Telling your boss you're pregnant

[1Wanda1]

I am 14 weeks pregnant and worrying about how my (male) boss will react when I tell him. Obviously I know work can’t discriminate against you for pregnancy, but it’s the less overt prejudice I am concerned about.

I’ve worked for my boss for several years. We are lawyers. We used to be part of a big team. Over the past 2 years my boss has adopted an aggressive strategy of managing people out, to increase his profitability, and we have gone from being a team of 10 to a team of just him, me, and one junior. I am busier than ever as a result and boss’s profitability is also much better. There is no financial benefit to me in this new arrangement - I just have more work. The junior is too junior for my boss to rely on unsupervised, so in practice I carry a large proportion of my boss’s practice and also supervise the junior. Boss depends on me a lot to run cases day to day.

I suppose you could say that the inconvenience of maternity leave is the price my boss pays for having reduced his team to the point where there is no one else to pick up my work when I’m off. However, my pregnancy will be absolutely the last thing in the world my boss is expecting. For most of the time I’ve worked for him, I was a single parent. My DC are teens now and I am remarried. I know his view will be “why on earth do you want to do this again?” and he might think I am less committed to my career, which is not the case. He is quite a stereotypical male boss, and doesn’t really “get” the concept that women can be career focused AND be mums. His own wife put her career on the back burner when they had kids. I think that one of the reasons he chose to retain me while encouraging other team members to find other jobs, was because he considered me to be beyond the years of having small children to think about.

I'm just really worried about telling him, and that he will view me differently when I do. But I don't want to apologise for being pregnant!

Usually I would say copy HR in but that's not an option in this case!
I would tell him sooner rather than later that way he can plan to get someone in whilst you are there who can get up to speed and then cover you.
Luckily for you as a lawyer you know exactly what he can and can't do which is better than most.
Have you decided how long you want off and return to work options with your DH? Personally I would get my ducks in a row of planning on finishing at x week, with x amount of time off returning on x... That way its not really a discussion you have it sorted all he has to say is congrats....

“I suppose you could say that the inconvenience of maternity leave is the price my boss pays for having reduced his team to the point where there is no one else to pick up my work when I’m off. ”

You’re spot on here OP- this is on him. Any manager which doesn’t factor in the possibility of a key member of staff going off sick, taking maternity or adoptive leave, requesting a sabbatical or resigning is a total idiot.

This isn’t your problem and I wouldn’t let him try and act like it is.

Poor planning on his part does not constitute an emergency on yours!

As an aside, I’d consider using the end of your maternity leave as a chance to brush up your cv and meet with some legal recruiters, especially if your pay isn’t reflective of the work you do.

Op, I know you are a lawyer but please don’t think women aren’t discriminated against. About 25% of pregnant women are discriminated against by their employers in the U.K. every year regardless of the law.
If you weren’t a lawyer, and having been there myself I would say the following.
a) check you have family legal cover on your house insurance BEFORE you tell him. If you haven’t, add it. It will cover the cost of lawyer/ barrister at tribunal if he fires you.
b) When you tell him, email him as you go in to the meeting, and blind copy someone in. You need that notification timed & dated.
Sorry but be prepared for him to be unreasonable.
c). If I was doing it again I would put my phone on record.
Hopefully he will be lovely, but prepare for the worst and all that. Good luck. Congratulations.

I don't think women aren't discriminated against - that's exactly the point of my thread. It's just that I know any discrimination won't be overt in my case. My boss can't run his practice without me. He won't make me redundant - he actually can't because the team is too busy for there to be any legitimate case for a redundancy. I have stellar reviews and have just aced an internal development course. But I am worried he won't keep supporting me for promotion. I've watched him make my colleagues' jobs miserable so they would leave and I just don't want that to happen to me.

I’m a lawyer too albeit no longer in private practice (fortunately as I’m expecting my third in four years!)

Personally I think the law is terrible for discriminating against lawyers. I survived two redundancy rounds at my old firm at the height of the financial crisis and saw first hand how the first round took out the part time working mothers whilst the second round sorted the wheat from the chaff and turfed out the underperformers. Law firms get away with it as it’s a small world and if you sue your old firm you’re writing off your career. Like you say, it’s not just a question of overt discrimination though. It sounds like your boss is quite shrewd and has a set up where he’s maximised profitability. If you want to keep being promoted after you return you’ll need to keep up your productivity (and hope he’ll show some loyalty). I think that’s hard with a small child though. If you’re aiming at partnership it doesn’t in any event seem like there is much prospect due to the team set up - it’d be far too top heavy.

If I were you I would go in with a clear plan of when you’ll leave and come back, what hours you’ll be doing and concrete plans for keeping up your billing. Would it be possible to work from home for a day or two to help increase your chargeable hours? Also do you know anybody that could do your maternity cover?

Good luck!

Hi chloechloe - are you in house now? If so, how do you find it compared to PP?

Re my longer term future, even if I hadn't got pregnant, I wouldn't be aiming at partnership. Not at my current (top 20) firm, anyway. I just don't see the lifestyle of a successful partner as compatible with happy family life unless you have a stay at home spouse (I don't). I've been looking at moving in house and that remains my plan.

I have some ideas about how my boss can cover my maternity leave, suggestions as to some contract lawyers I know in other parts of the firm, whose contracts will end just before I go on leave. I'm not going to ask for any flexible hours on return, and as I live close to work, it shouldn't be difficult for me to work the same hours I do already.