AIBU to feel resentful about repeated maternity leave cover at work

[Kedgey55]

Posting this here to get a different perspective and I'm aware this may sound controversial.

I'm 39 F no kids (by choice), never really felt any desire to have them. I'm a healthcare professional. Lately I've found myself getting more and more frustrated by what seems like an endless conveyerbelt of maternity leave to sort and cover for. Since I'm in healthcare it's challenging to get cover so often staff left behind including myself are left to pick up the slack. In my department we've barely been able to do much development work in over 5 years as a result. In an extreme case, an entire service is on hold basically until the manager returns from mat leave. I really don't want to feel like this but it is really hard to not feel resentful of women for this. I know it's awful but I can see why people would prefer to employ men. And I'm frustrated by the fact that women then seemingly always return part time while the husband/partner remains full time. Returning part time creates a whole host of other issues. And it disappoints me that there is not more sharing of the work/childcare split between men and women. And then of course when so many women return part time, obviously this limits future opportunities so this probably goes some way to explain the gender pay gap.

I realise that there needs to be equal mat and pat leave to encourage this to be shared more equally between men and women and until we have that, of course it makes financial sense for the woman to stay off work for longer. And I realise it is not womens fault we don't get mat cover- that is an organisational and national funding issue.

But it sometimes feels like the challenges the staff not on mat leave face are unacknowledged and I think this is what irritates me the most. It feels like there is a whole load of noise surrounding women's rights regarding mat cover, flexible working, childcare, equal pay etc etc, but there is never any acknowledgment of the significant challenges linked to all this, which unfortunately are a reality. I'm not saying these things should go (ofc they shouldn't) but some acknowledgment of the complexities of the issues and the burden placed on other staff would be nice sometimes.

Just needed to rant and tell me if I'm being unreasonable :)

Your workplace needs to cover maternity leave better and staff appropriately

Your issue should be entirely with your employers. This has nothing to do with women taking mat leave or returning part time. This is on your employer for their poor handling of staffing. The amount of money the NHS piss away on middle managers and they can’t manage this? Put your anger there.

Or would your solution be to ban reproduction? Or fire all fertile women?

If you had maternity cover this wouldn't be a problem, would it. The women going on mat leave aren't to blame - they're just having babies.

You’re getting angry at the wrong group of people. Your workplace is handling maternity cover badly. This isn’t the fault of the mothers themselves.

The workforce cannot have it both ways. If women are to work, then a recognition that women have children, is just part of it. When women have children - things alter. That is part of it.

Personally, I do think the view that to employ a man over a woman to avoid the possibility of maternity leave is misogynistic not logistical. And why should very capable and intelligent women be locked out the workforce because they want to work part-time?

Yabu this is a workplace problem not managing cover properly. I worked many years in my career and my employer was more than happy for me to return from my maternity leaves and on reduced hours because I have a wealth of experience. As do other women in a similar position. Totally wrong to try and write us off because it’s inconvenient and the cover can’t manage properly.

As Whitney once sang "I believe the children are our future".
The reason the mat laws are gold plated are to stop women who choose to have children getting screwed by their employers.
However once having had children the economic reality is that it is hard to work full time and pay for full time child care. So something has to give.
the flip side is that those who don’t take time off to have children or go to flexible working typically find that their career trajectory surpasses those that do. That is literally the quid pro quo of not having children. You will be paid more and get promoted more than someone who goes off to have kids.
So I guess suck it up for your own greater good.
plus those people’s kids will be paying your state pension when you retire, so that’s nice of them.

You do realise they are literally continuing the existence of our species.

When you take everything out of it. What is the meaning of life? It is literally that.

It’s not to work. That is something we have manufactured in the modern world. Sometimes with good reason - healthcares a pretty nice perk. But most of the time work is just a load of nonsense.

So I get your annoyed. But its not women. It’s not feminism. It’s not mothers who are the issue. It’s the world we have created which is the problem.

As long as you'd be happy to hand your job over to a man because it makes more sense to hire them.

Also are you grateful that you were give a job? And credit card? Are you grateful for all the things that women in previous generations were denied? Because why would women on mat leave be grateful you're covering them? Management should be on their knees thankful that you're not leaving them in the lurch- that's who should be grateful.

As you presumably have a public sector pension, you (and everyone!) need peers to have kids so that there is someone around to pay for it when the time comes! Who do you think pays for public sector pensions? The taxpayers of thirty years time!

Who will pay for your nhs pension when you retire if no one has children now?

You want women going on maternity leave to acknowledge how hard it is for you? Working in the NHS is hard and I think that is acknowledged, far more than any other profession is despite some others being just as tough.
Those women who go on maternity have worked in the same conditions I expect? So they've also been working whilst others have been on maternity leave, they know what it's like. They probably have it harder than a childfree person as they're trying to juggle being a good employee and a good parent. They're not going home to decompress at the end of a busy shift, they're going home and continuing to provide care.

“I really don't want to feel like this but it is really hard to not feel resentful of women for this. I know it's awful but I can see why people would prefer to employ men. And I'm frustrated by the fact that women then seemingly always return part time while the husband/partner remains full time. Returning part time creates a whole host of other issues”

Can you imagine the women who came before us, who fought for our right to work AND have all the privileges held by men, reading this

I can understand why it would get to you when it's one after another. Kids are a choice at the end of the day. I don't know why they make out there's a fertility crisis when this is the experience of companies up and down the country.

I realise that there needs to be equal mat and pat leave to encourage this to be shared more equally between men and women and until we have that, of course it makes financial sense for the woman to stay off work for longer.

I did not want equal maternity and paternity leave. I wanted a year off with my baby. I wanted to be with them most of the time on maternity leave and to breastfeed at least to one year (which yes you can do whilst returning to work but I didn't want to start faffing with pumping etc).
DH was happy to support with this.
He also tool a lot of leave when I was on maternity leave so we could have family time but I would not have wanted to share my leave so he could be off work and I would return earlier than planned. For many women the early weeks or months are a time of recovery, and sleep deprivation can go on for months (years in some cases including with DC1).

Duration of maternity leave was not decided thinking of what makes financial sense in my case. I spent tens of thousands of pounds (which I worked bloody hard for) to get pregnant. I have also taken periods of unpaid leave to spend additional time with DC.

Another NHS professional, who unexpectedly announced a pregnancy to my department in my forties. This is a management issue. There is a very fine line between being sympathetic and taking the . Those with children should not get preferential access to Christmas leave etc as this is a time people often want to spend with families themselves.
I try and do an additional on call for my closest colleague, who I know will help if he possibly can, and try very hard to be accomodating for swaps etc.

Having kids isn't part and parcel of being a woman though-it's a choice. One OP hasn't made.

I do agree with this, everyone should have equal access to holiday time etc.
A baby doesn't know if it's Christmas Day or Boxing Day etc even though adults do.

This.
youre being totally unreasonable.
you’d just complain about men going part time if childrearing was equally shared more often.
way to champion women.
workinf mothers already have it hard enough trying to put family first and do what’s best for their children, struggling with mum guilt and mental loads and also trying to retain some semblance of a personality, independence and career.
if your whole service has been on hold for 5 years because of mat leave, your service is badly organised.
sincerely a working professional single mother in healthcare trying to keep everyone and my own career afloat.

“They” make out there is a fertility crisis because that is what the statistics show. Anecdote isn’t data and all that.

Even childless people would be stuffed if women stopped having children. That will become more obvious to you as you get older and the people you rely on for essential services are younger than you (i.e. other people's children). Or read Children of Men if you want to get up to speed on that more quickly.

As others have said you are resentful and annoyed at the wrong people. The issue is your management and recruitment issues, not with women exercising their rights. Those rights also benefit you whether you realise it or not.

There is also room to be annoyed at a society which still socially and culturally results in women being the ones to move into part time work when both parents could share the burden of childcare. Or, the lack of properly high quality but low cost childcare to enable women to stay full time if they want to.

I know that when I went part time I did (and still do) substantially more work than what would actually represent my part time hours. I think a lot of workplaces, perhaps not NHS ones, get a lot of value from part time women workers that isn’t acknowledged

So you want women to stop having kids? So you have zero healthcare and zero pension in your old age?

Alright then.

PS. You're angry at the wrong people. You should be angry at your employers for not covering mat leaves properly

Aside from you trying to blame women for the mismanagement of your dept, YABU for assuming that all women want their partners to equally share the parental leave. Many women want the time off with their babies to bond and be a mother. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to go back to work and have DH home with the baby. If you are arguing for choices for women remember that choosing to be home with baby is also a valid choice.

I never minded except the ones who played it-claimed to be too sick to work, but were at nightclubs at weekends. Really not fair on people like you, or women who had genuine sickness in pregnancy.
And the fact that women off with things like ovarian cancer had limited paid time off, and had to go through absence stages. Separate issue, but not fair that they had to go through that while women saying they had too much morning sickness to work (while clubbing and posting days out eating) didn't.
The men thing-sometimes the woman wants to be the one to stay home more, and sometimes men are still judged for being "weird" if they want to look after children. And obviously single parents are more likely to be women, while there are single dads, of course.