Parental Leave gripes

[mears]

The Trust I work for has just launched some employee friendly policies, one being parental leave. As you know you can claim 13 weeks parental leave from birth to the age of 14 yrs for each child now. This leave will be phased in with 4 of the weeks being paid leave.
However, colleagues who do not have children think it is totally out of order.
One colleague said she is being penalised by not having children and is really angry about it.
Is she right? Is she disadvantaged?

The thing is because it's unpaid leave, very few people will take it. DH's employer demanded 3 months notice for each week that a person took, no more than 4 weeks in any one year, with at least 3 weeks inbetween periods of leave within that year. It wasn't a big inconvenience for DH's colleagues. I imagine that some of your childless colleagues could negotiate unpaid leave if they wanted to -- sheesh, with staff shortages in the NHS being what they are, seems like the Trust would bend over backwards to retain staff. Not that much of a 'benefit', is it?

I knew I was guilty of not reading all the details...... ok, so you guys get the benefit of 4 weeks of the 13 weeks as paid leave. Let me guess -- no more than one week per year? That is an advantage, but given the % of medical staff that leave the NHS when they have kids, not surprised the Trust realises they need that incentive to retain those staff.

It's true that the legal right to unpaid leave (up to four weeks a year and a total of 13 weeks) is only for parents ... but it's their children who will be paying the taxes to fund her (state) old age pension when she retires. We aren't having enough children in this country to replace the workers who are retiring (ie ageing population) so there's a good economic argument for Govt policy to support parenthood. Does the Trust not offer carer's leave for people who have other responsibilities ie elderly parents, for instance? If she's concerned, she should be pressing for policies that help everyone balance work and personal lives, not blaming parents!

What she says is she would like a paid leave to be with her husband but says that is hardly likely! I said that our children are the docyors, nurses, prime ministers of the future but she doesn't buy it. She states it was my choice to have children and work so why should she get less leave than me.

Well, when I was childless I certainly felt the same as her. We were expected to do all the unsocial hours stuff - weren't forced but it was assumed we wouldn't mind.

The pensions of the future argument may be a bit harsh. Our kids will be funding their own pensions, not old peoples I think. Also, she may not be able to have children, could be insensitive to mention.

Yes, it is our choice, mostly, to have children and if we get more paid leave then yes, I think it is unfair. However, if she wanted as much unpaid leave, think your employers would find it difficult to refuse a request. If I was her, I'd come up with an argument for as much paid leave as well. I wouldn't argue with her, I sympathise with her.

I didn't mean the pensions bit to sound harsh - it's just the way the state system works. The National Insurance we are all paying today is paid straight out to pensioners by the Treasury, not invested for our own retirements.

The fact is that parents do need this flexibility more than non-parents since they have children who depend on them - i.e. it really does need to be a parent/carer who takes ultimate responsibility for, say, taking a child to a hospital appointment or looking after them when they're sick. Who else is supposed do this? I agree, our children are the doctors and nurses and dustbin men of the future and the government needs to support parenthood. Having children does generally benefit society, not just the children's parents.

I don't think she's so hard done by though - you could take the view that she gets additional benefits through being childless such as the ability to potentially earn more because she can take jobs involving travel, overnight stays, high levels of time commitment etc; more money to spend on herself; more time for herself; an intact perineum and all the other things that go with being childless.

I do think the childless should understand that actually, there are an awful lot of other sacrifices that go with being a parent (which we mostly gladly make) and that therefore a poxy amount of paid/unpaid leave really isn't that huge a benefit when seen in those terms. If she wanted to make all the sacrifices that go with having children she too could have all the fantastic benefits the government hands out! (sarcastic smiley here)

Having said that, I do approve of employers having work/life balance policies that allow everyone to take unpaid leave or agree flexible working so that people like your colleague, Mears, could have time off to spend as they choose. But she's not a parent so the fact remains that her needs are different and she shouldn't be entitled to parental leave. IMO.

Time off to spend with her husband? Time off for shopping? Time off for a manicure? I think your colleagues are totally missing the point!

I totally agree with WWW's great post!!

i think your friend is being unreasonable.

when dd1 was under a year old, i had to take so much time of work to cart her off to the gp's, hospital etc. my employer was not happy with the situation, but what could i do?
I remember phoning them up one day to say i wouldnt be in, got a very shirty response by the manager, so took my dd1 down there in her buggy, plonk her on the customer service counter and just said 'This is why i'm not coming in today'. DD1 was covered head to toe in a rash plus had eczema covering her face that day.

If i had been able to arrange unpaid leave at short notice, or not had the days off counted as 'sick' days, then maybe i'd still be working now.

I wouldn't bother discussing it with your colleague - Evansmum's argument is generally accepted as the case - even by the government who are trying to incentivise parenthood (albeit in a modest way). If she doesn't buy this as you say - then plainly her mind is made up and she won't listen to reason and logic to the contrary.

Evansmum - I realise that the pensions we pay are for the pensioners of today not our own little peniosn fund (state pensions here) but by the time our children come to pay into pension schemes they are likely to be for their own, there may not be a state pension. We are the most hard done by generation here, funding the pensioners of today whilst having few, if any funding ours. Our children will, however, be wiping her bum when she is older.

I know 2 childless collegaues who took a year off for themselves, no problem with unpaid leave being available to all to use as they like.

What I keep thinking is that 35 years ago almost nobody was envisioning that the State pension would be on the way out, so maybe in 35 years it will be strongly back in. Anyway, the economy relies on people of working age, whether they directly fund my pension or not. Who else is going to help me out of the swimming pool and wipe my botty in the old folks' home?

I think Handlemecarefully is right. Don't discuss parenting issues with non-parents. You never understand before you are yourself a parents (mother). I know I didn't.....

If the incentives for being a parent are so fantastic, why isn't she doing it?

Excellent post, WWW.

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Good points here. I agree there is no point discussing things with a non parent because they just don't understand what goes with the territory. I have said that like minded people can lobby the government to provide paid time off to be with partners etc. That is how parental leave came about in the first place. She says she wouldn't expect leave for a trivial reason like that, adding that parental leave is a ridiculous reason to have time off work. She never plans to have children so she is just going to have to grow old being bitter and twisted about how hard she has been done by (is that English? Don't have time to reword it).

Hold on a minute here, am I really stupid. Are you saying that as a parent you will get an extra 4 weeks paid holiday (over the next 14 yrs)? If that is the case then it does seem unfair. WHen I first read this I thought it meant that the 4 weeks are paid as part of your annual leave??

I thought the law was that we could have upto 13 weeks unpaid leave, full stop. Nothing about being paid for it.

Yes I am all for flexibility, as a working mother I need it, but I do not expect to get extra 'holidays' paid for. If my kids or childcarer are sick and I take a day off, I use it as holiday, unless I can take work home and at least make an attempt to work from home. Last year I had about 2 - 3 days like this, so I did get extra time off in effect, but I tried to make everything up where I could.

I agree with Crunchie. Sounds very strange to me. Is this a general thing or just your Trust ? I work closely with HR and no-one here seems to know about 4 weeks extra paid leave.
I'm not suprised your colleague is fuming.

From her point of view, I'm sure your colleague does find it 'unfair'. But, whatever the moral rights and wrongs are, they are not the point from the Trusts point of view: we now operate under market forces and the Trust have obviously done a cost analysis and discovered that it is financially expedient for them to encourage people to stay with them / return after children. So your friend does benefit in an indirect way because the money not spent on recruitment and training can now be spent keeping her wages that bit higher!!!! (I feel I am suffering from a mixture of cynicism and rose-tinted delusion in this argument, though!)

Ahhh, thanks dino, was being totally thick !

Don't know about other places of work, but in the Civil Service anyone can take 13 weeks unpaid leave. (subject to managers approval, business need etc). We also get so many days paid care leave available but this also covers situations like looking after elderly parents, not just children.

Is yours definitely just parental, or "care" in general?

20 years ago I probably would have agreed with your colleague Then again, I was desperately ttc & having no luck, so couldn't see why people who were lucky enough to have children also needed so many extras. (Now much older & a little wiser..)

blimey, mears is your colleague another midwife?

The entitlement legally is 13 weeks parental leave from the birth till the age of 14 years for every child. The partnership forum in the Trust ( management and unions together) have agreed that4 weeks will be be paid. The leave will be phased in over the nest 3 years so that the entitlement will be 1 week till the end of March '04. 2 weeks for 2005 and 4 weeks for 2006.
Parental leave has been introduced due to market forces really - the NHS is short of staff and employee initiatives need to be employed to recruit and retain staff.
In the long run, more jobs will be created to facilitate leave for parents. There is also carers leave, special leave, adoption leave, bereavement leave etc.
I think people will have problems justifying to their colleagues why they need leave when infact it is no-one's business but their own.
Yes Tissy, the colleague without children is a midwife.

Forgot to say you need to give 3 weeks notice and your request must be honoured within 6 months.