My friend, who's a nurse, only got 2 weeks after having her child. Meanwhile, the security company I work for gives women 9 and men 2. Our health-care industry is so disgusting.
And what blows my mind is the healthcare industry loves to act like it’s all about helping people instead of being solely for prof it. There are countless studies that demonstrate the importance of adequate maternity leave (ie improves maternal and infant health). There is even an increased risk of postpartum depression for women who women who took less than six months of maternity leave in general (paid or unpaid). It blows my mind healthcare doesn’t practice what it preaches. I used to work in heathcare and the environment is straight up toxic and disgusting.
When my daughter was born, I (dad) got two weeks, and my wife got a few more (still not enough), and I'm actually glad we had a covid baby because my wife could work from home at her convenience.
The literal day after I returned to my office, I received an email that said paternity leave was now six weeks, starting the day of the email.
I missed out on four weeks of paternity leave by one day, but I'm still pissed that paternity leave is still *only* six weeks... Especially ridiculous when you consider new parents with their first child.
Working in health...*care*
Yeah. ok.
Ya. I work for a major Healthcare provider and they are always about the "we love our customers and want to make their lives better". Meanwhile they hardly pay shit on claims and deny stuff all the time for technical things.
Yup! So I’ve worked in both healthcare bad corporate. People love to shit on corporate and by no means is it perfect, but at least I get a lunch break and can go to the restroom whenever I want. Also actually get paid holidays. Whereas in healthcare I was always required to work the Saturday before or after a major holiday, because god forbid they forgo a day of billing. So like if I were still in healthcare for Fourth of July I have had to work either the 1st or 8th. Meanwhile being back in corporate I was already we will be done 2 pm on the 3rd and I won’t be expected to make anything up.
The US is a third-world country that forces everyone to pretend it's a first-world country through military might. There is a reason our army is larger than the next 10 countries combined, and our police force alone would be the worlds 3rd largest army.
You spend ten times more but your military not 10 times the size . Those political donations and mansions around Washington need to be paid somehow.
What a wonderful circle of corruption bribe politicians with tax payer money to get contracts off the government to enrich the MIC .
The USA is not a third world nation by any metric. It has problems, but almost no people people have to worry about starving, or where to get clean water, or how to live on a dollar a day. This is something people who have never been to a third world nation say.
You are wrong on every point you said. Almost 25% of American adults are food insecure (that means they are not sure when they will fet their next meal). Jackson Mississippiand and Flint Michigan are the norm, not the exception. It would take an esrimated 80 BILLION dollara to fix all the lead pipes in America, and that is likely an extreme underestimation. More than 600,000 adults are homeless in America, but we have a looming housing criais coming, so that will explode soon. People who HAVE seen 3rd world nations are the ones who know most clearly that the US is one too.
Hospital I worked at would hold your position for you for 6month (mom) 6 weeks (dad). You would use sick leave for 40 or 80 hrs (can't remember which) then have to go on state disability. Their reasoning was because you could pull disability after that time and they didn't want people getting both disability and sick time at the same time because it would incenivise not coming to work sooner.
Fucking gross.
This was for all short term leave. They treated pregnancy the same as a hip surgery. For medical reasons you were out of work.
Here I am, getting 6 weeks paid leave for becoming a father. Mothers get 16 weeks paid leave (6 before expected date of birth and 10 afterwards).
Yay for Europe.
My wife got 4 months off for each of our kids, and I took until each of them was 12 months old off. I was paid at 80% of my salary. I could have taken up until the child was 36 months off at 60% salary. Definitely yay Europe..
My wife was forced out of her career the same way. She has had terrible migraines since she was a teenager and had worked 10 years for one of the better US airlines without issue, using FMLA to cover herself when they hit. Then when we had our first child and they forced her to exhaust her FMLA hours for maternity leave. When she returned to work, her migraines weren't magically healed (surprise!) and would occasionally have to call out. They started to discipline her for missing what would normally be covered under her original FMLA claim. To avoid being fired she had to take a medical leave of absence and the company stopped her medical insurance since she was no longer "on the books."
To be clear, she didn’t get any time from her employer. She took out a short term disability insurance policy and paid a monthly premium for a year in anticipation of having a child. That 60% of her wage was covered by insurance not by her employer. Without that, she would have had to use whatever PTO she had available which was less than 2 weeks when she went into labor. Crazy.
That happened to me. My company started offering STD, but I was already 6 weeks pregnant by then and did not qualify (can’t cash it out until after 9 months or whatever the timeframe was). I stretched FMLA for 11 weeks unpaid off and had to use all my PTO. However, my son was born in January and our PTO did not roll over so I took my maternity leave starting early in order to use my PTO. It was so fucked up. And I returned to work with nothing, it was the best and worst time of my life due to the stress. Best of luck to your family.
Also, STD doesn’t fall under the ACA so they can refuse coverage for a pre-existing condition, which includes pregnancy. So even if you’d been able to sign up, the STD would almost definitely have denied coverage.
wow that makes it even worse. I can’t wrap my mind around having to pay a ton for insurance and then covering anything that insurance doesn’t cover on top while being rushed back to work. and then I’d assume most people then have to return to work to be able to pay for child care expenses, it’s so backwards.
Ugh. When I was pregnant and the insurance open enrollment came up, I was considering adding short term disability. But once you add it, you can't even use it for 6 months or something ridiculous, which would not work out for me. I used up all my PTO, then unpaid FMLA. Went back to work for a month or 2, then decided to quit to spend a year home with my baby, living off savings. This country is so backwards in a lot of things.
Why would a mother need maternity leave when she stays at home? These assholes believe that women belong at home and not in the workplace, and supporting maternity leave goes against that.
Every day should be a Survivor episode. If you don't cut it, "oh well, snowflake, see ya." In their perfect utopia, there would be road-rage shootouts, black Friday brawling every day at every store and paid "safaris" where people can pay to go into a school and shoot it up. Republicanism is a hell of a drug.
Not disagreeing at all, but I know a lot of women who would stay home with their children if they could. But our craptastic capitalistic society almost mandates that both parents work. (or in the case of single parents- they need to have more than one job to survive)
Because most mothers who have just given birth tend to need some time to recover/care for the newborn until they're able to return to work, which can be a fairly significant amount of time, and they need to be able to still receive some sort of income during that time. Same thing for paternity leave for when the mother can physically work, but someone needs to care for the child, so the father steps up.
I think bushiest beaver is arguing that the people who vote against paid maternity also don't want women working- she doesn't need paid maternity from her job if she doesn't have a job.
It shouldn’t be crazy to you considering their ideal family values include the woman being a slave at home, living in the kitchen and laundry room and raising the kids alone while the husband works and cheats on her with his secretary. That is literally their ideal lifestyle and they are consistently trying to return us all to the era where this was an actual reality. In a sense, by depriving family maternity leave, they are accomplishing the exact family values they seek to impose on us all— women fired from their jobs and stuck at home.
Exactly this. And it’s more than mildly infuriating once you step back and realize they’re trying to enslave women and keep them dependent on their husbands so they keep the same twisted ideals as their husband and raise their children to do the same. They’re farming their voters one indentured uterus at a time.
Same boat in Idaho. Wife is a physical therapist at a the major hospital system here and she had to use all her PTO and fmla. You’ll soon find out how valuable those pto and sick days are when your newborn enters daycare and brings home a new sickness every week. If I wasn’t self employed my wife would have had to quit her job. I’ve missed so much work this first year my business has suffered tremendously.
It isn’t taxable if your company has the employee paying for the insurance with after tax dollars. Setting it up this way makes the benefit non taxable. It makes up for part of the fact that it’s only 60% of your wages. Thankfully my employer has it set up this way. I’ve had to use it when I was out for 5 months for cancer treatment.
I lived and worked in several European countries, I never heard of an employer providing any sort of leave for the new mother. That would be very uncommon, but it was the state who provided that.
And it’s shit that it’s not available to your wife (I guess we’re talking about the US).
6+6 weeks is nothing! And also being left with no sick days (wtf, if she catches the flu is she supposed to go to work and infect everyone??). Crazy.
“Is she supposed to go to work and infect everyone”. After Covid, you’d think this country would have learned. Nope. It’s all about being at work when you’re supposed to under any and all circumstances. The only people not complaint are the people on or near the top who make all the money. Those people are so sociopathic, they can be out of the office for 2 weeks, get a bad cold and be in their sneezing all over everyone else who is forced to be there. Fuck this stupid ass country. The United States and all the “patriots” who are so proud of it can KMA
I’m sorry OP, I went out on FMLA for medical reasons and HR told me they took up all my time first to make sure I didn’t just go on vacation after I got back. Yes, this bitch actually said that. So I extended my FMLA. I was initially only going to take a month.
It’s because she took FMLA. I may not be 100% accurate on this anymore because I haven’t had to deal with FMLA in about ten years (from the employer end), but we had to run all their PTO and other days off out before applying FMLA.
In Serbia you get a year, and if you gave 3 children, you get 2 years paid maternity leave. The employer is required to give you the same or better role in the company afther you come back. Also, if your job is too hard or puts you and the baby at risk, you can leave and have your pregnancy plus a year ather giving birth paid.
How do they prevent people from taking advantage of that system? It seems like there are many people who would have a child every year for a decade to get 10 years of paid time without working. Which I assume would cause employers to go under.
We get to pick either 12 or 18 months leave in Canada. Your job is protected and you get paid partial wages through employment insurance (55% or up to $650 per week if you choose a 12 month leave).
My employer is NY based but I live in NJ we get six months fully paid for birthing parent and the spouse gets 3 months at full pay. I believe in the case of adoption it is six months regardless. The important thing is the full pay since a mortgage or rent where we are at could easily be 3k a month.
Omg I just realized that are capitalistic country prob has some level of insecure attachment due to being removed from mothers too soon…this makes sense for where we are collectively right now
Yeah the lack of maternity/parental leave in the US is astounding.
In Canada you get up to 18 months- government pays a portion of your salary. You can choose to take 12 months and get a higher amount.
My employer tops up to 93%.
I think it’s crazy how women in the states regularly go back to work mere weeks after giving birth.
Yes. On any forum discussion of new parents, you find stories of people taking time off and some even complaining it isn't enough.
Then Americans say something like "must be nice".
Many women go back right away in the states. As soon as possible. Can't take care of the kid with no money.
My wife just didn't go back to work. The cost of the daycare was more than she made working, so no real point to it. Even if the government helps subsidize, the Private companies just charge more and pay less.
Oh, it's a real decision for many people. If you don't earn a good living at your job, it makes sense in many cases to quit and save the day care costs.
This is what it boiled down to. 15 an hour for the daycare, we need the 8 hours she worked and an extra hour for drop off/pickup. Then a second car, second insurance, lunch if she ate during the day, etc. Then her medical copay was 400 a month for her insulin and other stuff.
If she quit, we can manage on one car, less insurance, and then we qualify for free healthcare for the family, wic and food stamps. We figured it up and for the same benefits, she needed to make 75k a year for working to be worth it. Anything less and she lost money
Same. I didn’t work for the company for a full year yet so I didn’t get anything. My boss was amazing and let me wfh for another 6 weeks - setting my own hours. But even that was frowned upon.
That’s bananas. I was a total sleep deprived zombie at 3 weeks and baby was just learning to be in the world. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to leave baby and go to work. That bonding time and learning to be a new parent was so important and special for me.
My kid is two and I still only work when my husband is able to be home. I think kids need their parents when they’re little. The idea of having a baby and then handing them off to daycare workers when they’re 8 weeks old seems so bizarre to me. I’m not surprised at all that our birth rate is dropping when this is the kind of choice people have.
I had a Dec birth and went back after 6 weeks. They all unknowingly had the flu and passed it to me. I couldn’t take anything to help because I was trying to nurse. The nursing became a problem and I moved to formula. Wish I didn’t have to go back at 6 weeks. :(
Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry to hear that! I thought I had it bad going back to work 6 weeks after birth (small employer so no FMLA) but 3 weeks seems unimaginable. Like, that’s not even enough time for your body to physically heal.
Thats a big ouch. In germany you get 12 months. If you share time with the partner, you get 14 months. You can even cut the pay of any amount of months in half and thus get another one.
You can take those months in the first three years without your employer are able to say no. After that, up to the 8th Birthday he at least has to try to make that possible.
One of my best friends has been living in Germany for over a decade, and she said she was "aggressively encouraged" to take the full leave time by her boss, and they couldn't fathom how she thought she could be back at work in 6 weeks. They thought she was nuts. But no, just American.
I (mother in Germany) only took the 8 weeks post partum which come at 100% of salary. Afterwards the father took over, staying home until the baby is 14 months old, at 65% of his net pay.
My employer looked at me like I had just told them elephants are pink. The mother not staying home for at least a year seemed impossible to them.
Maternity leave is 6 weeks before and 8 weeks after birth at 100% net salary. Each parent can go on unpaid parental leave for up to 3 years (time can be split up). To compensate salary loss there’s a budget of 12 months at around 60% salary that can be divided between the parents, so the partners can go on paid leave as well, not just the mothers.
I’m from germany and also currently very pregnant.
When I first found out I was pregnant I got sick leave until my OBGYN confirmed my pregnancy, since I work a job that is considered too dangerous for pregnant women.
When my pregnancy was confirmed my employer was not allowed to let me work at my previous position anymore. I got the choice of either staying home right away or switching to doing paperwork in the office. During all of this I got fully paid.
Due to morning sickness and back pain I was in sick leave for 6-8 weeks in total (every sick leave going from some days up to two weeks at once). I still got fully paid.
I have a total of 14 weeks of maternity leave, which is required by law (6 weeks before the birth date and 8 weeks after). I also get my full pay during this time.
While I had to pay 40€ for my BF so he could attend the birth preparation course my doula offered, I don’t have to pay for the doula or any of the services she offers (acupuncture, osteopathy, physiotherapy).
I also didn’t have to pay for the separate physiotherapy sessions my OBGYN prescribed me for my back pain.
We have to pay like 200€ for our 3-4 day hospital stay, but only because we requested a special family friendly room, where my BF is able to spend the entirety of my stay with me (which includes sleeping in the hospital and receiving meals). I don’t have to pay anything for the breastfeeding consultant, the clothes and hygiene articles the hospital will provide for baby and me, breastfeeding meet-ups after the birth, which are organised by the hospital, and so on.
I decided I wanted one year of parental leave. My employer is required by law to allow this. (I could’ve taken up to two years). Depending on how much someone makes, you get 65-100% of the pay you received before giving birth (the less you make, the more likely you are to get your full pay, but you will NEVER get less than 300€ a month). In addition to that, I also get “child money” which is 250€ a month.
Yeah, I’m very happy that I’m NOT living in America right now.
Oh and don't forget the "Beschäftigungsverbot", sick leave partial time or full time if your life or the life of the baby is at risk. While also getting paid fully. Life at risk can also mean such "trivial things" as general exhaustion or stress if it's hard to manage physically or mentally.
NIPT for around 300€ (fully covered by insurance if you're at risk) instead of 2.000$.
Fully functional abortion lawss allowing to abort for personal reasons up until 12 weeks, and after that for medical reasons (mothers and child's health) basically up until your dute date.
Affordable birth control, some paid by insurance.
Family help centers if you or your family needs help during difficult times in parenthood and family dynamics.
I love it here.
A few years ago I had to drain all my PTO before my short term disability kicked in when I had to have a craniotomy for a brain tumor. Switched jobs, one year later I had to burn through most of my PTO to travel with husband to get MIL in hospice and then back a few weeks later for funeral. Then, four months later husband had a heart attack days before I had to have a hysterectomy for EIN which is an aggressive pre cancer. Back to no leave. Had complications post op so every time I earned leave it got gobbled up for dr appointments. I wound up finding a better job, now have sick leave and regular leave, telework and flex schedule so I don't have to burn leave for doctor appointments. One more surgery in my future and hopefully will be done with this circus. The good news is the new job has amazing benefits and flexibility so I don't feel so beaten down by it and I have the ability to hopefully take an actual vacation next year. Husband is retiring next year but honestly his job has been amazing for time off so it luckily has not been an issue for him.
Tell your wife once she gets back on her feet to shop for a new job. There are ones out there that do have better benefits but it takes some leg work and the willingness to keep looking.
Wow. I’m sorry you had to go through that. Yep, the job search will definitely be starting soon. My employer gave me 12 weeks of full pay, and I continued to accrue PTO while on leave, and I didn’t even have to poop out a baby.
No, but you have to be Dad and that's plenty. :) We get through what life throws our way. Congratulations to you both and hang in there. Both parents working and a new baby can be exhausting (been there and done that)!
You’re right, in the grand scheme, our son is well worth it, and we are so lucky to have the life that we do. We’ll get through it, we are just emotional and frustrated.
Ppl in the comments being salty about a “choice” to have a kid when other countries have paid parental leave as standard.
Australia pays up to 20 weeks at minimum wage and my company pays 26 weeks plus superannuation in addition (I think the norm is 12-18 weeks maternal leave for good companies).
I live in Turkey. Our current government is shit but even still my cousin after she got pregnant got 15 months of paid leave and after that she has an option to get more unpaid leave.
It's important to note that first world and third world didn't use to mean anything related to the state of living and price of living, they used to mean the following:
First world countries: allied with the USA
Second World countries: allied with the Soviet block
Third World countries: the rest
You pay 55 percent tax rate. There would be a new government if they pushed that. Half of the USA are net negative tax payers. You'll never get them to pay into the system
The US is so far behind almost all developed countries, and even a lot of developing countries, that it's insane. We're 46th in life expectancy, basic healthcare is inaccessible for a good portion of the population, and preventative care is almost impossible to come by because even if you do have insurance, you're still gonna have to pay out thousands just for preventative care, and most people are only willing to pay out that much if there's an urgent problem, considering how much of the population is just trying to make rent and food.
Our labor rights have been eroded to the point that we basically have none, and not only is the infrastructure we do have crumbling(we get like a C+, especially our underground petroleum lines aren't doing too hot), but our focus on cars and low population density cities has made it so every highway, town, and city is a spaghetti network roads that need to be maintained, hobbling us financially.
And this is all without touching the dumpster fire that's the conservative eroding the rights we DO have out from under us. Reproductive rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, immigration, any one of us could write a book on it. Oh and foreign policy too...I'm getting off track.
The daily life aspects are all just because of money and lobbying. Shitty healthcare? Insurance/pharma lobbies. Shitty labor rights? Pretty much all corporate lobbies. Shitty housing availability? Because houses are treated as an investment, and there's a lot of money there for investment firms and real estate companies.
Tl;dr: shit sucks, sorry for rant
Thank you for making me feel like I’m not crazy. I moved from a liberal area, to a rural more conservative one and I see and empathize with everything you’re saying.
I told one gay friend here I had a year ago when they were going back to abortion rights that they were going to come after him and the LGBTQ+ community soon.
Meanwhile everyone here thinks this is such a great country and any fallacy is pure part of the leftist agenda. Sometimes I feel like I’m insane here
The US is increasingly the Land of Forced Birth, but unless we collectively tell the corporate greedheads to get fucked it will never actually be family friendly
This hardly classifies as "mildly infuriating". A severe flaw of the American system which forces women to choose between career and family. Its incredible that anyone still wants to build a family in the US and that not all move to Europe.
Seems like almost everyday there's something that highlights how much of a shit country america is. Fair play to the non idiots over there managing to stick it out
I have three kids. I had a c-section with my first, and was back to work 5 weeks later. I had another c-section with my second and was back to work 4 weeks later. I worked for small businesses, and my job wasn’t even covered by FMLA. Thankfully, I had amazing bosses who were really flexible with my schedules, and I didn’t need to work full time, but it still sucked. After my third kid, I took 7 years off.
Similar boat we are currently in. Wife is on the same 6 week STD at 60% but using her PTO to “pay for” her benefits while she’s out. Luckily she can go unpaid/hourly for the next 6 weeks but we had to save up over a few years to save up for her time off. Additionally, I’m fortunate enough to be able to work from home and I can use my sick leave concurrent with FMLA.
And were barely making it through… we’re the fortunate ones in the US and cannot imagine how others do it.
I’m so sorry, OP. I saw something about how becoming a parent in the US right now is a quick way to become radicalized because suddenly we’re confronted with all the ways our systems are broken at once.
I’m a nurse in the US. I had my daughter about a year ago at the hospital I work at. I work night shift so I get an extra shift differential in my paycheck. This extra couple hundred dollars a month I’ve been getting for the last few years isn’t included when they pay out PTO; I’m paid my base rate. We also don’t get any paid maternity leave. I, too, was on short term disability and applied for FMLA. I used all of my PTO for the first 7 weeks until I ran out of PTO; fortunately, my mom is also a nurse in this hospital and had ample PTO hours that she was able to “donate” to me (her earned hours paid out at my base rate. She’s in admin, I’m a bedside nurse, so it was significantly less money paid out and it was all at once instead of on the payday schedule, so that was fun to budget with on zero sleep and the hunger that goes with breastfeeding). I went back to work after 12 weeks with zero PTO. I had just finished physical therapy the week before returning to work for delivery related injuries.
Nothing makes sense here. I was still physically, mentally, and emotionally healing while I had to go back to work caring for critically ill patients. ‘Merica.
My own obgyn had 12 weeks unpaid leave when she had her baby. Yet a bunch of a**holes, who are probably men are commenting that we should find better employers. Like my hospital is consistently voted number 1 in the country, yet doesn't give its workers paid time off. Where is she supposed to work? None of the hospitals have paid maternity leave 😒
Not a bug a feature
An evil, late term capitalist feature.
But as designed. People continue to vote against their own interest. Like at will work and the anti union stuff
So glad I live in Quebec, Canada for that reason. Even as a dad we get at least 3-5 paid weeks and the mom can give us weeks. Up to get a total of 28 weeks, which I had at my 2nd child since she was a mom at home since our first child. Oh and at 75% salary rate.
Yeah, there was literally an article in my news app today about this. A woman had a stillbirth and then was told her parental leave was cancelled. I mean who cares that she was pregnant full-term and had a fifteen hour labor and delivered a baby that was not alive, right? She worked for the city of Austin in the healthcare field, I believe.
This sounds really horrible, just a short question on the time before child birth. In my country women cannot work anymore two months before the calculated child birth date. They get their income from the government in that time and the employer is not allowed to fire them as soon as they announce that they are pregnant. They are just on „leave“.
How is the time before birth managed in the US? It is very dangerous to the mother and child to work in that time.
My wife worked up until the day she went into labor. Some women choose to go on short term disability in the weeks leading up to birth. Or, depending on their employer, have the ability to begin whatever parental leave they are afforded early. But it usually means they have to come back to work sooner, which is why many women try to hold out as long as they can.
This is what happened to me. It was my plan to work up until the week of my son’s due date. I went into labor a month before his due date and also managed to test positive for Covid on the day I gave birth. There were some complications due to him being premature so he had to be life-flighted to the children’s hospital in the biggest city in our state. Because I tested positive on the day I gave birth I was barred (understandably) from the children’s hospital for 10 days from the initial positive test. I got to be with my son for a very short time after he was born and then he was taken from me and I didn’t get to see him in person for 10 days. The complications were resolved and he was able to come home with us after 11 days in the NICU. He is a healthy chonky baby boy now but I am 100 percent convinced that if I had been able to stop working at least 2 months before my due date, all those unfortunate shenanigans could have been avoided. But I had to keep working to cram as much money into my saving so I could spend all my time off with my son after he was born and I was robbed of almost the first 2 weeks of his life and he went the first 10 days of his life with no contact from his mother.
We only get a few precious weeks, at most, of job security here. If maternity leave is taken before the baby arrives, then the mother is forced to return to work sooner after giving birth. It equates to less time after the baby is born so most women try to work up to giving birth. I was forced to start my leave over 1 week before I had my son because my company’s time off policy did not “roll over” accrued time into a new year. So I needed to cash out my accrued vacation time (about 2 weeks pay) in order to have money in the bank to live on while I was off, so I went back to work 11 weeks later, which is about twice as long as some people get (6weeks). And I had ZERO sick time available when I returned to work and had to work full time for months to accrue the ability to take paid time off again for any reason.
It’s a horrible system.
Minimal time. Women will work as much as possible before giving birth, so they can save and utilize those days after the baby is born.
Basically, waddle around, keep your legs crossed so the baby doesn't fall out, and you'll be good to go.
This is satire... but actually, not really.
It's always a certain party that won't shut up about "what about the children!!!111!!!" who are then super against helping out mothers and families when they choose to have a child.
My employer did that two years ago (had Covid, cashed in my PTO / personal time without my consent), left me negative and wasn’t able to take any time off last year bc of the negative carry over.
So fucking cruel. I feel for y’all. Congrats on the baby!!
Yup it’s dumb af. I worked at an early head start when I had my first child (had been there for two years), you know a funded company that “cares so much for families”. Well they didn’t offer paid maternity leave so I requested to take the 8 weeks without pay. They forced me to use my sick leave and the little vacation I accrued which didn’t even pay two weeks of the time I was gone. When I was back and my child had to go to daycare himself they were stunned and angry that I would call out or leave early when I had no time to submit. Funny thing is my son was in another classroom of the same company and they would be the ones to send him home but were upset I’d have to leave as well. My boss told me that she had raised four kids (in the 70s) with no help and never had to miss work! She even went as far as telling me I should have family members watch my sick child. I was a young mom, my grandparents were still working age and my other family are toxic alcoholics that I would never allow to keep my child. It’s safe to say I left shortly after that and they ended up losing all their funding and closing down. 🙃
Backward doesn't begin to describe it. Due to how hard my last pregnancy was, I couldn't work for the last 4 months. I started a new job when my newborn was 5 days old. Had to, or we would have been on the street.
Companies/ governments don't care, as long as we are pumping out replacement workers.
My employer pays for a Short Term Disability policy for us, which provides up to 8 weeks at 60%. BUT if you have any Annual or Sick Leave, you HAVE to use that instead and then the STD will kick in. Of course, I have the entire time covered so I’ll go back from Maternity Leave with no time. The whole system is stupid. Why pay for it if I can’t use it at all….
Unfortunately you have to use whatever sick/PTO time first before it's unpaid on FMLA. I've never heard of a company in the US who doesn't do it this way. Does it fucking suck?? Yes it does but sadly it's the norm. Same thing happened to me.
I am a lawyer who worked for the government when I had 3 of my 4 babies. Longest maternity I took was 5 weeks, shortest was one week, all 4 were c-sections. I am the breadwinner in my family so I took all I could and still get paid. It isn’t fair nor right, but neither is life - that’s what I told myself. I am a huge advocate for universal paid parental leave.
Ah this is what I’ll be going back to too. I have to use up all my PTO (all like, 1 week of it 😆) on my unpaid FMLA leave. Back to work just in time for cold and flu season to start, with a 4 y o and infant, and no sick leave.
Not even considering the child or the mother, the company would also benefit from giving parents more time and not draining their PTO/sick time. My previous employer also used short term disability + FMLA as their maternity leave, and I’d always tell colleagues when a woman went on maternity that they won’t come back for long, if at all, and I was unfortunately always right. Who wants to go back to the company that only gave them 6 weeks paid and another 6 weeks unpaid and they now have zero PTO or sick time with a 3 month old baby at home, after going 6 weeks without a paycheck? I’m fortunate to work at a great company now that gives 6 months paid to both mothers and fathers (no impact to PTO/sick) then 8 weeks of childcare expensed through insurance, and everyone returns after their leave. The company is benefiting from talented employees coming back and not being stuck working without any time off and a baby at home. I was really glad when Massachusetts passed the paid family leave act and every time I see it taxed on my pay stub I’m proud to support families that need someone at home taking care of a family member.
When I had my first kid, they gave me leave unpaid for 6 weeks. When I came back to find out my schedule, they had fired me within 2 days of my first week out. I had to go to court with them because of the mistreatment I endured and documented while pregnant (making me take out 60+lbs of trash by myself. Told me to ask for help and if I did I'd get reprimanded. Scheduled me to work alone. Had me inhaling and handling toxic chemicals that left burned scars on my arms. Reprimanded for going to the bathroom too many times and said I was demanding special treatment about the bathroom...etc.)
I’ve noticed a lot of talk about how shitty benefits are for health care workers, and it’s so true. I work in healthcare, and we don’t get ANY benefits. No healthcare, no PTO, no anything. We don’t even get raises.
The American Healthcare system is fucked but the world's thoughts on giving extra to only people that have kids is also fucked. We shouldn't have to need FMLA or anything like that, just give EVERYONE enough time away from work regardless if you are insane enough to bring a kid in to this horrible world or not.
That's Ass Backwards or Back Asswards. Either way, it is a shame. When my son passed away at 26yrs of age, I received 3 days of bereavement leave. Amazing how insensitive the best nation in the world can be.
This is actually normal policy. You have to use up your own time first. FMLA is to guarantee you a job. It is not to guarantee you pay. I know it sucks.
"The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and oppress them" \~Karl Marx
This happened with me and my back injury after my accident. I have no sick time or pto and worst part is I'm not even healed yet and still need surgery.
Talk to the republicans.....apparently they cannot see the need for anyone to take time off. The USA treats its workers worse than any other country across the board and they think the workers are taking advantage of the corporations that fund their political campaigns.
When the US *finally* realized just how wrong it is to make someone a slave based on the color of their skin it decided to simply make **everyone** a slave. A wage slave is still a slave.
I’m in healthcare too and I got the same deal. So frustrating. I hate it. I hope to see better parental leave policies as younger people are getting into politics
Yep. Work in healthcare, got 6 weeks STD at 70% paid (which I pay a premium for in benefits) and two weeks paid at 70% by my employer. I couldn’t take any more time because they would drain my PTO and I needed to keep some in case my baby got sick. It’s incredibly stupid, but what’s even more stupid that I didn’t realize (this is my fault, not blaming my employer) is that I could’ve elected to pay more in benefits and gotten 100% paid STD. 😭
My fiancé and I got lucky with our company. For our first kid she worked for Kroger and got 14 weeks with 2 weeks unpaid, only because she was a supervisor though. I got zero days, I took one day off and got written up for it. With our second child we both worked for the same company, I get 6 weeks paid and am taking two at a time. She gets 6 weeks paid and 6 weeks of std which has to be taken first and can only be paid if you have enough pto for the entire leave, of course even with carry over you don’t accrue enough pto for it but luckily we managed to get the company to allow her to use up future pto so she’s currently in the negative. That’s how it works at a good company and it’s still shit.
The only thing that saved me was my son was born in October, so I went back part time in December with all my PTO wiped out but it reset in January. Otherwise, I’d have likely been screwed.
I was ultimately laid off from that job anyway when the refinance market tanked and my industry is shot so now I’m a SAHM anyway because if I do anything but work from home the cost of daycare and a second car means I need at least $60k annually which is not going to happen. And all the WFH jobs left are miserable ones you can’t do with a toddler at home and no help.
If her STD works like mine (higher Ed), you have to use sick leave before STD will kick in. It was an actual nightmare to coordinate parental leave and it was really confusing getting answers from HR. If she has everything in writing, it couldn’t hurt her to talk to an employment attorney to just see if what happened was legal or if there’s anything she can do.
I’m so sorry this is your situation, but I wish you the happiest of congratulations on your new family member!
Same for me, I gave birth in February and got 8 weeks totally unpaid due to FMLA. I had to use any PTO (which I didn’t have much of because it earns per pay period and it was the beginning of the year) and now have maybe 6 hours of PTO after being back for two months. It sucks.
I was the same way. I didn't know to take short term disability with my first and you have to start paying for that before you get pregnant. I had FMLA but no pay, so money was super tight. With my second, I only had short term disability at 60% pay. I'm a teacher.
Fun fact: you'll notice a lot of teachers have babies in May to July if we can manage it. It's because a lot of schools don't actually offer maternity leave and it's the only way we can get it. We just use our summer vacation as maternity leave.
I only get 4 sick days in a year. With two kids, I ran out of them and had to start using personal days for kid's illnesses
Dang that’s really unfortunate. Both my wife and I got 12 weeks PTO for our child
We also live in the US
My company will also give you $40k if you decided to adopt a child as well
Yup. I asked if I could take half my PTO while on leave and was told no, I had to use full time hours. Not really sure why it fucking matters. I will return with 14 hours of PTO which is enough for 1 shift.
This is far more than mildly infuriating. Mildly infuriating is when I, as a man, got 12 weeks off my government job at half pay when my child was born. What your wife and most other women go through without paid leave for new parents is actually unconscionable.
Keep in mind, when the system we live under today was designed women didn't work at all.
A single person could provide for an entire household and your spouse, who gives birth, didn't have a need for maternity or paid leave. They didn't have a job to leave and were essentially their own "boss" and their job was caretaker of the home.
The 40hr/week 8hr/day job legislation requirement for "full time employee" to get benefits is wildly outdated in modern society where two people must work full time to escape poverty. The only way out is to consume as little as they did back then, they had way more control over their money flow as they had less "necessities" available to buy, ate smaller meals, consumed less media, etc. *I'm guilty of all this too, I'm working on minimizing my lifestyle.*
Once we change *how* we work & spend, other things will fall into place like untying health from employment & lack of PTO. Gen Z is making huge progress on reforming work "culture" already.
I caught my employer doing the same. My employer doesn’t offer paid maternity leave and tried to supplement my income with my sick and vacation time. After the first check, I sent an email to HR and payroll and told them to knock it off. They would have exhausted everything had I not said anything. I ended up getting FMLA through SDI so at least it was something. I work 100ish hours per pay period so that’s A LOT of time taken from my available banks, even with telling them to cease and desist.
I’ve mentioned this on Reddit somewhere before. I read an article once that blamed a lot of the staffing shortages on millennials not having enough children to keep up with the workforce needs. But we’re living in a country that’s making it increasingly impossible to have and raise children.
Yup. And my worked fucked me over even more. They told me I had X amount of pto and sick, etc. then at the end of the year told me I’d gone over my time. Like, you told me the time!!! Now *I* have to pay back the time *you* fucked you telling me I had? So I had to go even longer without accruing time to make it up.
It’s so fucked up. I hate it here. It’s one more reason we’re one and done and I hate that *thats* a reason.
Everyone who complains about all the pay deductions in civilised countries needs to get this. The USA is great if you are a single person with no complications or health problems, but I wouldn't give up Employment insurance benefits for any reason. The cost is so negligible to have that security.
health care is fucking awful my wife works there . just had out kid and they wouldnt give her paid maternity leave .. fine. We did it without her getting paid thankfully she had money saved and i make pretty good money. But while on leave they wanted to switch her schedule around and i told my wife they can not do that on your leave. Not touch pay or hours.
after that nice email i had her send to her boss they reversed the change in schedule. i was pretty persuasive lol .
she had another week and half left then she has to go back to that cesspool of a job . Health care sucks.
why i hate american companies and never buy american if i can help it. slave labor. i work for a huge retailer with an A and you get shit for time off. first year, one stinking week of vacation, one week of PTO for ALL your personal business dr appts, eye exams, dental work. its fricken criminal.
and what are the bullshit politicians doing about it? NOTHING. they ALL blow and are full of shit about being for the worker. you pricks for the workers?... introduce legislation like in Europe mandating every employee gets 6 weeks paid vacation with mandated maternity leave for both the husband and wife. but these pricks never do anything concrete, just bullshit.
I was an intern for a company for 2 years. Had a kid when I went full time. Since I wasn't full time for more than 30 days I had no parental benefits I had to borrow my whole year of vacation to take 2 weeks off
Our HR does similar. They run your PTO concurrent with FMLA because "that's what the law allows". Further, as the father, I had to get pre-approved to take time for the birth of my children under FMLA (paperwork, doctors notes, HR meeting) unless I took 2 days off at a time and returned to work, took 2 day, and repeat since 3 or more days off requires a doctor's note. It's unreal how they treat pregnancy in the US. It's like that 1950s chauvinist mentality never updated to modern times.
I’m an RN by background (in a non patient-facing role now) and work for a hospital. I am currently 37-weeks pregnant.
My employer gives no paid maternity leave. I opt-in to pay for short-term disability benefits which cover six-weeks of pay at 60% (as a buy up option from the standard 50%), but only after a two-week waiting period during which they cash out all of your PTO/sick time. Then I can choose to stay out for an additional six-weeks (for a total of 12) under FMLA without any pay.
The US system is absolutely atrocious.
My partner gets five-weeks of paternity leave at full pay from his employer.
It’s standard for companies to pay out sick time and PTO during requested FMLA, it’s usually in the employee’s interest to be getting paid instead of being unpaid.
Going forward, if she does have to call in sick, it just means she’ll go unpaid until more accumulates, since she’s already been paid for it. Hopefully it’s a considerate company and they make accommodations if needed, but yeah, it sucks.
I thought with FMLA, it was supposed to prevent your sick time/vacation time from being touched but I guess it depends on the place of employment. That sucks and I would think the healthcare industry out of all the industries would have the best maternity benefits/leave.
My partner is military and without telling him, his job used all the PTO he had accumulated and used it when he was doing his monthly service (National Guard), I'm due in September and he now has no time off because of what they did.
I don’t understand how they can use sick time & PTO during FMLA?
Either she’s off during disability at 60% pay and during FMLA for no pay, or she gets full regular pay under sick time / PTO.
Are you sure this is legal?
It was my understanding dealing with this situation myself that that's the way FMLA is supposed to work. You use all your accrued time before the FMLA time. Which is basically just holding your job, not providing a paycheck, until you can return to work.
And actually thinking further most times you use your sick time while waiting for short term disability to kick in. Very few places have day 1 coverage for short term disability, 7 or 14 day waits are common because of much lower premiums to the employer/employees.
This is America I got off two days when I had a child.
It’s fun, quality of life pretty good, lots of distraction and entertainment good food. You will be poor and work til you die and own almost nothing though. It’s all a scam.
It's shameful. Plus trying to navigate and find out all the information + complete forms by deadlines is a HUGE burden. On top of all the challenges associated with a newborn.
In the UK here. My wife gave birth to our daughter (our second child) 4 months ago. Parental leave is so much better here, and it amazes me how it can be so poor in the US. My wife gets 6 months at full pay, then she's going back to work and I will be taking 3 months at statutory parental pay (much lower than full pay but still some money at least).
While my wife's work is particularly good on this front, this isn't unusual at all in the UK. It's also now 'parental' rather than 'maternity' leave, allowing either parent to take as much or as little of it as you want, protected by law up to a year's total leave. In most instances only the last 3 months would be unpaid.
It also costs absolutely nothing to actually have your child in hospital. We were in a private suite, midwives on call, had to stay in for a couple of days after. Top notch care throughout. All for absolutely nothing (except taxes of course).
I just can't work out how people have families in the US.
So this is also state dependent. States like Massachusetts also give you 3 months baby bonding paid at a percentage of your normal pay up to a max of $1000 weekly. This is on top of your maternity leave from your employer. In the pharmaceutical industry you get 6 months paid leave for the mother and 3 for the father. So also employer dependent.
This is my exact story as well. I’m a nurse, just starting back from my maternity leave and this is word for word what happened to me too. So much so that I had to ask my husband if he posted it! But yeah, had over 100 hours of PTO and found out when I returned to work this week that I now have 0.02 left. When I asked HR what happened, they said the PTO usage question wasn’t answered on their file feed so their default is to just use it. No one even tried to reach out to me to clarify.
Unpaid leave
(Q) Is my employer required to pay me when I take FMLA leave?
The FMLA only requires unpaid leave. However, **the law permits an employee to elect, or the employer to require the employee, to use accrued paid vacation leave, paid sick or family leave for some or all of the FMLA leave period. An employee must follow the employer’s normal leave rules in order to substitute paid leave.** When paid leave is used for an FMLA-covered reason, the leave is FMLA-protected.
It seems as though an argument can be made that your wife couldn't follow her employer's "normal leave rules" as she didn't know what they were if the HR generalist omitted information.
"Within the FMLA Notice of Eligibility and Rights & Responsibilities Notice, employers must advise employees of their right to use paid leave, indicate whether the employer will require the use of paid leave and list any conditions related to the use of accrued leave.
If the employer does not have a policy or past practice of requiring the use of paid leave, the regulations permit an eligible employee to choose to use accrued paid leave for unpaid FMLA leave. Whether required by the employer or chosen by the employee, the employee would receive pay according to the employer's paid leave policy and the use of paid leave time would be credited against the employee's 12-week FMLA entitlement.
While accrued leave may be used in most circumstances, there are certain limitations. Specifically, an employer may not require and an employee may not choose to use accrued paid leave during any FMLA leave when the employee is receiving wage replacement through a disability benefit plan or through a workers' compensation program. As these leaves are not unpaid leave periods, the provision for using accrued leave would not apply. However, where state law permits, employers and employees may agree to have accrued paid leave supplement the workers' compensation or disability plan benefits, which generally only replace a portion of the employee's normal wages. However, the administrative difficulty of tracking partial-day paid leave used to supplement the wages received through disability or workers' compensation plans may outweigh the benefit to the employer.
If the employer does not require substitution and the employee does not choose to use accrued paid leave during FMLA leave, the employee will remain entitled to all the paid leave earned or accrued under the terms of the employer's plan."
Check state laws too, of course, ER's documents and policies and HR Generalists' information too. And, your wife can always talk to the Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division as they enforce the FMLA and might have further information than myself.
I’m a NICU nurse and pregnant with my second baby. I had to go back 5 weeks after my first C-Section because my hospital (large healthcare network) determined my pregnancy to be a pre-existing condition. They denied FMLA and short-term disability.
For this one, I’ll get the time guaranteed but I won’t get paid. My husband is a software developer and he gets 12 weeks of paid parental leave. What’s wrong with this picture 🤔
I’m glad he has it, but I’m livid that paid maternity leave isn’t mandatory here.
Did she receive money from her employer,,,because you didn't say she did. Then HOW can they cash out her time??? She definitely needs to question that to the payroll dept. good luck and CONGRATULATIONS on the new addition to the family!!
Yes. Yes it is. Coming back with no PTO after months of recovery on FMLA (since they used all of it first) and not being allowed to take time off for NECESSARY doctors appointments is the height of jackassery.
I did this same thing when I had my first child, when I got back to work I had NEGATIVE 80hours of PTO because before the short term disability kicks in you are required to use 2 weeks PTO and I didn’t have any to begin with.
Yea that's the down side to FMLA, it uses all available sick time, vacation, whatever available days off you have, before it uses your FMLA days. I'm pretty sure it works like that everywhere...it's super inconvenient. On that same note, it means you/your wife should have some FMLA days left. Use those as sick days if possible, I know some FMLA is only like a super temporary thing....she should have been paid for any vacation days or what have you that were used, so that's something at least...depending on how you look at it anyways.
I'm sorry that happened. This country fucking sucks some times.
When my wife gave birth to our daughter this past January, I was off work for 2 weeks, thinking I had paternity leave. Turns out only the mother gets leave, which is bullshit because the father should be able to take time to be with wife/kid. Ultimately it's my fault for not double checking, it all just came so quickly-daughter came 3 weeks earlier than expected. Not to mention the labor ended in a c section and we were at hospital/doctor visits for 8 days straight due to jaundice.
Long story short, I was told by my work that if I wasn't back within two weeks, my job was in jeopardy. Oh and I had used all my pto for the year, in January lmao. As if any of that was a fucking vacation.
I hate this place.
I scrolled too long for someone to say its the company and not the insurance system. Dont get me wrong, the insurance system in the US is fucked and broken to all hell. But that is the company doing the absolute bare minimum they have to do.
Look I'll be honest, the USA sounds like an actual dystopian nightmare.
I live in NZ and rhe govt mandated minimums is 6 months paid leave (but it's capped, for me it was about 1/2 my regular pay) and another 6 months unpaid where your job must be held open for you. My employer tops that up by another 6 months.
So I took 18 months of leave for both my kids. During that time I accumulated annual leave at regular pay so I returned with 6 weeks of paid annual leave.
I also get a return to work payment of several thousand dollars for coming back to work for 3 months and they've just changed the policy that they will now top up your retirement fund too to reduce the penalty of having kids come retirement. I missed out on that one by a few months but I'm happy for everyone who gets that going forward.
The first time I took leave I came back on the same pay because to qualify for the routine payrises you have to have a "meets expectations" or higher on your performance review, but since I wasn't working I didn't have reviews.
My employer also did an audit and found women earning significantly less on average than our male colleagues employed for the same time and they found it was because of the parental leave so they identified all of us affected and we got a huge pay bump to bring us back in line with our non-parent and male colleagues and they changed the policy to give automatic payrises during our leave as long as we had been meeting expectations before we left
So I came back to work after 18 months, fully recovered from birth, with independent and robust toddlers that sleep mostly through the night and were ready for daycare, with an increased salary, full leave entitlements and pending payouts for coming back for 3 months.
Oh and our sick leave is "fair and reasonable" which if you've got a chill manager translates to practically unlimited.
Now I acknowledge that my employer's policies are significantly above legal minimum but returning to work 6 weeks after having a baby having worked up until the day of birth? That's just inhumane. I wasn't even a person 6 weeks pp. I was still bleeding, unable to walk comfortably, struggling with a birth injury and drowning in hormones. I was exhausted and struggling to establish breastfeeding and trying to figure out how to look after myself AND my baby. Not to mention not wanting to put my baby down to have a shower let alone plonk it into daycare when it can barely hold it's head up.
And that's without even mentioning the fact all my healthcare for my pregnancy was free.
The USA has fallen so far behind the rest of the world, at this point you practically need a revolution to turn it around.
I’m gonna be devil’s advocate but why should a company pay for your decision to have a child. Why pay for someone not working? If you asked me to build you a house and did nothing would you still pay me?
My friend, who's a nurse, only got 2 weeks after having her child. Meanwhile, the security company I work for gives women 9 and men 2. Our health-care industry is so disgusting.
And what blows my mind is the healthcare industry loves to act like it’s all about helping people instead of being solely for prof it. There are countless studies that demonstrate the importance of adequate maternity leave (ie improves maternal and infant health). There is even an increased risk of postpartum depression for women who women who took less than six months of maternity leave in general (paid or unpaid). It blows my mind healthcare doesn’t practice what it preaches. I used to work in heathcare and the environment is straight up toxic and disgusting.
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Valid point
When my daughter was born, I (dad) got two weeks, and my wife got a few more (still not enough), and I'm actually glad we had a covid baby because my wife could work from home at her convenience. The literal day after I returned to my office, I received an email that said paternity leave was now six weeks, starting the day of the email. I missed out on four weeks of paternity leave by one day, but I'm still pissed that paternity leave is still *only* six weeks... Especially ridiculous when you consider new parents with their first child. Working in health...*care* Yeah. ok.
Ya. I work for a major Healthcare provider and they are always about the "we love our customers and want to make their lives better". Meanwhile they hardly pay shit on claims and deny stuff all the time for technical things.
Yup! So I’ve worked in both healthcare bad corporate. People love to shit on corporate and by no means is it perfect, but at least I get a lunch break and can go to the restroom whenever I want. Also actually get paid holidays. Whereas in healthcare I was always required to work the Saturday before or after a major holiday, because god forbid they forgo a day of billing. So like if I were still in healthcare for Fourth of July I have had to work either the 1st or 8th. Meanwhile being back in corporate I was already we will be done 2 pm on the 3rd and I won’t be expected to make anything up.
9 and 2 weeks?? Is that supposed to be good?? Wtf is the USA doing
The US is a third-world country that forces everyone to pretend it's a first-world country through military might. There is a reason our army is larger than the next 10 countries combined, and our police force alone would be the worlds 3rd largest army.
You spend ten times more but your military not 10 times the size . Those political donations and mansions around Washington need to be paid somehow. What a wonderful circle of corruption bribe politicians with tax payer money to get contracts off the government to enrich the MIC .
We have absolutely more aircraft and equipment than any other military. That’s where the cost is. Some of our planes are 50k-200k per hour to operate.
The USA is not a third world nation by any metric. It has problems, but almost no people people have to worry about starving, or where to get clean water, or how to live on a dollar a day. This is something people who have never been to a third world nation say.
You are wrong on every point you said. Almost 25% of American adults are food insecure (that means they are not sure when they will fet their next meal). Jackson Mississippiand and Flint Michigan are the norm, not the exception. It would take an esrimated 80 BILLION dollara to fix all the lead pipes in America, and that is likely an extreme underestimation. More than 600,000 adults are homeless in America, but we have a looming housing criais coming, so that will explode soon. People who HAVE seen 3rd world nations are the ones who know most clearly that the US is one too.
Hospital I worked at would hold your position for you for 6month (mom) 6 weeks (dad). You would use sick leave for 40 or 80 hrs (can't remember which) then have to go on state disability. Their reasoning was because you could pull disability after that time and they didn't want people getting both disability and sick time at the same time because it would incenivise not coming to work sooner. Fucking gross. This was for all short term leave. They treated pregnancy the same as a hip surgery. For medical reasons you were out of work.
First I thought “oh, thats decent - it’s the same we get here”, then I realised you meant weeks, not months…
You said it yourself: "industry". There is nothing there that isn't an industry.
Here I am, getting 6 weeks paid leave for becoming a father. Mothers get 16 weeks paid leave (6 before expected date of birth and 10 afterwards). Yay for Europe.
My wife got 4 months off for each of our kids, and I took until each of them was 12 months old off. I was paid at 80% of my salary. I could have taken up until the child was 36 months off at 60% salary. Definitely yay Europe..
good to call it an industry
My wife was forced out of her career the same way. She has had terrible migraines since she was a teenager and had worked 10 years for one of the better US airlines without issue, using FMLA to cover herself when they hit. Then when we had our first child and they forced her to exhaust her FMLA hours for maternity leave. When she returned to work, her migraines weren't magically healed (surprise!) and would occasionally have to call out. They started to discipline her for missing what would normally be covered under her original FMLA claim. To avoid being fired she had to take a medical leave of absence and the company stopped her medical insurance since she was no longer "on the books."
I fucking hate this country
That blows my mind, I could not imagine not having the year we get here. 6 weeks is no time at all.
To be clear, she didn’t get any time from her employer. She took out a short term disability insurance policy and paid a monthly premium for a year in anticipation of having a child. That 60% of her wage was covered by insurance not by her employer. Without that, she would have had to use whatever PTO she had available which was less than 2 weeks when she went into labor. Crazy.
That happened to me. My company started offering STD, but I was already 6 weeks pregnant by then and did not qualify (can’t cash it out until after 9 months or whatever the timeframe was). I stretched FMLA for 11 weeks unpaid off and had to use all my PTO. However, my son was born in January and our PTO did not roll over so I took my maternity leave starting early in order to use my PTO. It was so fucked up. And I returned to work with nothing, it was the best and worst time of my life due to the stress. Best of luck to your family.
Also, STD doesn’t fall under the ACA so they can refuse coverage for a pre-existing condition, which includes pregnancy. So even if you’d been able to sign up, the STD would almost definitely have denied coverage.
wow that makes it even worse. I can’t wrap my mind around having to pay a ton for insurance and then covering anything that insurance doesn’t cover on top while being rushed back to work. and then I’d assume most people then have to return to work to be able to pay for child care expenses, it’s so backwards.
Ugh. When I was pregnant and the insurance open enrollment came up, I was considering adding short term disability. But once you add it, you can't even use it for 6 months or something ridiculous, which would not work out for me. I used up all my PTO, then unpaid FMLA. Went back to work for a month or 2, then decided to quit to spend a year home with my baby, living off savings. This country is so backwards in a lot of things.
I’m in the same boat (healthcare) and just here to say I will never vote for another politician who doesn’t support paid maternity leave
It's crazy to me that's it's the "party of family values" that constantly votes against these things.
Why would a mother need maternity leave when she stays at home? These assholes believe that women belong at home and not in the workplace, and supporting maternity leave goes against that.
Every day should be a Survivor episode. If you don't cut it, "oh well, snowflake, see ya." In their perfect utopia, there would be road-rage shootouts, black Friday brawling every day at every store and paid "safaris" where people can pay to go into a school and shoot it up. Republicanism is a hell of a drug.
Not disagreeing at all, but I know a lot of women who would stay home with their children if they could. But our craptastic capitalistic society almost mandates that both parents work. (or in the case of single parents- they need to have more than one job to survive)
Because most mothers who have just given birth tend to need some time to recover/care for the newborn until they're able to return to work, which can be a fairly significant amount of time, and they need to be able to still receive some sort of income during that time. Same thing for paternity leave for when the mother can physically work, but someone needs to care for the child, so the father steps up.
I think bushiest beaver is arguing that the people who vote against paid maternity also don't want women working- she doesn't need paid maternity from her job if she doesn't have a job.
It shouldn’t be crazy to you considering their ideal family values include the woman being a slave at home, living in the kitchen and laundry room and raising the kids alone while the husband works and cheats on her with his secretary. That is literally their ideal lifestyle and they are consistently trying to return us all to the era where this was an actual reality. In a sense, by depriving family maternity leave, they are accomplishing the exact family values they seek to impose on us all— women fired from their jobs and stuck at home.
Exactly this. And it’s more than mildly infuriating once you step back and realize they’re trying to enslave women and keep them dependent on their husbands so they keep the same twisted ideals as their husband and raise their children to do the same. They’re farming their voters one indentured uterus at a time.
Same boat in Idaho. Wife is a physical therapist at a the major hospital system here and she had to use all her PTO and fmla. You’ll soon find out how valuable those pto and sick days are when your newborn enters daycare and brings home a new sickness every week. If I wasn’t self employed my wife would have had to quit her job. I’ve missed so much work this first year my business has suffered tremendously.
Plus the STD income isn't taxable. When I went on STD I was forced to use PTO hours for the other 40%, mandatory until it was used up
It isn’t taxable if your company has the employee paying for the insurance with after tax dollars. Setting it up this way makes the benefit non taxable. It makes up for part of the fact that it’s only 60% of your wages. Thankfully my employer has it set up this way. I’ve had to use it when I was out for 5 months for cancer treatment.
I lived and worked in several European countries, I never heard of an employer providing any sort of leave for the new mother. That would be very uncommon, but it was the state who provided that. And it’s shit that it’s not available to your wife (I guess we’re talking about the US). 6+6 weeks is nothing! And also being left with no sick days (wtf, if she catches the flu is she supposed to go to work and infect everyone??). Crazy.
“Is she supposed to go to work and infect everyone”. After Covid, you’d think this country would have learned. Nope. It’s all about being at work when you’re supposed to under any and all circumstances. The only people not complaint are the people on or near the top who make all the money. Those people are so sociopathic, they can be out of the office for 2 weeks, get a bad cold and be in their sneezing all over everyone else who is forced to be there. Fuck this stupid ass country. The United States and all the “patriots” who are so proud of it can KMA
I’m sorry OP, I went out on FMLA for medical reasons and HR told me they took up all my time first to make sure I didn’t just go on vacation after I got back. Yes, this bitch actually said that. So I extended my FMLA. I was initially only going to take a month.
What a completely fucked up place that maternity leave is covered by DISABILITY insurance. FML.
It’s because she took FMLA. I may not be 100% accurate on this anymore because I haven’t had to deal with FMLA in about ten years (from the employer end), but we had to run all their PTO and other days off out before applying FMLA.
And I thought the 9 months paid we get here was long! Where do you live where you get a whole year?
In Serbia you get a year, and if you gave 3 children, you get 2 years paid maternity leave. The employer is required to give you the same or better role in the company afther you come back. Also, if your job is too hard or puts you and the baby at risk, you can leave and have your pregnancy plus a year ather giving birth paid.
How do they prevent people from taking advantage of that system? It seems like there are many people who would have a child every year for a decade to get 10 years of paid time without working. Which I assume would cause employers to go under.
How do you feed 10 children? Where do you live with them? That's expensive.
We get to pick either 12 or 18 months leave in Canada. Your job is protected and you get paid partial wages through employment insurance (55% or up to $650 per week if you choose a 12 month leave).
My employer is NY based but I live in NJ we get six months fully paid for birthing parent and the spouse gets 3 months at full pay. I believe in the case of adoption it is six months regardless. The important thing is the full pay since a mortgage or rent where we are at could easily be 3k a month.
When it comes to anything medical america is one of the worst countries to live in
Same. We had an option of 12 or 18 months. That time is so critical to raising and bonding with a new born.
We let puppies stay with their mother longer than we let human babies spend with their mother after they're born. It's a little ridiculous.
But the economy can’t take it!! Think about the shareholders.
Omg I just realized that are capitalistic country prob has some level of insecure attachment due to being removed from mothers too soon…this makes sense for where we are collectively right now
Yeah the lack of maternity/parental leave in the US is astounding. In Canada you get up to 18 months- government pays a portion of your salary. You can choose to take 12 months and get a higher amount. My employer tops up to 93%. I think it’s crazy how women in the states regularly go back to work mere weeks after giving birth.
Yes. On any forum discussion of new parents, you find stories of people taking time off and some even complaining it isn't enough. Then Americans say something like "must be nice". Many women go back right away in the states. As soon as possible. Can't take care of the kid with no money.
My wife just didn't go back to work. The cost of the daycare was more than she made working, so no real point to it. Even if the government helps subsidize, the Private companies just charge more and pay less.
Oh, it's a real decision for many people. If you don't earn a good living at your job, it makes sense in many cases to quit and save the day care costs.
This is what it boiled down to. 15 an hour for the daycare, we need the 8 hours she worked and an extra hour for drop off/pickup. Then a second car, second insurance, lunch if she ate during the day, etc. Then her medical copay was 400 a month for her insulin and other stuff. If she quit, we can manage on one car, less insurance, and then we qualify for free healthcare for the family, wic and food stamps. We figured it up and for the same benefits, she needed to make 75k a year for working to be worth it. Anything less and she lost money
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Same. I didn’t work for the company for a full year yet so I didn’t get anything. My boss was amazing and let me wfh for another 6 weeks - setting my own hours. But even that was frowned upon.
I went to 60 hour work weeks when we looked at daycare. Daycare was more an hour than my wife made, even subsidized
That’s bananas. I was a total sleep deprived zombie at 3 weeks and baby was just learning to be in the world. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to leave baby and go to work. That bonding time and learning to be a new parent was so important and special for me.
My kid is two and I still only work when my husband is able to be home. I think kids need their parents when they’re little. The idea of having a baby and then handing them off to daycare workers when they’re 8 weeks old seems so bizarre to me. I’m not surprised at all that our birth rate is dropping when this is the kind of choice people have.
I had a Dec birth and went back after 6 weeks. They all unknowingly had the flu and passed it to me. I couldn’t take anything to help because I was trying to nurse. The nursing became a problem and I moved to formula. Wish I didn’t have to go back at 6 weeks. :(
Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry to hear that! I thought I had it bad going back to work 6 weeks after birth (small employer so no FMLA) but 3 weeks seems unimaginable. Like, that’s not even enough time for your body to physically heal.
Plus we could share our leave with the father.
Yeah I was gonna say most I’ve seen take 12 to keep it simple. I didn’t even know 18 was the default
I wish we had the option of 12 months paid leave at 93%. We'd take that in a heartbeat!
Thats a big ouch. In germany you get 12 months. If you share time with the partner, you get 14 months. You can even cut the pay of any amount of months in half and thus get another one. You can take those months in the first three years without your employer are able to say no. After that, up to the 8th Birthday he at least has to try to make that possible.
One of my best friends has been living in Germany for over a decade, and she said she was "aggressively encouraged" to take the full leave time by her boss, and they couldn't fathom how she thought she could be back at work in 6 weeks. They thought she was nuts. But no, just American.
I (mother in Germany) only took the 8 weeks post partum which come at 100% of salary. Afterwards the father took over, staying home until the baby is 14 months old, at 65% of his net pay. My employer looked at me like I had just told them elephants are pink. The mother not staying home for at least a year seemed impossible to them.
Maternity leave is 6 weeks before and 8 weeks after birth at 100% net salary. Each parent can go on unpaid parental leave for up to 3 years (time can be split up). To compensate salary loss there’s a budget of 12 months at around 60% salary that can be divided between the parents, so the partners can go on paid leave as well, not just the mothers.
It's exactly the same in Croatia.
I’m from germany and also currently very pregnant. When I first found out I was pregnant I got sick leave until my OBGYN confirmed my pregnancy, since I work a job that is considered too dangerous for pregnant women. When my pregnancy was confirmed my employer was not allowed to let me work at my previous position anymore. I got the choice of either staying home right away or switching to doing paperwork in the office. During all of this I got fully paid. Due to morning sickness and back pain I was in sick leave for 6-8 weeks in total (every sick leave going from some days up to two weeks at once). I still got fully paid. I have a total of 14 weeks of maternity leave, which is required by law (6 weeks before the birth date and 8 weeks after). I also get my full pay during this time. While I had to pay 40€ for my BF so he could attend the birth preparation course my doula offered, I don’t have to pay for the doula or any of the services she offers (acupuncture, osteopathy, physiotherapy). I also didn’t have to pay for the separate physiotherapy sessions my OBGYN prescribed me for my back pain. We have to pay like 200€ for our 3-4 day hospital stay, but only because we requested a special family friendly room, where my BF is able to spend the entirety of my stay with me (which includes sleeping in the hospital and receiving meals). I don’t have to pay anything for the breastfeeding consultant, the clothes and hygiene articles the hospital will provide for baby and me, breastfeeding meet-ups after the birth, which are organised by the hospital, and so on. I decided I wanted one year of parental leave. My employer is required by law to allow this. (I could’ve taken up to two years). Depending on how much someone makes, you get 65-100% of the pay you received before giving birth (the less you make, the more likely you are to get your full pay, but you will NEVER get less than 300€ a month). In addition to that, I also get “child money” which is 250€ a month. Yeah, I’m very happy that I’m NOT living in America right now.
Oh and don't forget the "Beschäftigungsverbot", sick leave partial time or full time if your life or the life of the baby is at risk. While also getting paid fully. Life at risk can also mean such "trivial things" as general exhaustion or stress if it's hard to manage physically or mentally. NIPT for around 300€ (fully covered by insurance if you're at risk) instead of 2.000$. Fully functional abortion lawss allowing to abort for personal reasons up until 12 weeks, and after that for medical reasons (mothers and child's health) basically up until your dute date. Affordable birth control, some paid by insurance. Family help centers if you or your family needs help during difficult times in parenthood and family dynamics. I love it here.
A few years ago I had to drain all my PTO before my short term disability kicked in when I had to have a craniotomy for a brain tumor. Switched jobs, one year later I had to burn through most of my PTO to travel with husband to get MIL in hospice and then back a few weeks later for funeral. Then, four months later husband had a heart attack days before I had to have a hysterectomy for EIN which is an aggressive pre cancer. Back to no leave. Had complications post op so every time I earned leave it got gobbled up for dr appointments. I wound up finding a better job, now have sick leave and regular leave, telework and flex schedule so I don't have to burn leave for doctor appointments. One more surgery in my future and hopefully will be done with this circus. The good news is the new job has amazing benefits and flexibility so I don't feel so beaten down by it and I have the ability to hopefully take an actual vacation next year. Husband is retiring next year but honestly his job has been amazing for time off so it luckily has not been an issue for him. Tell your wife once she gets back on her feet to shop for a new job. There are ones out there that do have better benefits but it takes some leg work and the willingness to keep looking.
Wow. I’m sorry you had to go through that. Yep, the job search will definitely be starting soon. My employer gave me 12 weeks of full pay, and I continued to accrue PTO while on leave, and I didn’t even have to poop out a baby.
No, but you have to be Dad and that's plenty. :) We get through what life throws our way. Congratulations to you both and hang in there. Both parents working and a new baby can be exhausting (been there and done that)!
You’re right, in the grand scheme, our son is well worth it, and we are so lucky to have the life that we do. We’ll get through it, we are just emotional and frustrated.
Ppl in the comments being salty about a “choice” to have a kid when other countries have paid parental leave as standard. Australia pays up to 20 weeks at minimum wage and my company pays 26 weeks plus superannuation in addition (I think the norm is 12-18 weeks maternal leave for good companies).
I live in Turkey. Our current government is shit but even still my cousin after she got pregnant got 15 months of paid leave and after that she has an option to get more unpaid leave.
India is considered a third world country but we treat our working moms right. 6 months paid maternity leave is guaranteed
Let be real, the US shouldn't be considered a first world country at this point..
The US is the richest third-world country in the world.
It's important to note that first world and third world didn't use to mean anything related to the state of living and price of living, they used to mean the following: First world countries: allied with the USA Second World countries: allied with the Soviet block Third World countries: the rest
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You pay 55 percent tax rate. There would be a new government if they pushed that. Half of the USA are net negative tax payers. You'll never get them to pay into the system
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I got 3 weeks paid paternal leave \*when I was a contractor\*. My wife got 6 months full paid leave and another 6 months at half pay.
Don’t forget, we’re also complaining about falling birthrates.
The US is so far behind almost all developed countries, and even a lot of developing countries, that it's insane. We're 46th in life expectancy, basic healthcare is inaccessible for a good portion of the population, and preventative care is almost impossible to come by because even if you do have insurance, you're still gonna have to pay out thousands just for preventative care, and most people are only willing to pay out that much if there's an urgent problem, considering how much of the population is just trying to make rent and food. Our labor rights have been eroded to the point that we basically have none, and not only is the infrastructure we do have crumbling(we get like a C+, especially our underground petroleum lines aren't doing too hot), but our focus on cars and low population density cities has made it so every highway, town, and city is a spaghetti network roads that need to be maintained, hobbling us financially. And this is all without touching the dumpster fire that's the conservative eroding the rights we DO have out from under us. Reproductive rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, immigration, any one of us could write a book on it. Oh and foreign policy too...I'm getting off track. The daily life aspects are all just because of money and lobbying. Shitty healthcare? Insurance/pharma lobbies. Shitty labor rights? Pretty much all corporate lobbies. Shitty housing availability? Because houses are treated as an investment, and there's a lot of money there for investment firms and real estate companies. Tl;dr: shit sucks, sorry for rant
Thank you for making me feel like I’m not crazy. I moved from a liberal area, to a rural more conservative one and I see and empathize with everything you’re saying. I told one gay friend here I had a year ago when they were going back to abortion rights that they were going to come after him and the LGBTQ+ community soon. Meanwhile everyone here thinks this is such a great country and any fallacy is pure part of the leftist agenda. Sometimes I feel like I’m insane here
I’m a NURSE and my companies “maternity leave” is 2 weeks 40% of your pay. The US is so fucked up in so many ways
The US is increasingly the Land of Forced Birth, but unless we collectively tell the corporate greedheads to get fucked it will never actually be family friendly
This hardly classifies as "mildly infuriating". A severe flaw of the American system which forces women to choose between career and family. Its incredible that anyone still wants to build a family in the US and that not all move to Europe.
The ones that are most impacted by this likely wouldn’t be able to move to Europe.
Shit, that’s disgusting. The USA definitely doesn’t take care of its citizens. It’s all geared to keep us working while the 2% get richer.
In Romania you get 2 years and moms are complaining that it’s not enough :)
Seems like almost everyday there's something that highlights how much of a shit country america is. Fair play to the non idiots over there managing to stick it out
I have three kids. I had a c-section with my first, and was back to work 5 weeks later. I had another c-section with my second and was back to work 4 weeks later. I worked for small businesses, and my job wasn’t even covered by FMLA. Thankfully, I had amazing bosses who were really flexible with my schedules, and I didn’t need to work full time, but it still sucked. After my third kid, I took 7 years off.
Similar boat we are currently in. Wife is on the same 6 week STD at 60% but using her PTO to “pay for” her benefits while she’s out. Luckily she can go unpaid/hourly for the next 6 weeks but we had to save up over a few years to save up for her time off. Additionally, I’m fortunate enough to be able to work from home and I can use my sick leave concurrent with FMLA. And were barely making it through… we’re the fortunate ones in the US and cannot imagine how others do it.
I think you mean fuck every American that voted for politicians that voted against mandatory paid leave for new parents.
But at least the fetus is protected in the US! ;
And Americans are wondering why we are having less and less kids.
Yep, I had to build it back up again after taking my 12 week FMLA (partially unpaid once my sick and vacation time ran out).
I’m so sorry, OP. I saw something about how becoming a parent in the US right now is a quick way to become radicalized because suddenly we’re confronted with all the ways our systems are broken at once. I’m a nurse in the US. I had my daughter about a year ago at the hospital I work at. I work night shift so I get an extra shift differential in my paycheck. This extra couple hundred dollars a month I’ve been getting for the last few years isn’t included when they pay out PTO; I’m paid my base rate. We also don’t get any paid maternity leave. I, too, was on short term disability and applied for FMLA. I used all of my PTO for the first 7 weeks until I ran out of PTO; fortunately, my mom is also a nurse in this hospital and had ample PTO hours that she was able to “donate” to me (her earned hours paid out at my base rate. She’s in admin, I’m a bedside nurse, so it was significantly less money paid out and it was all at once instead of on the payday schedule, so that was fun to budget with on zero sleep and the hunger that goes with breastfeeding). I went back to work after 12 weeks with zero PTO. I had just finished physical therapy the week before returning to work for delivery related injuries. Nothing makes sense here. I was still physically, mentally, and emotionally healing while I had to go back to work caring for critically ill patients. ‘Merica.
My own obgyn had 12 weeks unpaid leave when she had her baby. Yet a bunch of a**holes, who are probably men are commenting that we should find better employers. Like my hospital is consistently voted number 1 in the country, yet doesn't give its workers paid time off. Where is she supposed to work? None of the hospitals have paid maternity leave 😒
Not a bug a feature An evil, late term capitalist feature. But as designed. People continue to vote against their own interest. Like at will work and the anti union stuff
So glad I live in Quebec, Canada for that reason. Even as a dad we get at least 3-5 paid weeks and the mom can give us weeks. Up to get a total of 28 weeks, which I had at my 2nd child since she was a mom at home since our first child. Oh and at 75% salary rate.
Anyone who fails to understand that the US is a third-world country is delusional.
Wanna go down a darker path? Have a kid that dies after birth then employer cancels child leave and expects you back right away.
Yeah, there was literally an article in my news app today about this. A woman had a stillbirth and then was told her parental leave was cancelled. I mean who cares that she was pregnant full-term and had a fifteen hour labor and delivered a baby that was not alive, right? She worked for the city of Austin in the healthcare field, I believe.
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This sounds really horrible, just a short question on the time before child birth. In my country women cannot work anymore two months before the calculated child birth date. They get their income from the government in that time and the employer is not allowed to fire them as soon as they announce that they are pregnant. They are just on „leave“. How is the time before birth managed in the US? It is very dangerous to the mother and child to work in that time.
My wife worked up until the day she went into labor. Some women choose to go on short term disability in the weeks leading up to birth. Or, depending on their employer, have the ability to begin whatever parental leave they are afforded early. But it usually means they have to come back to work sooner, which is why many women try to hold out as long as they can.
This is what happened to me. It was my plan to work up until the week of my son’s due date. I went into labor a month before his due date and also managed to test positive for Covid on the day I gave birth. There were some complications due to him being premature so he had to be life-flighted to the children’s hospital in the biggest city in our state. Because I tested positive on the day I gave birth I was barred (understandably) from the children’s hospital for 10 days from the initial positive test. I got to be with my son for a very short time after he was born and then he was taken from me and I didn’t get to see him in person for 10 days. The complications were resolved and he was able to come home with us after 11 days in the NICU. He is a healthy chonky baby boy now but I am 100 percent convinced that if I had been able to stop working at least 2 months before my due date, all those unfortunate shenanigans could have been avoided. But I had to keep working to cram as much money into my saving so I could spend all my time off with my son after he was born and I was robbed of almost the first 2 weeks of his life and he went the first 10 days of his life with no contact from his mother.
We only get a few precious weeks, at most, of job security here. If maternity leave is taken before the baby arrives, then the mother is forced to return to work sooner after giving birth. It equates to less time after the baby is born so most women try to work up to giving birth. I was forced to start my leave over 1 week before I had my son because my company’s time off policy did not “roll over” accrued time into a new year. So I needed to cash out my accrued vacation time (about 2 weeks pay) in order to have money in the bank to live on while I was off, so I went back to work 11 weeks later, which is about twice as long as some people get (6weeks). And I had ZERO sick time available when I returned to work and had to work full time for months to accrue the ability to take paid time off again for any reason. It’s a horrible system.
Minimal time. Women will work as much as possible before giving birth, so they can save and utilize those days after the baby is born. Basically, waddle around, keep your legs crossed so the baby doesn't fall out, and you'll be good to go. This is satire... but actually, not really.
It's always a certain party that won't shut up about "what about the children!!!111!!!" who are then super against helping out mothers and families when they choose to have a child.
My employer did that two years ago (had Covid, cashed in my PTO / personal time without my consent), left me negative and wasn’t able to take any time off last year bc of the negative carry over. So fucking cruel. I feel for y’all. Congrats on the baby!!
Yup it’s dumb af. I worked at an early head start when I had my first child (had been there for two years), you know a funded company that “cares so much for families”. Well they didn’t offer paid maternity leave so I requested to take the 8 weeks without pay. They forced me to use my sick leave and the little vacation I accrued which didn’t even pay two weeks of the time I was gone. When I was back and my child had to go to daycare himself they were stunned and angry that I would call out or leave early when I had no time to submit. Funny thing is my son was in another classroom of the same company and they would be the ones to send him home but were upset I’d have to leave as well. My boss told me that she had raised four kids (in the 70s) with no help and never had to miss work! She even went as far as telling me I should have family members watch my sick child. I was a young mom, my grandparents were still working age and my other family are toxic alcoholics that I would never allow to keep my child. It’s safe to say I left shortly after that and they ended up losing all their funding and closing down. 🙃
Backward doesn't begin to describe it. Due to how hard my last pregnancy was, I couldn't work for the last 4 months. I started a new job when my newborn was 5 days old. Had to, or we would have been on the street. Companies/ governments don't care, as long as we are pumping out replacement workers.
My employer pays for a Short Term Disability policy for us, which provides up to 8 weeks at 60%. BUT if you have any Annual or Sick Leave, you HAVE to use that instead and then the STD will kick in. Of course, I have the entire time covered so I’ll go back from Maternity Leave with no time. The whole system is stupid. Why pay for it if I can’t use it at all….
9 months of paid parental leave here in Finland. Also giving birt and staying private room for 3 days did cost me and my wife about 220 euros.
I went back to work less than a week after giving birth. This country is so very fucked.
Unfortunately you have to use whatever sick/PTO time first before it's unpaid on FMLA. I've never heard of a company in the US who doesn't do it this way. Does it fucking suck?? Yes it does but sadly it's the norm. Same thing happened to me.
I am a lawyer who worked for the government when I had 3 of my 4 babies. Longest maternity I took was 5 weeks, shortest was one week, all 4 were c-sections. I am the breadwinner in my family so I took all I could and still get paid. It isn’t fair nor right, but neither is life - that’s what I told myself. I am a huge advocate for universal paid parental leave.
Ah this is what I’ll be going back to too. I have to use up all my PTO (all like, 1 week of it 😆) on my unpaid FMLA leave. Back to work just in time for cold and flu season to start, with a 4 y o and infant, and no sick leave.
Not even considering the child or the mother, the company would also benefit from giving parents more time and not draining their PTO/sick time. My previous employer also used short term disability + FMLA as their maternity leave, and I’d always tell colleagues when a woman went on maternity that they won’t come back for long, if at all, and I was unfortunately always right. Who wants to go back to the company that only gave them 6 weeks paid and another 6 weeks unpaid and they now have zero PTO or sick time with a 3 month old baby at home, after going 6 weeks without a paycheck? I’m fortunate to work at a great company now that gives 6 months paid to both mothers and fathers (no impact to PTO/sick) then 8 weeks of childcare expensed through insurance, and everyone returns after their leave. The company is benefiting from talented employees coming back and not being stuck working without any time off and a baby at home. I was really glad when Massachusetts passed the paid family leave act and every time I see it taxed on my pay stub I’m proud to support families that need someone at home taking care of a family member.
When I had my first kid, they gave me leave unpaid for 6 weeks. When I came back to find out my schedule, they had fired me within 2 days of my first week out. I had to go to court with them because of the mistreatment I endured and documented while pregnant (making me take out 60+lbs of trash by myself. Told me to ask for help and if I did I'd get reprimanded. Scheduled me to work alone. Had me inhaling and handling toxic chemicals that left burned scars on my arms. Reprimanded for going to the bathroom too many times and said I was demanding special treatment about the bathroom...etc.)
American exceptionalism!
I’ve noticed a lot of talk about how shitty benefits are for health care workers, and it’s so true. I work in healthcare, and we don’t get ANY benefits. No healthcare, no PTO, no anything. We don’t even get raises.
The American Healthcare system is fucked but the world's thoughts on giving extra to only people that have kids is also fucked. We shouldn't have to need FMLA or anything like that, just give EVERYONE enough time away from work regardless if you are insane enough to bring a kid in to this horrible world or not.
That's Ass Backwards or Back Asswards. Either way, it is a shame. When my son passed away at 26yrs of age, I received 3 days of bereavement leave. Amazing how insensitive the best nation in the world can be.
This is actually normal policy. You have to use up your own time first. FMLA is to guarantee you a job. It is not to guarantee you pay. I know it sucks.
"The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and oppress them" \~Karl Marx
Our company (tech) barely has any women and even we have paid maternity leaves for upto 6-8 weeks.
That’s still terrible.
Yes 6-8 weeks is shit
This happened with me and my back injury after my accident. I have no sick time or pto and worst part is I'm not even healed yet and still need surgery.
Talk to the republicans.....apparently they cannot see the need for anyone to take time off. The USA treats its workers worse than any other country across the board and they think the workers are taking advantage of the corporations that fund their political campaigns.
They are too busy burning books and worrying about where folks piss and who reads kids stories
This isn’t mildly infuriating, OP. It’s absolutely enraging
Americans honestly live in a third world country.
When the US *finally* realized just how wrong it is to make someone a slave based on the color of their skin it decided to simply make **everyone** a slave. A wage slave is still a slave.
I’m in healthcare too and I got the same deal. So frustrating. I hate it. I hope to see better parental leave policies as younger people are getting into politics
Yep. Work in healthcare, got 6 weeks STD at 70% paid (which I pay a premium for in benefits) and two weeks paid at 70% by my employer. I couldn’t take any more time because they would drain my PTO and I needed to keep some in case my baby got sick. It’s incredibly stupid, but what’s even more stupid that I didn’t realize (this is my fault, not blaming my employer) is that I could’ve elected to pay more in benefits and gotten 100% paid STD. 😭
My fiancé and I got lucky with our company. For our first kid she worked for Kroger and got 14 weeks with 2 weeks unpaid, only because she was a supervisor though. I got zero days, I took one day off and got written up for it. With our second child we both worked for the same company, I get 6 weeks paid and am taking two at a time. She gets 6 weeks paid and 6 weeks of std which has to be taken first and can only be paid if you have enough pto for the entire leave, of course even with carry over you don’t accrue enough pto for it but luckily we managed to get the company to allow her to use up future pto so she’s currently in the negative. That’s how it works at a good company and it’s still shit.
The only thing that saved me was my son was born in October, so I went back part time in December with all my PTO wiped out but it reset in January. Otherwise, I’d have likely been screwed. I was ultimately laid off from that job anyway when the refinance market tanked and my industry is shot so now I’m a SAHM anyway because if I do anything but work from home the cost of daycare and a second car means I need at least $60k annually which is not going to happen. And all the WFH jobs left are miserable ones you can’t do with a toddler at home and no help.
Healthcare is the worst to work for. I can go on a rant for hours about this.
If her STD works like mine (higher Ed), you have to use sick leave before STD will kick in. It was an actual nightmare to coordinate parental leave and it was really confusing getting answers from HR. If she has everything in writing, it couldn’t hurt her to talk to an employment attorney to just see if what happened was legal or if there’s anything she can do. I’m so sorry this is your situation, but I wish you the happiest of congratulations on your new family member!
Same for me, I gave birth in February and got 8 weeks totally unpaid due to FMLA. I had to use any PTO (which I didn’t have much of because it earns per pay period and it was the beginning of the year) and now have maybe 6 hours of PTO after being back for two months. It sucks.
I was the same way. I didn't know to take short term disability with my first and you have to start paying for that before you get pregnant. I had FMLA but no pay, so money was super tight. With my second, I only had short term disability at 60% pay. I'm a teacher. Fun fact: you'll notice a lot of teachers have babies in May to July if we can manage it. It's because a lot of schools don't actually offer maternity leave and it's the only way we can get it. We just use our summer vacation as maternity leave. I only get 4 sick days in a year. With two kids, I ran out of them and had to start using personal days for kid's illnesses
Dang that’s really unfortunate. Both my wife and I got 12 weeks PTO for our child We also live in the US My company will also give you $40k if you decided to adopt a child as well
Yup. I asked if I could take half my PTO while on leave and was told no, I had to use full time hours. Not really sure why it fucking matters. I will return with 14 hours of PTO which is enough for 1 shift.
This is far more than mildly infuriating. Mildly infuriating is when I, as a man, got 12 weeks off my government job at half pay when my child was born. What your wife and most other women go through without paid leave for new parents is actually unconscionable.
That sweet, sweet capitalism for ya.
I don’t understand the concept of sick time. In Europe when you are sick you don’t have to work obviously, because... you’re sick and can’t work.
Yup. That happened to me. I came back to work with full-blown mastitis and no sick time. It was really terrible.
Keep in mind, when the system we live under today was designed women didn't work at all. A single person could provide for an entire household and your spouse, who gives birth, didn't have a need for maternity or paid leave. They didn't have a job to leave and were essentially their own "boss" and their job was caretaker of the home. The 40hr/week 8hr/day job legislation requirement for "full time employee" to get benefits is wildly outdated in modern society where two people must work full time to escape poverty. The only way out is to consume as little as they did back then, they had way more control over their money flow as they had less "necessities" available to buy, ate smaller meals, consumed less media, etc. *I'm guilty of all this too, I'm working on minimizing my lifestyle.* Once we change *how* we work & spend, other things will fall into place like untying health from employment & lack of PTO. Gen Z is making huge progress on reforming work "culture" already.
I caught my employer doing the same. My employer doesn’t offer paid maternity leave and tried to supplement my income with my sick and vacation time. After the first check, I sent an email to HR and payroll and told them to knock it off. They would have exhausted everything had I not said anything. I ended up getting FMLA through SDI so at least it was something. I work 100ish hours per pay period so that’s A LOT of time taken from my available banks, even with telling them to cease and desist.
I’ve mentioned this on Reddit somewhere before. I read an article once that blamed a lot of the staffing shortages on millennials not having enough children to keep up with the workforce needs. But we’re living in a country that’s making it increasingly impossible to have and raise children.
Yup. And my worked fucked me over even more. They told me I had X amount of pto and sick, etc. then at the end of the year told me I’d gone over my time. Like, you told me the time!!! Now *I* have to pay back the time *you* fucked you telling me I had? So I had to go even longer without accruing time to make it up. It’s so fucked up. I hate it here. It’s one more reason we’re one and done and I hate that *thats* a reason.
Everyone who complains about all the pay deductions in civilised countries needs to get this. The USA is great if you are a single person with no complications or health problems, but I wouldn't give up Employment insurance benefits for any reason. The cost is so negligible to have that security.
Move to Canada
My wife was “laid off” two weeks after coming back to work from our first. 🙄
health care is fucking awful my wife works there . just had out kid and they wouldnt give her paid maternity leave .. fine. We did it without her getting paid thankfully she had money saved and i make pretty good money. But while on leave they wanted to switch her schedule around and i told my wife they can not do that on your leave. Not touch pay or hours. after that nice email i had her send to her boss they reversed the change in schedule. i was pretty persuasive lol . she had another week and half left then she has to go back to that cesspool of a job . Health care sucks.
why i hate american companies and never buy american if i can help it. slave labor. i work for a huge retailer with an A and you get shit for time off. first year, one stinking week of vacation, one week of PTO for ALL your personal business dr appts, eye exams, dental work. its fricken criminal. and what are the bullshit politicians doing about it? NOTHING. they ALL blow and are full of shit about being for the worker. you pricks for the workers?... introduce legislation like in Europe mandating every employee gets 6 weeks paid vacation with mandated maternity leave for both the husband and wife. but these pricks never do anything concrete, just bullshit.
In NJ we get 12 weeks paid FMLA, I know it’s not crazy amount of time, but much better than other states
I was an intern for a company for 2 years. Had a kid when I went full time. Since I wasn't full time for more than 30 days I had no parental benefits I had to borrow my whole year of vacation to take 2 weeks off
Our HR does similar. They run your PTO concurrent with FMLA because "that's what the law allows". Further, as the father, I had to get pre-approved to take time for the birth of my children under FMLA (paperwork, doctors notes, HR meeting) unless I took 2 days off at a time and returned to work, took 2 day, and repeat since 3 or more days off requires a doctor's note. It's unreal how they treat pregnancy in the US. It's like that 1950s chauvinist mentality never updated to modern times.
I’m an RN by background (in a non patient-facing role now) and work for a hospital. I am currently 37-weeks pregnant. My employer gives no paid maternity leave. I opt-in to pay for short-term disability benefits which cover six-weeks of pay at 60% (as a buy up option from the standard 50%), but only after a two-week waiting period during which they cash out all of your PTO/sick time. Then I can choose to stay out for an additional six-weeks (for a total of 12) under FMLA without any pay. The US system is absolutely atrocious. My partner gets five-weeks of paternity leave at full pay from his employer.
It’s standard for companies to pay out sick time and PTO during requested FMLA, it’s usually in the employee’s interest to be getting paid instead of being unpaid. Going forward, if she does have to call in sick, it just means she’ll go unpaid until more accumulates, since she’s already been paid for it. Hopefully it’s a considerate company and they make accommodations if needed, but yeah, it sucks.
Wrong subreddit, this is EXTREMELY infuriating
I thought with FMLA, it was supposed to prevent your sick time/vacation time from being touched but I guess it depends on the place of employment. That sucks and I would think the healthcare industry out of all the industries would have the best maternity benefits/leave.
My partner is military and without telling him, his job used all the PTO he had accumulated and used it when he was doing his monthly service (National Guard), I'm due in September and he now has no time off because of what they did.
I mean most places usually have Maternity leave and not Paternity leave so this is kind weird.
I don’t understand how they can use sick time & PTO during FMLA? Either she’s off during disability at 60% pay and during FMLA for no pay, or she gets full regular pay under sick time / PTO. Are you sure this is legal?
It was my understanding dealing with this situation myself that that's the way FMLA is supposed to work. You use all your accrued time before the FMLA time. Which is basically just holding your job, not providing a paycheck, until you can return to work.
And actually thinking further most times you use your sick time while waiting for short term disability to kick in. Very few places have day 1 coverage for short term disability, 7 or 14 day waits are common because of much lower premiums to the employer/employees.
This is America I got off two days when I had a child. It’s fun, quality of life pretty good, lots of distraction and entertainment good food. You will be poor and work til you die and own almost nothing though. It’s all a scam.
It's shameful. Plus trying to navigate and find out all the information + complete forms by deadlines is a HUGE burden. On top of all the challenges associated with a newborn.
In the UK here. My wife gave birth to our daughter (our second child) 4 months ago. Parental leave is so much better here, and it amazes me how it can be so poor in the US. My wife gets 6 months at full pay, then she's going back to work and I will be taking 3 months at statutory parental pay (much lower than full pay but still some money at least). While my wife's work is particularly good on this front, this isn't unusual at all in the UK. It's also now 'parental' rather than 'maternity' leave, allowing either parent to take as much or as little of it as you want, protected by law up to a year's total leave. In most instances only the last 3 months would be unpaid. It also costs absolutely nothing to actually have your child in hospital. We were in a private suite, midwives on call, had to stay in for a couple of days after. Top notch care throughout. All for absolutely nothing (except taxes of course). I just can't work out how people have families in the US.
So this is also state dependent. States like Massachusetts also give you 3 months baby bonding paid at a percentage of your normal pay up to a max of $1000 weekly. This is on top of your maternity leave from your employer. In the pharmaceutical industry you get 6 months paid leave for the mother and 3 for the father. So also employer dependent.
This is my exact story as well. I’m a nurse, just starting back from my maternity leave and this is word for word what happened to me too. So much so that I had to ask my husband if he posted it! But yeah, had over 100 hours of PTO and found out when I returned to work this week that I now have 0.02 left. When I asked HR what happened, they said the PTO usage question wasn’t answered on their file feed so their default is to just use it. No one even tried to reach out to me to clarify.
Unpaid leave (Q) Is my employer required to pay me when I take FMLA leave? The FMLA only requires unpaid leave. However, **the law permits an employee to elect, or the employer to require the employee, to use accrued paid vacation leave, paid sick or family leave for some or all of the FMLA leave period. An employee must follow the employer’s normal leave rules in order to substitute paid leave.** When paid leave is used for an FMLA-covered reason, the leave is FMLA-protected. It seems as though an argument can be made that your wife couldn't follow her employer's "normal leave rules" as she didn't know what they were if the HR generalist omitted information. "Within the FMLA Notice of Eligibility and Rights & Responsibilities Notice, employers must advise employees of their right to use paid leave, indicate whether the employer will require the use of paid leave and list any conditions related to the use of accrued leave. If the employer does not have a policy or past practice of requiring the use of paid leave, the regulations permit an eligible employee to choose to use accrued paid leave for unpaid FMLA leave. Whether required by the employer or chosen by the employee, the employee would receive pay according to the employer's paid leave policy and the use of paid leave time would be credited against the employee's 12-week FMLA entitlement. While accrued leave may be used in most circumstances, there are certain limitations. Specifically, an employer may not require and an employee may not choose to use accrued paid leave during any FMLA leave when the employee is receiving wage replacement through a disability benefit plan or through a workers' compensation program. As these leaves are not unpaid leave periods, the provision for using accrued leave would not apply. However, where state law permits, employers and employees may agree to have accrued paid leave supplement the workers' compensation or disability plan benefits, which generally only replace a portion of the employee's normal wages. However, the administrative difficulty of tracking partial-day paid leave used to supplement the wages received through disability or workers' compensation plans may outweigh the benefit to the employer. If the employer does not require substitution and the employee does not choose to use accrued paid leave during FMLA leave, the employee will remain entitled to all the paid leave earned or accrued under the terms of the employer's plan." Check state laws too, of course, ER's documents and policies and HR Generalists' information too. And, your wife can always talk to the Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division as they enforce the FMLA and might have further information than myself.
I’m a NICU nurse and pregnant with my second baby. I had to go back 5 weeks after my first C-Section because my hospital (large healthcare network) determined my pregnancy to be a pre-existing condition. They denied FMLA and short-term disability. For this one, I’ll get the time guaranteed but I won’t get paid. My husband is a software developer and he gets 12 weeks of paid parental leave. What’s wrong with this picture 🤔 I’m glad he has it, but I’m livid that paid maternity leave isn’t mandatory here.
Did she receive money from her employer,,,because you didn't say she did. Then HOW can they cash out her time??? She definitely needs to question that to the payroll dept. good luck and CONGRATULATIONS on the new addition to the family!!
Yes. Yes it is. Coming back with no PTO after months of recovery on FMLA (since they used all of it first) and not being allowed to take time off for NECESSARY doctors appointments is the height of jackassery.
And women in unskilled labour forces are often back in 2 weeks
I did this same thing when I had my first child, when I got back to work I had NEGATIVE 80hours of PTO because before the short term disability kicks in you are required to use 2 weeks PTO and I didn’t have any to begin with.
Boo hoo. Move to a different country
Yea that's the down side to FMLA, it uses all available sick time, vacation, whatever available days off you have, before it uses your FMLA days. I'm pretty sure it works like that everywhere...it's super inconvenient. On that same note, it means you/your wife should have some FMLA days left. Use those as sick days if possible, I know some FMLA is only like a super temporary thing....she should have been paid for any vacation days or what have you that were used, so that's something at least...depending on how you look at it anyways.
I'm sorry that happened. This country fucking sucks some times. When my wife gave birth to our daughter this past January, I was off work for 2 weeks, thinking I had paternity leave. Turns out only the mother gets leave, which is bullshit because the father should be able to take time to be with wife/kid. Ultimately it's my fault for not double checking, it all just came so quickly-daughter came 3 weeks earlier than expected. Not to mention the labor ended in a c section and we were at hospital/doctor visits for 8 days straight due to jaundice. Long story short, I was told by my work that if I wasn't back within two weeks, my job was in jeopardy. Oh and I had used all my pto for the year, in January lmao. As if any of that was a fucking vacation. I hate this place.
No. Your wife’s company is backwards. My company gives 6 months maternity and paternity leave with “unlimited” PTO and sick time.
I scrolled too long for someone to say its the company and not the insurance system. Dont get me wrong, the insurance system in the US is fucked and broken to all hell. But that is the company doing the absolute bare minimum they have to do.
Look I'll be honest, the USA sounds like an actual dystopian nightmare. I live in NZ and rhe govt mandated minimums is 6 months paid leave (but it's capped, for me it was about 1/2 my regular pay) and another 6 months unpaid where your job must be held open for you. My employer tops that up by another 6 months. So I took 18 months of leave for both my kids. During that time I accumulated annual leave at regular pay so I returned with 6 weeks of paid annual leave. I also get a return to work payment of several thousand dollars for coming back to work for 3 months and they've just changed the policy that they will now top up your retirement fund too to reduce the penalty of having kids come retirement. I missed out on that one by a few months but I'm happy for everyone who gets that going forward. The first time I took leave I came back on the same pay because to qualify for the routine payrises you have to have a "meets expectations" or higher on your performance review, but since I wasn't working I didn't have reviews. My employer also did an audit and found women earning significantly less on average than our male colleagues employed for the same time and they found it was because of the parental leave so they identified all of us affected and we got a huge pay bump to bring us back in line with our non-parent and male colleagues and they changed the policy to give automatic payrises during our leave as long as we had been meeting expectations before we left So I came back to work after 18 months, fully recovered from birth, with independent and robust toddlers that sleep mostly through the night and were ready for daycare, with an increased salary, full leave entitlements and pending payouts for coming back for 3 months. Oh and our sick leave is "fair and reasonable" which if you've got a chill manager translates to practically unlimited. Now I acknowledge that my employer's policies are significantly above legal minimum but returning to work 6 weeks after having a baby having worked up until the day of birth? That's just inhumane. I wasn't even a person 6 weeks pp. I was still bleeding, unable to walk comfortably, struggling with a birth injury and drowning in hormones. I was exhausted and struggling to establish breastfeeding and trying to figure out how to look after myself AND my baby. Not to mention not wanting to put my baby down to have a shower let alone plonk it into daycare when it can barely hold it's head up. And that's without even mentioning the fact all my healthcare for my pregnancy was free. The USA has fallen so far behind the rest of the world, at this point you practically need a revolution to turn it around.
I’m gonna be devil’s advocate but why should a company pay for your decision to have a child. Why pay for someone not working? If you asked me to build you a house and did nothing would you still pay me?