How would you respond to someone who thinks it’s unfair that new parents get paid parental leave? He seems to understand why parental leave is important (good for baby, society, etc) but ...

That’s why we have family leave. Not just for parents but can be used to care for ailing family member

I’ve heard this argument before and I find it pretty stupid. It’s like saying you should get bereavement regardless of someone close to you passing

The comments in this thread equating PTO and discretionary leave with maternity leave have me astounded at the sheer lack of context you all have. Pregnancy, labor and delivery, and postpartum are all serious medical situations with physiological implications. The US has the worst maternal mortality rate in the developed world and it’s rising.

This is not just about being tired or uncomfortable or sleepless with a new infant. This is about the fact that a lot of women return to work still not fully recovered from giving birth. I had surgery literally two days before returning to work (prior role, 6 weeks leave which is the minimum requirement for recovery time + using all my vacation to get to 9 weeks — surgery Friday, work Monday - I’m sure they totally got their money’s worth from me that day 🙄) - I had complications, but complications aren’t uncommon and I was lucky enough to have good advice or a postpartum issue literally would have killed me since I hemorrhaged in my sleep - twice.

This is about the mental tax of trying to function as a human being on less than 3-4 hours of sleep (and none of it in a row) consistently over months. Even though studies show that sleeplessness impairs your judgement more than alcohol. Most international agreements define denying someone sleep as torture.

This is about trying to be a good employee and leaking breast milk all over your shirt so that you can stay in the meeting - or missing the meeting to pump, and being seen as someone “not as ambitious/dedicated” as everyone else on the team.

And don’t give me the “it’s a choice" argument. Someone has to make that choice or the human race ends. And those of us that make the choice still have bills to pay, and a lot of us are the primary earner in our household because we are smart, ambitious, and we can damn well raise an amazing next generation if you’ll stop being so petty over a few months that we get to work on something more important and more demanding than whatever you are working on at your current client.

Maternity leave is. not. vacation.

Tough shit life is not fair. Who ever expect life to be fair. If life was fair we probably wouldn’t get paid as well as we do to be consultants

Tell person not getting leave that they will be several months ahead in progression - which he/she will be. The choice to take time off for family (which I think is necessary, important and the right thing to do for a family) means person taking leave is likely slowing down career progression . It’s a personal choice each person makes - no right or wrong answer either way

@D4 totally agree. It’s about making different types of benefits available to attract the best talent so that they can perform the best. If you avail of those benefits or not, it is your call, but it is there for you and everyone else. I would choose a firm with benefits that appeal to me. I have the choice of where I want to work. It is like some firms giving free bagels for breakfast for all employees. Whether you choose to eat the food provided or not, is up to you. You make the decision based on what you want. But it’s made available to all. If you question this benefit, you’ll need to question every possible ‘benefit’ there is, irrespective of choice (I choose to get pregnant but I didn’t choose to fall sick!) connected to the benefit. I do not make use of the health and fitness reimbursement (no judgement needed). There are more benefits where choice is involved. Not just this one. Anyways, very shallow question.

In theory he has a point if you are viewing it strictly in a frame of fairness. The argument, at least in my opinion, lies in the application of a policy as he suggests. How would a paternity leave equivalent be addressed at a company level? How many would you get since paternity leave is essentially unlimited ? What happens if you take a non-paternity paid leave but later have a child? Could be a planned thing or an oopsie, doesn’t really matter.

The reality is that welcoming a new family member, by birth or adoption, is a unique life event with no equal.

Interesting that no one has offered a coherent argument on the basis of it being fair.

It had mostly been anecdotes that kids keep you up at night.

Director 2 - here’s your requested coherent argument : It aligns w/“our” corporate/firm/partnership’s values. You may not like it and that’s okay. Perhaps reassessing your alignment w/the corporate/firm/partnership’s values should be “Step 1."

Well Deloitte’s policy is family leave which applies to ailing family members as well as new borns and adoptions. So let’s expand out of PwC world

And while the point of choice vs not choice in having a baby vs terminally ill parent, the option to take time off is still a choice. Like for a baby, you could pay someone else to take care of it just like you could pay for a family member’s care.

And all the non-kid having people or non-time take-offing parents typically progress faster because a) didn’t take leave and b) generally work more hours because they are considered to have less of a home life, get or pick the more intensive assignments.

There’s no fair or parity and their won’t and shouldn’t be. I’m a non-kid haver myself and I do not begrudge parents their time, it’s not fucking vacation. And having more work when they’re out sucks, but if I had to be out for a parent getting ill or heaven forbid my husband getting in an accident, I’d expect those parents to take on my load. Or if I got sick and had to take leave or reduce hours. Kids, sick self/relatives are NOT VACATION. You can’t achieve parity with a sabbatical or non-life event time off

It's amazing how many people are trying to come up with a "fair" solution. This guy sounds like an idiot. I hope he has better critical thinking skills with his clients.

How's this for fair: while I'm on leave, he's at work, excelling at his job, getting one step closer to achieving his career goals. When I'm back, he's also taking on more travel roles without considering family implications, potentially capable of retiring way before I will... Etc etc perhaps he shouldn't be so short sighted and realize that there are implications to choosing to have kids that go way beyond a few weeks off.

But end of the day, it's easier to just ignore these kind of dumb comments. As they say, never fight with an idiot. He'll drag you down to his level, and then beat you with experience.

I love all these replies that are pretty cordial up until the last sentence like P6. “I’m happy with my life without kids” then throws an insult at D3 and unborn kids.

EY8, there are dozons of benefits that you CHOOSE to use or not.

Many companies have a fitness benefit, and cover ovjectively elective medical procedures like Ortho, ivd, adoption, heck even Viagra.

If it makes you/your friends feel better the male/female wage gap is pretty closely tied to having children. So on average that leave isn't free, it costs about 20% of their salary for the rest of their lives. Pretty freaking expensive time off.

But thinks he shouldn’t miss out on x weeks of paid leave just because he chooses not to (or can’t) have a child of his own.

I can’t deal with this right now, so I’m outsourcing to my fellow 🐠 lol. Thanks

BCG1 — I agree and gave a similar analogy about people complaining about not getting paid sick leave when they didn’t get sick. But he could argue in both those examples, you don’t choose to have someone pass or to get sick.

Whereas most people do make a conscious choice to have a child.

Not saying I agree with the original statement! But trying to think of more ways to respond.

I wouldn’t waste my time/breath/bytes 🙃

Like when someone has a heart attack in the group insurance policy and their benefit is paid let’s say 100k .. then I get sore because it’s not fair that I don’t get that benefit. Sooo many other examples of this like property taxes and having kids in k-12 age range

D2, it’s a better investment than giving someone without kids 4 months off. No lessons learned, no loyalty gained. What do you get as a company by giving a DINK 4 months off?

PwC4 I'm not so concerned with that. I'm more focused on the fairness question.

That said maybe it isn't so complicated. Perhaps paid sabbatical every x years. If you take your sabbatical and have a kid before earning a new sabbatical you don't receive paid leave or only your accrued portion of paid leave.

You can’t propose a solution unless you gain consensus?

Let’s assume that paternity leave is generally agreed upon to be unfair. My question still stands: How do you make it equitable?

It isn't clear to me that my original solution wasn't fair with respect to taking a sabbatical.

To make it even a bit nicer perhaps you can take your sabbatical at any time. If you get ahead of accrued days you're get an extra bump in your check as you accrue days until you reach parity between accrued days and utilized sabbatical. This way we could avoid the risk of paying out on unearned sabbatical.