Being open with your manager about plans to have children (or more children)

[barcelona87]

I'm asking in the context of thinking of ideas for an MSc Occupational Psychology research project and want to test whether there is something interesting to say about this.

My hunch is people generally don't feel comfortable openly discussing it and this could impact career planning / the support your manager can give you.

Similarly, for all the managers out there - would you feel comfortable discussing this if an employee raised it in the context of their career?

Would love to know what others think! At this stage I'm just brainstorming ideas...

Thanks!

Why would a woman discuss her plans for children with her employer?

Exactly - and an employer isn’t allowed to ask either.

A few reasons I can think of:

• To help create a more realistic 3-year career plan
• To support thinking through career opportunities, potential future roles or even your current roles and how work-life conflict challenges might be overcome
• To support decision-making on whether to start a professional qualification / further study
• To provide support around any anxiety over whether to have children and how it might impact your career, or to provide support through fertility issues
• To discuss whether going part-time after having children would be viable in the role

None of the things you’ve listed are reasons why discussing possible children is not relevant in the workplace.
I discussed having a child with one person only - the child’s father!

I would never have an actual conversation with my manager about when of if i was going to have a baby.

It might come up in light conversation if we were friends sort of thing or general chit chat but id never formally say anything

Dear god NO. Your manager is not your friend and it is literally their job to put the company first. It is basic self-preservation to not discuss it with them until you actually need to invoke the protections that come with pregnancy. I'd go so far as to say that someone who discussed it with their manager has poor boundaries and judgement.

the employer would then need to be having the same conversations with all male employees.

Sorry, but it's a horrible, pointless idea for a research project. If it were a thing, literally all it would do is sway managers towards sex discrimination, which is, y'know, illegal.

I didn't suggest it would only be female employees having these discussions - the points certainly apply to all employees thinking about children.

• To help create a more realistic 3-year career plan
I think most women who are career focussed don't need help creating a realistic 3 year plan.
• To support thinking through career opportunities, potential future roles or even your current roles and how work-life conflict challenges might be overcome
Again, no one needs a conversation with their manager to think about how potential future work life balance - most women are capable of assessing the work life culture in the organisation without needing a specific discussion about it.
• To support decision-making on whether to start a professional qualification / further study
As above - are women not capable of thinking through the consequences of pregnancy/childcare and further study?
• To provide support around any anxiety over whether to have children and how it might impact your career
Line managers really shouldn't be put in the position of having to support anxiety in a team member.

I didn't suggest it would only be female employees having these discussions - the points certainly apply to all employees thinking about children.

Lol. As if becoming a parent was ever something that affected a father's career prospects to the extent that he needed career and anxiety counselling with his line manager

My children are in their twenties now but when I did have my son and returned to work after 7 months I was asked by my female manager whether I was planning another one in the next year or two because ‘she had a department to run’. I stupidly did say that yes there’s be another one fairly close together.

She then rescinded my reduced hours agreement. I went to HR who reinstated it but when I did have my second baby and returned on a job share role she’d decided that I couldn’t do the same quality of work as a job share (despite the role nor job title changing) and duly cut my hourly rate of pay.

I had to put a formal grievance in eventually and I was compensated and my hourly rate of pay returned to what it was.

So my advice is to avoid all conversation about your plans whatsoever

If one of the people I manage started talking to me about their plans for having children/more children I'd tell them to stop. Because it would be one of the most unprofessional things I could ever be party to. Dear God, way to go to set back working women. And it would be women. Because it always is.

People shouldn't be having these discussions at work. The employee shouldn't be hinting they may be going off to have children AND more importantly, the management should definitely NOT be putting people in the position to do so.

I didn’t do it before having kids. If nothing else, it’s none of my work’s business what my future plans might be. Also, you can have all the plans you want but I wouldn’t want my professional development path to be discussed as in any way contingent on a future pregnancy (even though I might be taking it into account myself) because you don’t know if or when the pregnancy would actually happen.

Even if managers weren't human beings with the full range of conscious/unconscious prejudices which makes such conversations risky for the employee....

....babies don't come to a schedule. You can vaguely plan, but you certainly can't plan the next 3 years based on when you'll get pregnant.

I'm sure you can think of other reasons why these conversations would be less useful for both sides than you might suppose.

I would love to have this discussion with my manager because my projects, training objectives/opportunities and committee positions tend to run on 12-36 month timescales and can't be paused/restarted or even really taken at a later opportunity. If I could say with a good reason "not this year, but count me in for when I'm back" or "can I have 6 month projects", it would make everyone's life easier and so much more productive. The reality is I won't say anything because I work in a male dominated environment and I'm scared of being sidelined just in case I get pregnant.

Have you ever worked in a corporate job OP? Or just studied psychology? In my entire 20 year career I don't know anyone who has or would discuss their plans with their boss.

I know someone who did as it was going to involve grueling IVF. Their manager was incredibly supportive

That's a pretty useless 'subject' to research.

The only person I ever discussed my plans to procreate with were my husband.

It's no one else's business.

As an employer I do not want to discuss family planning with any of my employees - their plans for children or not are none of my business and it's not pertinent to their employment.

As a manager, the answer is no.

It wouldn't influence whether I felt they should be promoted etc, but I would worry that they would use it to claim discrimination if I didn't promote them. I don't need that extra liability hanging over me.

As a manager I do not wish to discuss this with men or women. I treat each member of staff on the basis of their aspirations and performance at work. I cannot plan around fictional children, long term health problems that haven't emerged, or the possibility they will leave and get another job. It's the here and now.

I am certainly not going to enter into "what if" conversations about working hours etc., beyond what is the organisational policy, because what flexibility I will have will depend very much on the circumstances at the time of the ask.

Regardless of issues around discrimination etc, it seems a bit pointless to have conversations about potential hypothetical children. We all know that plans change and Mother Nature often has different ideas for us to the ones we have for ourselves. So let’s say that I tell my manager “I’m planning on getting pregnant next spring so I should be going on mat leave at Christmas” and so I maybe don’t get allocated to specific projects or given opportunities or maybe I am still given them but I turn them down because I’m expecting to be pregnant. And then it takes months/years to conceive and all that while my career is effectively put on hold because in “the plan” I was meant to be on Mat leave by now? No thanks.

I think a better project would be around discussing support required for women who are already pregnant and how organisations can plan effectively for mat leave etc without disadvantaging women. Or perhaps something around support available for women who have suffered from a miscarriage?

There have been a couple of times when I've brought this up (much as some people in this thread think I'm wildly unprofessional!), the first being in my job interview!

I already had a job so while I wanted this one, I wanted it to be better for me than the job I was in. One of the things I was interested in was their maternity policy so I asked about that (which will of course have told them that I was planning another child at some point - they also knew I was on maternity leave at the time). I got the job and will have been working there for 2 years before I go on maternity leave before Christmas.

The other time was when discussing some training they were offering - it was optional but would be expected to take around 2 years to complete. So I asked if I would need to commit to doing it all in one go or if I could take a break from it for maternity leave (this discussion was before I was pregnant)

And they will have guessed I was likely to be trying for another baby soon when I took some sick leave while I was having a miscarriage (they let me take some compassionate leave for this too).

So while I didn't discuss "Oh I'm trying for a baby now", I was able to ask the relevant questions because I trust this company not to hold that against me. Some genuinely are good to work for!

The only possible outcome I could foresee from having this discussion with your manager is that your career progression would come to an immediate halt.