort.

I don’t have children through choice because it looks like drudgery I don’t really want to do. People with children tell me it’s an amazing experience and I am really missing out, I’ll never know love like it, etc..

So forgive me for thinking that if someone has time off work ‘birthing a child’ that they made a conscious decision to have, then it might have been a mostly enjoyable experience for them.

I hate it when people complain about parental leave, we are so lucky to have it. We struggled with ttc for nearly a decade and it used to crush me when people came back complaining about how hard parental leave was when I longed for a baby. I’m so fortunate now to have twins, when people ask how my 12 month holiday was I tell them the truth…the best and hardest year of my life. Simple as that.

It isn’t about whether babies are lovely or unlovely, whether being a parent is hard or easy, or whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times, to paraphrase dickens.

It’s all the above, but that is not the point.

Working parents and disproportionately mothers, are disadvantaged in the workplace for precisely this reason. Maternity leave is seen as being a year ‘off’, ‘dossing’, inconveniencing colleagues and employers and the sign of not being committed to your career.

That is wrong and it’s sad to see those very attitudes being upheld here.

I loved maternity leave. There were a couple of phases where it was harder, including 2 weeks of nicu, then later on two spells in hospital, but there were also many months where both the baby and I slept well and then we had lovely relaxing days playing in the garden or having lunch with friends. It was very much a year off work. Even the people I knew with babies that were worse sleepers still had plenty of phases where it was lovely.

It's just conversation. Smile and say something benign!

However, I have to say I think you're really lucky to have had a whole year to be at home with your baby. When I had my eldest, SMP was much lower than it was now, so I had to go back to work when my baby was only two months old. I loved every minute of the two months I had 'off' to be with him. Yes, they were hard work, but it was what I had signed up for when I chose to have a baby.

There is a difference between being glad to have you back and thinking maternity leave is some form of holiday. I guess those making the comments are not parents, or are dads who like Jacob Rees-Mogg have never changed a nappy.

OP unfortunately I cannot think of a pleasant response to help you. Though your colleagues do make me feel glad I work with the team I do, who would not be like that.

I fail to see how maternity leave can be seen as anything but time off. Does that mean any leave taken by parents of young DC is also not time off, as they are still looking after DC then? What age do the DC have to be before it counts as time off again? If you want to take it to an extreme I work as a cleaner, housekeeper and chef when I am not at work, all of which people do as paid jobs, so none of us get time off.

This thread is positively sizzling with internalised misogyny.

OP, these people must be pretty thick if they imagine maternity leave during a pandemic was a matter of taking ‘nice trips’. I would tell them you left the baby with relatives as soon as you delivered the placenta and spent the rest of your leave drinking cocktails in the Seychelles/ snorkelling off your superyacht.

I mean, it is great to have a year off

Say something like "I'm thinking of starting a campaign to have it renamed maternity work rather than maternity leave. I've come back for a rest"

No violet, women aren’t ‘lucky’ to have hard fought for rights any more than we are ‘lucky’ to avoid sexual assault as we go about our business.

It is how it should be. The fact it wasn't always thus is not a matter of luck.

It suck OP. But there is honestly nothing you can say to change their perspective. They will think this way until they have their own children. Chin up, when they have their turn they will look back and realise what dicks they've been