Do teachers try and plan on having kids in the summer? I would think that it would be more convenient for them, and for their classes, if they were out having babies during the summertime. I know that you can’t always plan on that kind of thing, and that my current job (substitute teacher) actually thrives on teachers popping out babies during the school year, but it just seems overall inconvenient to everybody else if it can be avoided.
Back in late February I had a teacher ask me if I could substitute for her while she planned to be out on Maternity leave…in November. I’m guessing she was recently pregnant, and just planning ahead. I told her that I tentatively could, and that I would let her know if it turned out I was unable to help her. But for someone planning on having a child, to me it just seems more convenient to time it so that it happens during those summer months the kids are out of school, i.e. try and conceive around November.
My mother was a teacher when I was younger. She had three boys born in June, June, and Mid-August. My brother born in mid-August required her to take a few weeks off but me and my other brother were bullseyes.
In my experience teachers TRY to get pregnant so as to be due in late April, the idea being that most have about 6 weeks of sick leave accrued and they want to be able to use it, and that time of year is after AP exams, after graduation exams, and sort of a good time to miss. This, together with ten weeks of summer, means the kid is about three month old when you go back. However, shit happens–people take longer than they expected to get pregant and also, sometimes, get pregant sooner than they expected (i.e., we will start trying at such and such a date, assuming it will take 2-3 months, and it takes a week).
As I’ve said, being a substitute means that pregnant teachers are a gold mine for me. Cover them on their maternity leave, and know exactly where I will be working the next 2 weeks (since normally it can be quite random). But sometimes it can be difficult on the class- I subbed for a teacher that really should have waited a bit to get pregnant if she could, since she worked in a special ed class and then pretty much decided to quit, leaving her students high and dry stuck with a series of substitutes when they really need a special ed teacher to help them graduate.
My mom the teacher only managed two of her kids in the summer. The rest were school-year babies. Of course, mom and dad were Very Catholic at the time, so I suspect that there wasn’t much planning involved, if you catch my drift.
In Japan the school year begins in April, and the spring break is only about ten days - no hope for getting a baby popped out in that time. And as a total hijack, in Hokkaido the summer holiday is only about 24 days because they get a month off in the winter when its dangerous to walk to school, but the teachers still go on to the kids about the long, long, summer holiday. WTF???
My son’s first grade teacher told us at her ORIENTATION MEETING at the end of April that she’d got pregnant and would be taking a year’s maternity leave from the summer holiday. So the poor kids only had one term with her before they went to the substitutes route for the next two terms. In her defence, she was mightly red-faced when she told us (she had only been married six months and I don’t think they were planning kids that quick!) and she worked right up to about three weeks before the due date, which is very, very unusual in Japan.
Actually my kid came home in early September (the baby was born at the end of September) saying “Teacher X yelled at my teacher today.” I was rather shocked and asked why. “She said my teacher shouldn’t be doing forward rolls over the vaulting horse when her tummy is so big.” (You have NO IDEA how odd this is as most women here stop work, sex, anything at all the moment the sperm hits the egg!)
Not that she could plan it that precisely, but my wife was delighted to find out her due date was late September. The worst part of the pregnancy came after the summer heat, and she was able to spend a month getting her lesson plans together and hand them over to her substitute. She only took six weeks off, so she went back just before Thanksgiving. That gave her T-day and the winter break to get eased back.
Although if you asked most teachers, they’d probably pick mid to late June as a prefered time to give birth.
My friend the music teacher is delighted by her late April due date. April she’s doing on a week by week basis–no baby, no phone calls cancelling lessons, students show up and pay for lessons. May through August–no lessons from my friend. She has arranged for someone else to teach lessons during the summer. Come September, she anticipates being back to giving lessons. That said, the details aren’t entirely worked out yet–because too many details are dependent on whether or not baby will cooperate with a sitter or daddy while mommy gives lessons, and that is kind of hard to predict before baby is even born.
Mine as well, superfertile teachers seem to have their babies in the Spring - maternity leave FOLLOWED by summer break…however, subfertility being what it is, I don’t think most people have the luxury to pick their month. Having spent years trying to conceive, I’d recommend a ‘take what you can get’ approach, but you might want to start trying in the summer.
My wife and I specifically chose when to starting trying so as to have a late spring baby. It worked pretty well. The little one should be here in the next week or so. This falls comfortably in the 12 week FMLA leave time and give my wife an extra three months with the baby before she goes back to work. Plus, the effect on her paycheck only lasts until September. Our last one was born in July and my wife took all of here leave in the fall. She didn’t get a normal paycheck until the following fall.
A friend of mine who is a teacher was quite successful at planning her pregnancy. The baby was born in early August. Parental leave is longer in Norway, so it worked out that she took the school year off, and then her husband took his share of parental leave in the summer. Of course she spent the summer getting ready for the next school year, but that can be done at home and on whatever schedule is convenient, so they had lots of family time together. And she was ready to return to work just as the daycare centers started the biggest chunk of admissions, in mid-August.
I think she’s planning to try it again. Since she’s supposed to be my kid’s first grade teacher, I just hope she hasn’t already gotten things started
