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 :)

You have a huge management issue!!!!
Shocked that you can’t see this…

Its nothing to do with your colleagues, the fact you haven’t had kids, or political maternity policy strategy.
The entire issue is a lack of competence from your management.

I think you aren’t suited to the (shit) culture of the place you’re working. Rightly so. You should vote with you feet! I also think you should make a complaint to higher up about his maternity cover is being handled.

I am quoting your post, because absolutely yes this is reality. Men rarely ever willingly request part time/ truly flexible working. They might if they are senior, rarely on the shop floor, and yes if self employed where they are short changing a client on hours worked on a job. Always it is considered women's work to sort childcare/babysitting/whatever. I dont think equal mat/pat leave will solve this discrepancy. And yes on here there will always be the occasional mum whose wonderful DH deals with it or some of it. Great. But not the norm for most. So yes maternity cover will fall to the existing workforce, and yes it will inevitably never be that men need that support. I agree with you 100 %.

i despair at this 🫠🫠🫠
’they’… really. The population statistics are available for all to see. There isn’t some sort of conspiracy and this isn’t the experience of most people 🫠🫠🫠

@babyproblems there must just be something in the water at OPs workplace then!

who do you think helped make the baby that led to the mother requesting part time/flexible working? another woman?

💯

And I realise it is not womens fault we don't get mat cover- that is an organisational and national funding issue.

You wrote that and you know it’s the only thing to blame.

Your colleagues could just as easily be out for illness or bereavement. Management should not keep staff levels so tight that work can’t continue while people also live their lives.

I don’t think you’re unreasonable for being frustrated by inadequate staffing. If colleagues are constantly expected to pick up the workload when someone is on maternity leave, that absolutely needs addressing.
But I think the problem is being aimed at the wrong people. The issue isn’t women taking maternity leave — it’s employers failing to plan and provide adequate cover.
And saying you can understand why employers might prefer men is where I think the argument isn’t great.

Women shouldn’t have to feel guilty for having children because a workplace hasn’t staffed itself properly.
You can absolutely acknowledge the impact on colleagues left behind without blaming the women who are on maternity leave because we as women are entitled to live our lives how we want and have children when and how we want without judgment or worry about your opinion or the impact it’ll have on your employer that’s their job to worry about staffing not the pregnant lady

Can I also say I would not want my children’s father to take my mat leave and share it. It is my time to be at home and bond with our child as a mother and it would be unfair to rip my child away from me 6 months in just because Susan on mumsnet said we need to split maternity leave with men- guranteed you’d ask and the majority of men would say they’d prefer to be at work and leave the mother at home

You have a management issue, not a mothers issue.

My work brought in equal parental leave for fathers/non birthing parents about a year ago - both 6 months full pay. It has definitely sparked a change in mindset but I do find it entertaining as those taking it mansplain to me how challenging it is to be off with the baby or phase back to work… I’m a mother of 3, I know pal.

Don't blame the players. Blame the game.

In the corporate world where I work, if. Staff member is going on mat leave then a mat leave cover is hired temporarily, work never stops, there is a handover and the full duties and ambitions of the business, the objectives, plans and projects that we’re going to happen still happen, may leave covers get paid a higher wage as they are on contacts, they usually are of the same or higher seniority and experience than the person going on mat leave so that their work can be handled fully and with no gaps. Obviously it doesn’t always work out perfectly but this is usually the expectation and I have never seen a complete disaster. Except my own mat leave cover who was a total arsehole but that’s nothing to do with the actual job which he did do to the level and completeness required.
is this not the case in your field ??

The question really is why the NHS doesn’t take account of the fact that they have a large percentage of women in their workplace and have more robust procedures in place to cope with fairly predictable occurrences like maternity leave or long term sickness leave. There’s a lot of money spent on the NHS so running it on a minimum staffing level and then being surprised that women take their hard fought for, perfectly legal, maternity leave is frankly mind boggling. Expecting other staff already working flat out, to just suck up the extra workload is complete nonsense, the issue as many PP’s have said is not the women on maternity leave it is the shit management within the NHS.

Why are you angry at women for having babies? You need to take it up with management. They’re the ones who need to be better organised.

I moved jobs because of continued maternity leave. I moved after 3 continuous years of it and just before the 4th one started.

I don't resent the women being off at all, it was the replacements they had that made my job insufferable.

I now, not necessarily by design, just the way it ended up, work with women past child baring age and a man.

I’d say that if you had a policy of recruiting and supporting older staff and perhaps recruiting more male staff members, you’d have a better balanced team who could manage better? If you are only recruiting women of childbearing age, then that is a problem. Older women and men bring their own skills, experience and perspective that is being excluded here.

It doesn't have to be that way OP. In my industry it's normal to bring in a contract person to cover mat leave and if they are a good fit they often stay on in another capacity when the mat cover is over - so it's a win for both the new hire and the employer. Woman taking mat leave is just part of the ebb and flow of office life and nothing to get all riled up about.

Women are (obviously) more likely to go on maternity leave than men, but in my experience men are more likely to move on and leave the company every few years whereas women are more likely to be loyal and stay. So if you employ men you have to recruit and train replacements. I know it's a generalisation, but that's been my experience.

YABU because the exact same happens in my health service program. Not for maternity leave but for staff going on secondment. The nature of the work, lack of workforce sustainability planning and glacial place of recruitment for cover causes everything to grind to a halt. It is nothing to do maternity leave but poor workforce planning and protection.

I wanted to go back part time after having DC as I wanted to be around for our children. I resent your implication that I’ve somehow contributed to the gender pay gap by doing this. The point of womens rights was to have choice. Part time is my choice. And I did not want to share any of my mat leaves with DH, even though both of our employers support this. You seem to be looking at this completely from a workplace perspective only.

The issue is your employer, as everyone else has said.

You need to redirect your annoyance towards managers and their poor handling of staffing. Women have had babies forever and the vast majority would probably want to stay at home with baby. There would have been little point my husband giving up a very generous six figure salary and all the perks for me to return to a part time admin role. If your managers know someone is going on mat leave they have months to arrange alternative cover.

Years ago when I was first diagnosed with RA, I had a lot off time of sick.
My new manager , ( who was a horrible bastard) ,put me on a warning. The woman from HR was sitting with him and she had worked for 5 years and had 3 seperate years off maternity leave in those 5 years. I was annoyed because I couldnt9 chose my illness but she chose to have 3 babies.
In the end I had a referral to Occupational Health and they wrote back to my boss to say that I had a disability and that he should stop threatening me.
I didnt care that the woman had 3 babies by choice in 5 years, but I did care that I was victimised for something which wasnt my choice.

You mention the gender pay gap like it’s a justifiable punishment for women who have babies!
The pay gap is very often one of the reasons mothers are the ones who go part time - because their male partners earn more, meaning it makes more financial sense for them to maximise their income…

As someone in a managerial role in another public service I agree with you to an extent. Not so much about the maternity leave, but about the part-time work afterwards, as well as the fact that it always seems to be women and not their husbands who take time off when kids are ill.

We have regular training where I work and every day there is someone off due to working part-time and it's an absolute nightmare. The main issue is the employer gives people any days they request, whereas I think people should be told there is one day everyone has to work. It's a logistical nightmare but, in all fairness, it isn't the women's fault, though I know many would kick right off if they were told no one could be off on a Monday, for example, anymore.