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 :)

There are some companies now offering equal leave for fathers (not sharing the maternity leave). I know Aviva is one that offers 6 months full paid leave for fathers. I think this is great, to try and equal things up, but i guess if those companies still don't arrange appropriate cover, someone will still complain about women getting pregnant (because it will always be the woman's fault 🙄).

DS is self employed, so was only able to take 2 weeks off when his baby was born recently. But he absolutely will flex things to attend appointments/do nursery drop offs/pick ups for his other child etc

OP you are aiming your anger and frustration at the wrong people.

I hear you, OP. But this is a management issue, not an issue with the women on maternity. In my company, maternity cover is organised the moment someone announces they are pregnant, and the handover is so smooth it rarely means the rest of us have to pick up additional work.

If you work for the NHS or similar, it does not surprise me that this is an issue - management incompetence seems rife!

Also, certainly for my family, equal maternity leave for men and women simply wouldn't work - for those who exclusively breastfeed on demand there's simply no way in the first 12 months my husband could have looked after our children for more than a few hours (breastfed babies often struggle to take a bottle, even of expressed breastmilk).

I think the flip side is if there was no maternity leave and no part time working would these positions actually become harder to fill? You feel let down now, but would there just be longer vacancies. Men arent rushing to fill these posts and the younger generations are smaller. Surely we want to retain these expertise overal.

Whilst I understand women have always worked and MN is quite militant about that, its fair to say the type of work was often very different and lack of mat leave meant a lot of women did leave the workforce for the early years and then return to something else. Maternal employment rates have increased from 50% in 1975 to 75% or more now and actually pretty war maternal employment was lower than 50%.

I would say its quite normal to want to have children and as long as you have one or two you are not contributing to the population growth.

Yabu and Yanbu.

The facts that Matrrnity/Parental leave is important AND absences of several montjs cause problems in the workplace are both true simultaneously.

DH has a very specialised, public sector job. Theres a handful of people qualified to do it. They each have a "sector" of the UK they cover. When one had 3 months Paternity leave, the only way to cover it was them spliting that region. Meaning DH eas covering the Scottish Highlands and Oxfordshire. He was exhausted. But also reslected his colleague for taking the time off.

Not true.
We recruit maternity cover for a whole range of professional roles, including management.
Sometimes we give someone an opportunity to be seconded into the higher role and recruit to cover the lower level, but if there isn’t anyone appropriate then we’ll recruit externally.
It will be advertised as fixed term, maternity cover.

🙄

I stated clearly people should have children if they want them.

I can kinda see where the OP is coming from.

Myself, am NHS staff and had 2 very well paid maternity leaves and then was able to come back part time, I could not have been more looked after.

I later became a manager and however delighted I am for them when someone in my team tells me they are pregnant, there is always a thought in my mind of 'oh god, how am I going to cover their shifts'.

We are not given extra staff to cover mat leaves, we just have to cope. If people can't pick up extra shifts then it generally falls to me to have cover the short fall, it's really hard.

So yes absolutely this is not women's fault, we have fought long and hard to even be allowed to work initially, and then for mat leave etc, and I support that 100%, but I can see where the OP is coming from as on the shop floor, when you're short staff, stressed, unable to carry on with projects as that person is gone for possibly a year, it is hard.

Is it the system's fault - Yes
Is this going to change - No

Absolutely no amount of telling management that mat cover is needed is going to change a thing. In the NHS (this is the only area I have experience in) they don't provide maternity cover for clinical areas.

In my trust at the moment there is a vacancy freeze so they aren't even replacing staff that leave. In the last couple of months I've had 2 people leave to go to new roles, plus 1 person on maternity, and have not been allowed to advertise for the leaver's posts. We are expected to cover the work with 3 less people, and we do, as at the end of the day if we don't it's the patients that would suffer.

Fun times!

So as I've said I can see where the OP is coming from, I don't think at all she is actually blaming the women, but it is easy for her to feel the frustration.

Yes it does - it means they aren't having to recruit for that role/cover that role too.

YANBU, OP @Kedgey55

at the point when women are employed they should be made to sign a contract stating that they will take the contraceptive pill until they retire. Otherwise it’s just not fair on everyone else around them.

🙄

Take it up with management. If you can't do your work safely and essential development is on hold because of the level of covering for others, then you have the duty to report this.

I say this as someone who used to work in a department with an insane amount of sickness absence and subsequently covering for these absences.

You need to speak up, they have a duty of care towards you and their clients. Or vote with your feet.
Bu don't let your frustration out on your fellow women who have done nothing wrong.

This is my experience of the NHS staff management too. And surprise surprise the patient care suffers, morale drops, staff sickness increases and people leave for other less stressful jobs.
It’s not really about Mat Leave as every kind of leave is treated similarly, sickness, training, compassionate etc.
Ive found that people in a caring profession tend to want to have families to care for also, it seems to go hand in hand a lot of the time.

Why have you come on a website specifically for mums, to slate mums & expect people to agree with you.

Strange. Maybe go to Reddit for sympathy

boohoo x no development at work

Well this just is anger inducing, and sheds a light on the issues within the NHS that us lay people don’t know about but only see the outcome when we wonder why there are no appointments or why we are waiting for hours. Absolutely shocking treatment of staff to expect everyone to just pick up the gaps.

Women generally take off longer than men because it's biology, to simply put it. It's natural for baby to need more time with their mother. Especially if breastfeeding. I could never have gone back to work and left my baby before 9 months really. I just wouldn't have felt ready. That's not to say that my partner doesn't share the load. We are pretty equal. I now work 3 days a week, he works 5, but that's our choice. If I wanted to work more then I would. But I like working 3 days. It works for us as a family. Work is not my life, and it shouldn't be yours either. Work is just one part of what we have to do in order to have money to pay bills and enjoy life. You do realise that even if people don't have children, they can still choose to work part time? You sre getting angry at the wrong people here.

Come on, you know you're being unreasonable! It's normal to combine work and kids. If you can't cope with it maybe you should move jobs to a male dominated sector where it's less of an issue.

Exactly this, yet this post illustrates perfectly how, frequently and by many, the resentment gets misplaced and women having babies are the ones that bear the brunt of the blame, which perpetuates gender disparity.

I remember being irritated by a colleague who left at five on the dot everyday when the rest of us worked until 6:30 or 7:00. But of course it wasn't her fault that's when nursery closed.

I wonder if there are people out there who resent your mum for having you and inconveniencing your workplace?

I too work for the NHS and have to manage the very real service issues due to lack of resource, under resourcing, and down-banding. To focus on maternity leave suggests you may need to expand your view to the wider issues of why it’s challenging to fill these temporary vacancies.

Which is a long winded way of saying the same as the OP - for both of you the problem is poorly run organisations, not the women having children. There is no excuse for organisations operating at the scale of NHS businesses for this to be so badly managed.

Yes this happens across the board in the private sector including C-suite roles. In other organisations work is reorganised and people take up roles and bring in more capacity further down the pyramid. That requires flexibility of course and often offers opportunities to staff willing to take on a different challenge.

The fact that it would take the maternity leave period to bring in a temporary member of staff is a massive failing of management in the sectors where this happens and is not the fault of women taking maternity leave.

I mean, who do you want to acknowledge it? Your higher managers? Fair enough. How would society as a whole recognise it for you? What would actually make you feel seen and heard?

Men can share maternity leave too ... so your plan is highly flawed. Maybe you are in the wrong job if you feel like this about your female colleagues.

You have a management issue.

And at my job, a request for part time work is flat out rejected. It's really not a given that women go back part time and cause lots of issues. Your management is abysmal.

But let's blame women for everything, as always. Especially if they dare have children.

That 'management issue' probably applies to the entire public sector. Someone goes on parental leave, sick leave, career break, etc etc, their work is just given to colleagues who are expected to get on with it. No attempt is made to bring in cover, in most circumstances. It's just another vacancy that goes unfilled.