Motion: TTHB that it is in the interests of women's equality to campaign against maternity leave

Great Debates
41

Try taking FMLA as a father and see how it goes. I was denied FMLA leave (actually, I could take the leave, I was just notified that I wouldn’t be reinstated) as a key employee. But many women, more highly paid and at a more senior level in the organization than me (including my boss’s boss) have taken FMLA leave and come back to their old position.

My only option was to sue the employer for discrimination, because to say that HR was unsympathetic would be an understatement. The same HR folks that are all over us if we fuss about FMLA to a female employee.

Does anyone know of a father who has taken parental leave under FMLA of more than a week or two? Serious question.

Every father I have talked to about the issue thinks that it would torpedo their careers. Problem is most of them think it should torpedo your career.

This is why a mandatory provision makes sense. If the mother takes twelve weeks, the father must take at least two weeks. Something like that. In the US, with FMLA being unpaid, this might be a problem, because the employee might not be able to afford it.

In our company at least, six weeks of the FMLA is effectively paid for new mothers, because they are considered disabled under our Short Term Disability program. Even if they are playing tennis and golf. They are non-rebuttably presumed to be disabled for six weeks after childbirth. This has been true for my last two employers as well, and every one my wife has worked for. Heck, one of her employers considered her disabled for six weeks after we adopted a child, though to be fair, they explicitly did that as an adoption benefit.

So far this year we have zero STD claims from male administrative employees (over 1,300 or 55% of the workforce) and ~20 from women. Just from eyeballing the list, vitually all the names I recognize appear to be childbirth related (i.e. I know they have had a child this year)

42

I feel that maternity leave enables many women to be who they naturally are, and broadens acceptance for who they are. It is in humanities and females best interest for a woman to be accepted in her natural role as well as any other role she may wish to pursue.

By not acknowledging who women are in a biological sense in society you diminish the core role of women and thus diminish all other roles that women may wish to be in.

43

I have taken it twice at two different companies. The first I took seven weeks (we had to take 1 week of PTO before California’s Paid Family could start) all in one chunk after the birth. The second, I took four weeks starting when my wife’s leave ended and then an additional two weeks several months later. It was not an issue at all in either companies. I do know that that is not universally true, and I know

44

In my dialect, the sound I make when pronouncing it naturally is a “short i”, and when pronouncing it in an exaggeratedly careful way, it’s a “long e”.

Which means nothing, but it’s fun to take note.

45

I gave birth in 1979, when my husband was in the Air Force. He was given leave of at least a couple of weeks in order to bond with the baby and help me recover. One of the few things that the military did right, IMO.

46

I took a month of paid leave off, and a month of working half-days off under FMLA at my current employer. Then again, my current employer is amazing and highly atypical in many ways.

47

“Hey boss, I got the clap again. Can I take the weekend off?”

48

I’m a Leave Administration Manager for a Fortune 200 company, and previously I did leave administration for a large private corporation.

In the US, most large companies do not provide “maternity leave.” Disability and leave policies do not distinguish between man and women, fathers and mothers.

A company will have a Medical Leave policy. This will usually cover all manner of serious health conditions including complications due to pregnancy and recovery from childbirth, but also covers prolonged sickness, injuries, and other short term disablities.

Many companies also provide some sort of parental leave or family leave for new parents. This leave would be available to both parents, including adoptive or foster parents.

Employees who are covered by FMLA also get to take leave under that entitlement; but again the reasons include “serious health condition” (including recovery from childbirth) and “caring for a newborn” (which covers men and women).

‘Maternity leave’ is a phrase used colloquially but you will not find it in many company policy manuals.

49

OP, as a high school debate coach, let me just say that I’d be more than a little disappointed in my kids if they were trolling* message boards for arguments. Come up with your own parli arguments.

You guys realize you’re doing this kid’s homework for him, right?

*Trolling in the “digging up information” way, not the the YUMADTHO troll way.

50

California Pregnancy Disability Leave is a special animal that has no parallel law in Federal law or any other state that I am aware of, FYI. Just one reason why leave administration in California is a royal pain in the ass.

“Key employees” must be among the company’s highest paid 10% of all workers within 75 miles. So by definition, 90% of your coworkers cannot be key employees. If you are, it kind of sucks for you but I guess the DoL figures you can afford childcare. I have a list of dozens of men right in front of me who are currently on FMLA newborn or childcare leave.

I to two weeks of parental leave for each of my children when they were born. (Not consecutively, though).

If using FMLA has any impact on your career prospects, you have an excellent case to take to the Department of Labor.

How would this be enforced, even coordinated, if the parents work for different employers?

Six weeks is the medical norm for full recovery from a vaginal delivery. Someone may be able to play a game of tennis but not be able to work a full shift at whatever job they hold. If you broke your leg and were out for six weeks you would be eligible for the same protection and pay. Also presumably you would be eligible for the same adoption benefit if you worked for the same employer.

So what? You want to eliminate disability benefits for childbirth?

51

Does that mean that the people saying heart attacks should also be covered are misinformed, in that if leave after pregnancy is covered then leave after a heart attack is too?

It is over here - UK. There are actual laws requiring employers to pay a certain amount of pay for sick leave. Link. It doesn’t apply to everyone - some part-time workers aren’t covered if they work minimum wage for very few hours - and it’s not much, but it’s something, and most companies actually have better sick leave policies than that.

So, over here at least, and from the sounds of it in the US, maternity pay is not unique in being leave required to recover from a medical condition.

Even though I had an easy pregnancy and recovered well from my terrible labour (the episiotomy did get infected - sitting down was painful for about a month - but I was young and very fit and a lot more active after childbirth than most women are) I was still a lot weaker after childbirth. It’s a six-week-long extra-heavy period if nothing else.

Completely “equal” parental leave would be like a workplace having completely “equal” uniforms where they were all the same size no matter whether the person was 90lbs or 290lbs.

52

Except because we have a huge “field” workforce that is low paid and part time, most of the corporate staff (and certainly all of the management-grade employees) can be defined as key employees.

But invoking the Key Employee exception is discretionary for the employer, presumably they are not allowed to do it for a discriminatory reason. But is is really going to be hard to prove that the women who were allowed FMLA leave were just as critical as the men who were denied. For example an accounting director may be more easily replaceable than a systems administrator. So proving discrimination is going to be difficult, especially if you only go through the analysis of “substantial and grevious economic injury” for employees who have been notified of their key employee designation, and not for others.

Not sure what being able to afford childcare has to do with anything here.

But I am very glad to see that not only do you report that there are many men who are currently on FMLA leave, and other posters have reported it as well. The companies I worked for must be of a different culture than yours. I actually briefly worked for a company that was much more “family friendly” and guys there did take time off when they have kids. But in the other companies that my wife and I have worked at this has not been the norm. Of course I can’t see the whole universe of people who are on FMLA and STD, just the ones I work with, except for my current employer, where I see the list of names, titles, etc, as part of my job (in Finance, not HR).

I am (sincerely) very glad to hear that. I wish I could have done the same. Or maybe I wish I believed I could have done the same.

You must be in some different legal and corporate environment from me, if you think that an “excellent case” is any guarantee of relief. Proving discrimination is very difficult.

Yes. I think I mentioned that enforcing this in the US environment would be difficult in the US. Unless FMLA required some kind of reporting to and administration by a government entity.

The only work I have experience with is desk work, on a computer or paper work. No heavy lifting, prolonged standing, stretching, etc. I’m not an OT, some conditions could make it difficult to sit for a couple of hours. I may have been making an unwarranted assumption that if you can play tennis or swim a couple of miles, you could do an office job for eight hours.

I think there should be no presumption of disability, any more than there is for any other injury or surgery. My wife was working four weeks after having a grapefruit sized tumor removed from her uterus. But based on medical findings, with medication and with someone else driving her to and from work, she was not disabled after four weeks.

I think having an automatic presumption of a standard minimum time of disability for something that only happens to women, and that has a very wide range of medical impacts is plainly discriminatory.

53

The tricky thing with allowing parental leave for fathers is that fathers have widely varying levels of involvement with children. You could have a father who’s always on diaper duty and does all the bottle-feeding and is the one tracking all the developmental milestones and reads the bedtime story every night and so on, and it’s easy to argue that that daddy should have the same or more allowances made for bonding as the mother. On the other hand, you could also have a father who last saw the mother nine months ago, and didn’t even know she’d gotten pregnant until the authorities start asking him for child support. Or anything at all in between. It would be difficult for some HR drone somewhere to fairly judge whether a particular father is involved enough to warrant time off.

54

I don’t understand how we are disagreeing. A heart attack is a serious health condition, just like giving birth, and they should be treated similarly – i.e., you are provided medical leave (up to a reasonable cap) as long as your doctor certifies that you’re medically unable to perform your job.

Paid leave is a little different. Some employers provide workers with paid disability benefits and some don’t, or only provide the employee the opportunity to enroll in their own coverage at group rates. At my current company, corporate employees get employer-paid disability while the other 95% of the company have to pay their own disability premiums if they want benefits while on leave.

FMLA and various state laws may require the employer to provide reasonable leave, but few if any require paid leave in the U.S. There has been some talk of that happening, but it’s almost certainly not going to happen in the current economy (or with the current Congress).

I’m not sure you’re understanding my explanation. Mothers who give birth get medical leave while they recover (usually six weeks). In addition to that, any parent (male, female, adoptive, etc) is entitled to “parental leave” to bond with the new baby if they are eligible for FMLA and work for a covered employer. Many companies offer more generous policies. But the point is there is a “medical” leave and a “parental” leave but there is no “maternity” leave.

I can see how that would bite, being a key employee. That provision is there in the FMLA to protect the business owner, but it’s true that 10% of the workforce is potentially screwed. The two companies I’ve worked for never opted to designate anyone as “key,” but it sound like your company is excercising it. I do think that if you can prove that they are designating men as “key” and not women in similar positions, you have a discrimination case.

I’m sure the corporate culture plays an important role. In my old company, men got two paid weeks of parental leave (when I left they were talking about increasing it to three) in addition to unpaid FMLA. At my current company we get one paid week in addition to FMLA (at corporate – field employees get no paid leave). Many companies don’t even offer that.

I believe the six week standard for pregnancy has become established because it is the normal, reasonable amount of time a woman requires to recover from the physical strain of childbirth. Certainly there are some women who recover much more quickly – and because my company is not paying women on leave, we often have them come back earlier than six weeks with a note from the doctore. But ultimately the company has to grant leave based on the certification provided from the health care provider. If the doctor says she needs six weeks to recover, it doesn’t matter if she’s playing tennis in three weeks; I can’t accept the liability of bringing her back before her doctor says it’s okay.

Two things: first, childbirth is not the only medical condition for which there is a very specific revcovery time that is considered the medical norm. Insurance companies have a chart with all kinds of common procedures/illnesses/injuries and how long an employee should be expected to be out of work for each. But it’s also there to protect employees. If some women are able to come back at three weeks, pretty soon the employer is expecting/pressuring all women to come back at three weeks, when most will be unable to.

55

Responses like yours are why I love this board. I am not fully convinced, but you have given me a lot to think about, not to mentions further caution me about making broad assumptions based on a very narrow view of what the world is like.

56

I wasn’t disagreeing with you - yours was a very good and informative post. My question was meant as a question. I’d hoped that the rest of my post would suggest that I wasn’t arguing with you, but things like that aren’t always that clear on messageboards.

So (correct me if I’m wrong) it seems that some of the posters were mistaken, and leave after pregnancy isn’t a special case? Or at least not much - if some states mandate a certain amount of leave, but it’s unpaid, then that’s only slightly better than nothing.

57

Not sure if you were referring to me , but - I know that in jobs covered by FMLA unpaid leave must be provided for any serious medical condition. However, not every employer or every employee is covered by the FMLA.

This

really did happen to me- I had worked there less than 12 months at the time and wouldn’t have been covered under FMLA.

Someone advocated for that job to treat pregnancy more favorably than other medical conditions. People at my current job have advocated light-duty assignments in the case of pregnancy only and a number of people in this thread have talked about leave being needed for pregnancy, childbirth and for mothers specifically to care for infants. Someone even mentioned HR having a difficult time in determining which fathers are involved enough to warrant leave. I think the cause of all of those situations is that people (not necessarily employers) use the term “maternity leave” and the term itself causes people to treat women differently - I can’t imagine anyone saying it would be difficult for HR to determine which mothers are involved enough to warrant leave.

I’m not against women having time off after giving birth- I’m against using the term “maternity leave” , because it shouldn’t depend on being a mother ( some should be medical leave also available to non-parents, and some should be parental leave also available to fathers) and I really do think using the term causes a backlash against women.

58

I think the corporate culture is a pretty big deal. My husband worked for the same small startup while we had two kids. The culture of the company was always very pro-parental* leave but there was nothing formalized at the time that we had our first child. His direct manager was (frankly) a jerk who refused to let him take more than a week of vacation time (he had stored up vacation time because this was planned). Most of the other dads who had babies then were allowed to take leave that was “off the books”. I call him a jerk because he (the boss) would call other fathers while they were on leave. That boss took more than 2 full weeks of leave when he had a baby in the same general timeframe.

At some point before our second kid was born, his company instituted paid parental leave of 2 weeks for all employees (in addition to your vacation time). We believe the change was related to his boss :). The COO of the company took 2 full weeks off when his daughter was born. It was strongly encouraged that all of the new dads take the time and it could be used anytime within 6 months. It was quite common for the new dad to take 2-3 days off work, go back to work while family was in town and then take the rest of the time after they left.

*He worked for a high tech startup and the reality was that there were very few women. Many of the employees were men who were just starting families so most of the parental leave was taken by guys. The company was founded by 5 guys and four of them had their first child within the first 2 years of the company being founded.

59

For most people it doesn’t require SIX weeks…but it does require time.

Yes you can go home from the hospital the day or the day after you are giving birth, but for a week you pass blood clots the size of baseballs - it can be sort of messy and blood is one of those things that carry pathogens that your employer would just you rather say home. If you had a c-section you had the major abdominal surgery that normally GETS six to eight weeks recovery, like a hernia operation or a gall bladder removal. If you didn’t, but you tear, you may find it very painful to walk very far - it was a good two weeks before I was really walking post birth. You don’t get a lot of sleep those first six weeks, either, even if you bottlefeed and Dad takes shifts - that leads to having a dangerous situation out on the roads as women drive to work who have had four hours of sleep broken into pieces- I wouldn’t want to have a lot of new moms out on the roads during rush hour - I know how tired I was. Definitely there is a recovery period and while it might be possible for pioneer women to drop a kid and be back in the field in the afternoon - even most of them in subsistence circumstances were “laid up” for a few weeks from anything strenuous.

60

Sorry I missed this question earlier.

There may be individual employers who offer something called ‘maternity leave’ but most companies have realized that this is a bad idea, because it opens the company up to charges of discrimination if they offer a benefit to women and not men. So usually there will be some kind of medical leave policy for men and women that covers pregnancy- and childbirth- related disabilities as well as other illnesses or injuries, and perhaps a separate “parental leave” that allows any new parent time off to take care of a new baby.

A very few states (California being the prominent) offer a special pregnancy-only leave entitlement, however. In California, a pregnant mother could conceivably receive up to four months of Pregnancy Disability Leave in addition to twelve weeks of leave under the California Family Rights Act to bond with the new child. This is all unpaid by the employer, although CA workers do receive some state disability pay.

Few if any leave entitlement programs by the state or federal government require paid leave. FMLA and other state leaves laws only provide for unpaid leave, although employers may be (and frequently are) more generous.