Maternity leave needs to be redesigned

[PlumPudd]

Did you enjoy your maternity leave? Because I’m finding mine a challenge (50% exhaustion and terror, 30% boredom, 20% joy) and I can’t help but feel it’s something to do with the way it’s set up.

No idea what the alternative should be but surely entirely dropping entirely out of society and work for a year and having solo care of a tiny helpless lovely being who is attached to you like an oyster on a rock all the time - then doing a 180 and going back to full on work and life but still caring for your kids is not how it’s supposed to be?

Feel that in some ways (not health, sexism, life expectancy etc) things must have been better in the past, when there would be a bevy of aunties, neighbours, siblings and friends around you in your village, and you’d look after your baby but still spend a bit of your time working / cooking and share a bit of the baby care with the others there would be a bit more of a balance between babies and the rest of life.

Not articulating this very well, but somehow feel this lurching between extremes - a year of nothing but baby then back to normal - is not how it’s meant to be and not really good for anyone.

What would a better alternative look like? Is one even possible now modern society has changed so much and we live and work in different ways?

I think 12 months is too long. Max was 6 months when I had dd. That was perfect.

Could have done with some leave in the early days as I felt so Ill though with morning sickness and fatigue.

You don't have to do a year though. And request flexible working when you go back if you want

I needed the 12 months and probably longer. I was incredibly unwell.

Absolutely spot on.

I hate that the insistence by so many women on a whole year off after giving birth has made me, a 33 year-old woman, a potential liability to a future employer.

You had a unicorn baby! I had planned to do all of these things. Did almost none of them as the baby just screamed relentlessly for 9 months.

I loved it 😊

I seemed to drop off the map to friends unless they wanted something.
My workplace has a "return to work " period for those off sick for 3 months plus , however 12 months maternity leave and I was expected to just rock up to work and carry on where I left off.

I agree with you about fathers.

Not sure about mat leave tho. The problem is that employers see it as an annoyance - they could use it as an opportunity for another employee to be seconded, or to experiment with contractors etc. Personally I work for a small company, found my own mat leave cover and she's been kept on after my return, so that's worked out ok.

Every time a worker gets pregnant, employers have this shock horror response - the possibility of mat leave should be built into their plans. Because pregnancy happens. It's part of sensible resilience.

I personally loved maternity leave with both children and took a year off with both. The only thing I'd change is that women should get full pay for the full year but sadly that's not going to happen.

SO boring. Although I found being pregnant deadly boring also. Do you see a theme emerging?

You're definitely being rose-tinted about how it worked in the past. I've just been listening to the Ladykillers podcast, there's one about baby farmers - in Victorian times babies were often shipped off to supposedly caring families, but in reality there would be 10-15 of them barely cared for by dodgy people and they'd be given alcohol or laudanum if they cried, which made them less hungry, so they'd get weak and die. There were several cases of baby farmers just killing the babies and pocketing the cash paid for their care. Look up Amelia Dyer for more.

It was also fairly common for poor families to accidentally-on-purpose smother babies and say they rolled on them while co-sleeping.

Even wealthier families shipped off babies - I found out from a biog that Jane Austen and her siblings were sent to a family in the village soon after birth and only occasionally saw their real parents before being returned at the age of three. Because their parents had a business to run and babies are very time consuming.

I think architecture is responsible for a lot of isolation parents feel - with a central courtyard, village green type space or ways of being in and out of each other's houses, you can parent a bit more collectively. But I'm not sure there was ever a rosy time where babies weren't labour intensive.

It's not a requirement to take leave. It was only 6 months when my kids were born, you could take a shorter leave and negotiate pt fir a further few months

Why do you fell you need to drop out of society ?

I found it so boring. Took a year, started to enjoy it when Dts were just turning one, we went on holiday using accrued al.

Slightly extreme but I'd have like to go back at say 8 weeks and then take the rest when they turned one.

Being at home ft definitely contributed to my pnd. Shared leave wasn't an option then.

I love how you talk about having 'village' to surround you and clean and cook and support you, and yet 99% of new mothers now a days have that obsession with 'bonding as a bubble and a 3'

Which is it?

Do you what a village to swoop in and take care of you?

Or do you want to be alone with no visitors and no family, and absolutely no one holding the baby other than you?

My partner and I worked in the same organisation when we took parental leave (but it was abroad). We did two months together, then I did one month on my own and then we essentially alternated i.e. he did Mon, Wed, Fri and I did Tue, Thurs, Sat. Honestly, this was much, much better for my mental health. There was no way I could have done 9 months on my own. Even a whole month on my own was too much for me. I know thats unusually but it worked for us.

We don’t all share a hive mind @CoachBeardsJane !! New mothers can have different preferences and wishes from each other

I do understand what you're saying OP but equally I think mat leave is what you make it. My first was lovely- did lots of groups, made friends. Second was awful- baby born during covid, toddler to entertain but couldnt leave the house and got severe PPD so I understand both sides. It's no one else or society's 'job' to make motherhood easier or more enjoyable for us though- its not us as individuals to create that village with friends etc.
I went back to work part time after both kids an that was a nice balance between work and home. I enjoy my job and feel like part time gives me the best of both.
Motherhood is and always has been hard. It's not you but you need to push yourself to find your way, you'll get there

This is about you, not the system. In fact the system is giving you a whole lot of choices women before us didn't have (and most women right now still don't).

1. Go back to work early. No one is forcing you to stay home for a year. In fact, all my friends who are very career focused went back at 4-6 months.

1. Go visit family. You're sitting at home with the baby all day anyway, time to pack up and visit relatives.

1. Why have you dropped out of society? That's on you.

So much depends on your baby, your pregnancy, your birth, your finances, your location, and the choices you make – there’s no “one size fits all” solution, and accepting that is helping me with the boredom of my current maternity leave!

Seven month old potato baby, very jolly, now sleeps at night and for cot naps thanks to a very good, gentle sleep consultant – but only if we’re rigid with routine, nap him in the cot at lunch (bang go the leisurely days on the Downs with the baby in a sling I’d envisaged). He’s on three square meals a day, two snacks and five breastfeeds – while I can now share the occasional night waking with DP, as the baby is night weaned, returning to work now would mean training the baby to take a bottle, and switching to formula (costs too much if we’re also having childcare for a baby) or me expressing on top of working, or childcare in the home and me doing 3/5 of those feeds in breaks from work. I’m too tired for that as I’m still recovering from a doozy of a pregnancy.

So some of that is choice – I never attempted bottles when he was small as I wanted to feed on demand and establish breastfeeding, and recover from birth, without any additional work; some of that isn’t – I have a huge aversion to expressing, my physical health is still not where it was from pre-pregnancy; some of it’s debatable – could we go without elsewhere to afford formula and under-one childcare?

Accepting my luck – a potato baby who sleeps well, by and large, eats well, and is generally jolly – helps me accept the mind numbing tedium that the routine brings. Accepting my choices – I don’t want him in childcare yet more than I want my freedom from Wind the Effing Bobbin Up – helps me accept the daily Wind the Sodding Bobbin Up.

It is a bit isolating – lots of the groups and classes are out of budget/I learned on previous maternity leave I don’t really value time spend with random women with whom all we have in common is we had babies at the same time/the routine limits where we go (oh look the swings again). But I’ve got a big reading list and I hate the day job I’m going back to, so I’m trying to appreciate this break from it.

Plus personally I find it much easier, mentally, to do one big year out with the baby, then step back into work, bam, than do keeping in touch days. One day I’m at home with the baby then the next day not then the next day back again, and oh Christ the logistics of DP taking annual leave to care for the baby but then not enough annual leave left over for school holidays for the eldest and bottles or do I KIT doing WFH and pop in and out to feed and can I even focus on a Teams call if I can hear sodding Wind the Fucking Bobbin Up going on downstairs?

What I would find more helpful than rearranging maternity leave would be broader range of more flexible and more affordable childcare for school wraparound, and just affordability generally. The cost of it all impacts my MH and career more than one short-lived year of singing Wind the Bloody Bobbin Up.

I've had 2 mat leaves and absolutely loved them, so it's different for everyone. I didn't drop out of society, I changed my role but I was always active and out and about with my baby (classes or groups daily) and not stuck in the house. I loved having that time to focus exclusively on my baby (and household) and I like my own company and managed my baby's needs and life well so didn't feel the need for lots of family members or friends around (if anything they were a bit of a distraction from my baby's needs). Planned my age gap carefully so older dc was in nursery when I had dc2 so I could have the full experience of baby massage, swimming, age-appropriate classes etc.

Returned to p/t working so not quite back to full in work, it's been a nice balance for me.

Did you enjoy your maternity leave?

Loved it.

Because I’m finding mine a challenge and I can’t help but feel it’s something to do with the way it’s set up.

No, it isn't really "set up" in anyway though. You can set your maternity leave up however you like.

No idea what the alternative should be but surely entirely dropping entirely out of society and work for a year

First of all I didn't remotely feel like I dropped out of society while on mat leave. Work, obviously, society and my life in general, not at all. Plus see previous point, you can set your maternity leave up however you want. You don't need to take a year off. You can return as early as you like basically, you could go part time, your partner could take time off to look after the baby, you could use a number of KIT days etc. The combinations are vast really.

It's no one else's fault you don't enjoy maternity leave, that doesn't mean we need to change it.

I had two very grumpy babies (both have subsequently become charming toddlers!) and I hated the advice to 'just get out of the house' - honestly, being in a cafe/library/gallery/class/park when your baby just won't stop screaming is honestly more depressing than having them do it in private at home. Walks did work with DC1 (and god I went on thousands, she was a lockdown baby) but not an option with DC2 when I had a toddler to entertain and also DC2 screamed whenever he went in the carrycot so I didn't manage to leave the house until he was in the seat.

What did make a huge difference for me was that DH was made redundant when DC2 was 3 months old. He received a great redundancy package and we decided that I would go back to work at 9 months and then he'd look for something to start when DC2 was a year old. As a result we had 6 months together and honestly I think I'd have had a breakdown if he hadn't been around. And for the moments when DC2 wasn't screaming it was lovely - we spent proper, quality time together in a way we're not likely to until retirement now.

So my hugely unpopular, never-gonna-happen policy is that when a baby is born, both mum AND dad should be entitled to a year off, paid, together, at the same time. Sorts out any potential discrimination issues because literally anyone could be gone for a year, male or female. No issues with having to 'trade' mat leave for SPL. Truly equal parenting. Noone stuck alone without another adult to speak to, because your partner is there. You're both managing the load, together, as a couple. And it's an opportunity for you to bond as a couple during one of the hardest parts of your relationship. I bet there'd be much less PND and fewer couples with preschoolers splitting up.

Never going to happen, obviously, totally unaffordable. But it would work.

@ShadowPuppets That would be the perfect scenario really wouldn’t it? I’d vote for you.

This is good advice I think