"Women have got greedy with maternity leave"

[Bleh]

What do you guys think?
I do kind of feel sorry for male friends, because they don't really have as much of a choice as women do when it comes to leave after having children, as men are only allowed up to two weeks, whereas women can be away for a year. It's really imbalanced. Also, this is a very difficult law for small businesses to fulfill, and discourages them from hiring women of a child-bearing age.

If I was in charge, I would make it so that you can choose to use some of your NI contributions to take extra maternity leave (rather than the employer footing the whole bill), and would have the government give more financial support/tax breaks to small companies that need the assistance.

Businesses should be able to offer flexible working conditions and not just for families. The prison service which have offered me a terrific mat leave also offer plenty of flexible working schemes. They actively encourage job sharing and everyone gets flexi time which means you can come in as late at 10 and leave by 3:30 (obviously if you've stacked the time up)

Yes there is a recession and people are being made redundant, but this country on the whole makes it very painful for people to WANT to work. It saddens me that fewer parents get to spend time with their children when they're young, in their formative years, yet some parents manage to spend their whole lives on their asses because they're being subsidized by the government (my MIL for example, who is perfectly healthy and could easily work, but its better for her on benefits).
I call THAT milking the system, not people who've worked hard and paid their dues taking time off to be with their children.

(disclaimer: I'm not saying people on benefits are scroungers at all!)

When I say milking the system I dont mean ALL PARENTS that take leave. Maternity kleave is a human right, and the US system, disgusts me. I refer to the many mothers that take 2-3 lots of mat leave back to back, come back to work then resign! quite a few people do this I am afaid. also people that demand flex conditions etc , knowing they get it cos company are scared they will sue. Its people that do stuff like this that piss companies off. I just think we need to be bit more pragmatic about it thats all. My ex collegue demanded a certain day off when she came back cos for a very spurios reason, and another collegue took a whole week off cos her baby was sick (even tho she had a support network).

Stuff like that makes it very unconfortable for other working Mums that dont want to be tarred by the same brush.

Ah, I see what you mean. Yes, you do have a point with that. But I think its hard to define what is taking the piss as some parents, for example, feel uncomfortable leaving a poorly child with anyone even rellies. I would perhaps take time off but expect it to be unpaid.

'Example being the women who take the whole year, get up the duff, come back for 2 months then go off again'

I have a friend who did this, sort of. She got pregnant, she claims by accident, while on mat leave. So she came back early and worked for three months then left again. (she and her partner spent nearly two years TTC the first one, so understandably thought getting pregnant again would be harder)

She was the first person at the company who ever needed mat leave (my industry is mostly young, single men) and is setting a lot of precedents with managment. I'm the second person and am being judged based on her return to work.

Unfair? Maybe, but I don't see a way to codify change to the system to disallow that sort of thing that isn't either wildly intrusive to people's family planning, or unfair to second children. (ie - I don't want the govt or my employer telling me how soon it is acceptable to get pregnant again, nor do I think it is fair to reduce mat benefits for second/third/etc children) Unfortunately, to make a system that is more-fair overall it has to allow this sort of thing to take place.

I do feel like I am taking the piss though. I have been off work for nearly a year, and by the time I go back I will have been off for 14 months. I worked up until the last moment they would let me (I was having significant contractions my last day of work) because the work kept my mind off being pregnant. I had a bunch of leave saved up, so that got tacked onto the front and my mat leave didn't start until after my due date. DH and I saved and scrimped and moved house to the ass-end of town so that we could afford to take the year on little/no pay because it's IMPORTANT. I will be going to stay with my parents and IL's to scrounge visit grandparents for the last, unpaid month while DH lives as cheap aspossible. Then I will be taking the leave I had to roll over from last year AND all my leave from this year (comes to just over six weeks) = 14 months. If I didn't have the option of longer mat leave I would have just quit. I can always get another job - even just stocking shelves at the local supermarket or cleaning toilets. I won't ever get another 1st year of my daughter's life.

I won't be asking for part-time or flex working arrangements when I go back, just a schedule that lets me off early enough to pick up DD. I fully believe that I don't need to ask for these things BECAUSE I am taking the year.

It still feels like I am sneaky and getting away with something.

Surely these women you describe are in the minority, procamiseria.

I agree with the poster, sorry can't remember who it was, who said that we must decide what sort of society we want to live in. I know that I wouldn't be happy in the US - their maternity leave is a joke. How are you supposed to breastfeed? In Sweden, my uncle and aunt each took one year off for each of their three children.

I think that the option to take one year off is important. But also that you can go back after 6 months if financially or emotionally that is what you need/want to do. I work in the public sector, as a trainee, and initially thought I could go back after 6 months but have now extended it to 8 months as I think that the extra time with my DS as a baby is important to me and to him. I know that I am lucky that I can do this.

It is a fact of life that most women are going to get pregnant and have children. Surely we want to remain with a system that is the best for children and parents? And that means giving parents the option of staying off for a year.

Surely for a lot of women, the reason that they don't resign until the end of the maternity leave is because until faced with the reality of leave their child to return to work, they simply don't really know how they are going to feel. I for one wavered and wavered for months, and actually it was only as DD1 approached 10 months old (ie shortly before I had to make a final decision about returning) that I realised that leaving her was going to be OK for me and I would be fine as a WOHM. If I'd been forced into making that decision earlier, when she was smaller, I strongly suspect that I would have jacked in my job rather than face leaving her.

The maternity leave is changing. There are plans to extend smp to 52 weeks, with the father being able to take up to 26 weeks instead of the mother. It's supposed to happen soon, it's been delayed since april this year. Personally I took nine months off and went back part time. I spent the last two months gradually dropping daytime bf's as my dd began to eat more food - I couldn't have done this and then continued to bf on waking up and then when I got home until she was a year old if I'd had to go back at six months, I would never had been able to keep up that much expressing!

"I spent the last two months gradually dropping daytime bf's as my dd began to eat more food - I couldn't have done this and then continued to bf on waking up and then when I got home until she was a year old if I'd had to go back at six months, I would never had been able to keep up that much expressing!"

?????

I only expressed twice a day for my DD's, who were only 6 months and not eating much solid foods both times. I could have taken more expressing breaks, but managed a lunchtime bf too (onsite nursery) instead. You have the right to as many expressing breaks (with no loss of pay) as you need when you return to work, just as you entitled to part-time hours and flexible working.

'If I'd been forced into making that decision earlier, when she was smaller, I strongly suspect that I would have jacked in my job rather than face leaving her. '

I felt exactly like this. My work was covertly pressuring me to go back around 6 months and had I been forced to at that time, I would have quit. Now, also at ten months, it's becoming clearer that DD really enjoys nursery days and that it won't be a burden on either of us (well, emotionally at any rate) for her to go.

As to BF'ing/expressing - my company is almost exclusively young, childless men. I could be strident and say I'm entitled to BF'ing breaks, but they would consider it monumentally weird and work-shy and it would damage my career more than extended mat leave. So it's not a one-size-fits-all proposition.

I think that the govt have designed a policy that is right and fair. Unfortunately, businesses dont see it that way. If you work in the public scetor its a different kettle of fish. Whether we like it or not, the system as it is quite a burden on businesses as it stands. What this means is that as time (and this recession) goes on people are going to be increasingly reluctant to hire women of childbearing age.
I am not saying this is RIGHT- but to ignore that this is occuring wont do any of us any favours.

hophophippidtyhop I thought that had been shelved.

I think it is hard for working mum's full stop. I am a very loyal employee but my company has been taken over and now rather than 5 days paid emergency leave, I get 3 days unpaid emergency leave.I work part time and this week my DS1 has had croup - he has a temp of over 100degres and been off school all week. I have had to be home with him. I now am minus a weeks pay!

However if I was sick I would get paid - so next time my kids are ill, I feel forced to take a sicky rather than be honest.

I returned from maternity leave still b/f my youngest and HR were most put out that I didn't want to go away on residential training courses - even my boss who has children was suprised I was still feeding at a year old.

It is very difficult to balance both things. Work and Home life.

Why are we even having this self flagellating debate. Parliament has said that for the good of individuals and society women have a right to a year's maternity leave. Some women take it, sometimes more than once. The state reimburses the vast majority of statutory maternity pay to employers. It is an optional employee benefit if employers choose to enhance that maternity pay above the statutory basic, presumably because it helps them to attract and retain quality staff.

In what other area is it seen as "taking the piss" to exercise your statutory rights or lawfully get state benefits? I for one wish those greedy pensioners would stop taking handouts from the state ...

It is becoming a received truth that the childfree are suffering becauase of burdens dumped on them by those with children. I see no evidence this is true. In my workplace the part timers and parents easily pull their weight.

I took a year off for maternity and certainly did not feel the least guilty about my employer.

I had twins and the maternity rights are no different from if you have 1 child. If I had 2 children at seperate times I would have been gone for longer in total.

not everyone is good at expressing greenmonkies. i couldn't have gone back to work when dd was 6 months and continue bf for this reason.

i don't feel i have been unfair to my employer by taking a year out. i had worked full time there for 4 years before taking mat leave, and when i returned part time, continued to work as much as full timers, often with better results, for a part time salary!

the way i see it, they are a getting a bargain by employing me.

in turn, by not treating me like garbage they have ensured that i feel some degree of loyalty.

win-win.

Plus greenmonkies - not everyone's job lends itself to expressing facilities.

I'm guessing you have a desk-based job with a reasonably sympathetic, clued-up employer?

Some factories and call-centres dock pay for toilet visits, fgs, what do you think they are going to say if a female employee demands unlimited, paid expressing breaks? In those situations it doesn't really matter what the law says, if your employer wants to make your life impossible, they will.

Or you might work somewhere where it's physically tricky - like an airhostess, or on a building site. What do you do if the single expressing facility is the one toilet used by all female employees? Or if it's a chemical portaloo where all your male colleagues can hear the buzz of your breastpump through the door?

I think you're talking from a fairly comfortable position tbh and should be more sympathetic to people physically or practically unable to express.

Totally agree, Patsy99.

'Some factories and call-centres dock pay for toilet visits...'

My company doesn't dock pay, but they certainly keep track and if they feel like the privilege of being allowed to go to the toilet is abused, they will discipline or terminate employees.

When I was pregnant I had to have a medical notice from my doctor to tell them that I needed to be able to take toilet breaks AT ANY TIME and not be tethered to my desk.

I have a middle-income desk job with a female manager. Go figure.

I agree also Patsy (although not wrt "why are we even having this self-flagellating debate" - it's always interesting to discuss whether we have the balance right).

I am slightly bemused by the pity for employers on this thread and the anger at women "milking the system". If a man moves on from a job 3 months after accepting it, no-one accuses him of milking the system. No-one says "oh his poor employer with the intolerable burden of recruiting a new employee".

They shrug and say, "good on him - should have paid him better if they wanted to keep him"

Besides which, if employers really found mat leave such an intolerable burden (and let's not forget they are reimbursed for this) they wouldn't offer above the statuatory minimum, would they? Since many do, we can only suppose that they think women of child-bearing age worth attracting and retaining.

'I am slightly bemused by the pity for employers on this thread and the anger at women "milking the system". If a man moves on from a job 3 months after accepting it, no-one accuses him of milking the system. No-one says "oh his poor employer with the intolerable burden of recruiting a new employee".'

I don't know about the pity, but I don't think this is a fair analogy unless the man came back to that company 6 months later expecting to have the job he left still open and available.

I think women are saying they feel guilty exactly because of some of the pity-business views posted here. They understand that they have earned mat leave and that children/families are a benefit to society, but they also understand that keeping a position open for up to a year can be a burden, not just financially, on companies. I think the guilt reflects how much they are able to [making sweeping generalisations] see and empathise with both sides.

I would be interested to know how many women cut their mat leave short because of that 'guilt'. I felt guilty, but that didn't stop me from taking the leave.

I work in a government dept and a team where most of us have recently had babies (men and women). The feeling is that it's actually easier to cover maternity leave as you just get someone in for a year, and most people are only in posts for a year or two anyway. And you know when the leave will be.

Paternity leave is actually more inconvenient as your colleagues have to cover as its only two weeks, and you don't know when it will be. We've spent the last month muttering 'Hasn't X's wife had the bloody baby yet?' as X was planning on returning and being in some important meetings next week, and yesterday his pat leave hadn't started! I imagine Mrs X is fed up being 3 weeks beyond her due date too...

Small companies are obviously rather different.

The employer's position is very important in this discussion. Not only because women are employers too and so equally affected by their employees taking ML but also because unless the right balance is struck the system won't work. Both employees and employers have to believe that the system is a fair one so that they both buy into it and support it. Personally I think a year is a good balance.

marenmj, I felt no guilt whatsoever in taking a year off but that's because I work in a relatively big company which could (imo) afford to do without me for that year. If I worked for a very small company or by someone who was self-employed, I suspect that I would have felt differently. But I would still have done what I wanted to do because it is my life and my baby.

I dont think that women who take mat leave are milking the system! But do people not think that the following scenarios (and I know ppl that have done it) are not a bit wrong?

have baby
return to work, demand flex time
have another baby
at the end of mat leave 2, resign
ergo your childbearing years have been paid for by the state and your company

I know I am going to get hammered for this, but I think that this is what pisses businesses off. People that do this rightly or wrongly create a bad perception in the workplace, and make it alot harder for others, as trust me now that times are tight, mat pay over stat is one of the first areas that business will cut

await hammering......

greenmonkies, I did express, but never had a niagara falls situation, it would have taken a lot of time and effort to get enough for while I was at work, plus I used a childminder 20 minutes from work.
Barek - I've been trying to look up when this may happen as I'm planning on having another child - all I can find are details of the changes and articles saying it will happen just not yet.

porcamiseria - unless the women in question knew when going off on maternity leave that they were going to not return to work, then they have acted perfectly reasonably. As per my earlier post, I think for many women, the decision to not return is not taken until towards the end of maternity leave. I for one would have been completely incapable of judging at 9m pregnant whether I was going to be able to work and by a Mum. And I don't think I'm that unusual in that.