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 :)

What do you suggest?

Come on guys, she’s come onto mumsnet to moan about women taking maternity leave. She’s either ridiculously dumb or winding everyone up.

You need to go to your employer and spell out that YOUR health is being impacted by YOU not being supported during continuous mat leaves of colleagues.
Put it back on management by creating a paper trail.

I wonder if all mothers immediately left the work place, I wonder if fathers would be the new workplace pariahs, with their school holidays annual leave requests, parents evenings etc. Most fathers require some flexibility or late starts or early finishes due to childcare issues from time to time. I wonder if the glare of condemnation left mothers, I wonder if it would land on fathers as being the new unreliable workforce.

No it’s the total norm and I don’t work in Teams that deal with clients in most of my roles. Which is why I was so surprised it wasn’t the norm in every field

I will say that is a downside of parental leave cover that is rarely discussed. My company rolled out a great update to its parental leave scheme. Which applies to men and women. But they largely refuse to provide cover for those off for 6-12 months. So those left behind are drowning in the excess work but we’re not allowed to mention it for…reasons.

Actually NHS employees fund their own pensions, not the taxpayers.