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ATTN NERDS:

infosec is what i'm interested in specifically, but general industry input welcome

what is your maternity/parental leave policy?

would you, under any circumstances, consider a week of maternity leave acceptable?
Ahem....

NO

NO NO NO. NO NO. NO. NO NO. NO.
put this on 12 hour loop to get my feelings about this. I would send this to whatever man came up with this.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2csSPkBEKus
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
my current employer gives 12 weeks for new moms and dads. When I had mine at my prior employer, I think I got a week. And it’s not acceptable
Jesus wept. A week? I can see circumstances where people need to accept it and … 🤯🥵🤬
a week? As in...total? Yeah, that would not fly at any of the places I have punched a clock. Are you sure it is a week for maternity, that you are not looking at the bereavement column?
it's varied but one week is so much below acceptable. for either parent.
@eljefedsecurit you mean the law in the US, the only industrialized country with proper maternity leave? Zero it is, then
@Whitney Champion 🍪 I took 7 months for both kids - both because I wanted to return the first day back in January.

The felt like a solid minumum
8 weeks paid paternity at my current employer and my wife and I love it. Just had our second baby and I’m off right now 😂. 0 weeks at anywhere else I’ve been. 1 week maternity is a slap in the face.
I'm between jobs so can't quote a specific policy, but holy shit one week for maternity leave? No fucking way, absolutely not.
18 weeks at my current place; can be broken up as needed across the first year.

When my son was born, I took my one week of paternity leave and one week of saved up vacation, and got dinged for it on my annual review.

One week of *maternity* leave is beyond unacceptable -- it's abusive to both mother and baby. The exec team should be ashamed.
no, that is insane, damn
a week? like is that a week per week you have been working there? because uhh if it's just one week period that was definitely written by a man...
no. You need 3 months minimum. A week isn’t even time to get physically well from the birth.
Definitely not.
I am in no way qualified to answer, but...

A single week of parental leave is one of the most depressing things I've ever heard.
At my last job, one week was paid for dads, next week was half paid, and everything after that was on PTO. My first spent a long time in the ICU and I was fortunate enough to have a great manager that went to bat for me.

Can't remember what my current job's plan is, but I know it's 50x better.
wat. no, one week is not enough. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't even be legal here.
By law, 6 weeks before (expected) birth, 8 weeks after, at full pay. Then up to 14 months at 2/3rd salary distributed between both parents (father has to take at least two months).

A week is ridiculous.
no, that's not at all acceptable
nope.
I feel very fortunate that my state agrees with me, too, and mandates 8 weeks.
somehow that strikes me as worse than none. None means you're obvious, discriminating against parents in general and mother's in particular, or you think some other type of leave you offer covers it. (Which I doubt, but won't rule out without seeing that policy.) A week says you think you thought about it and still think that's enough.
It's government mandated here in NZ. The primary caregiver gets 26 weeks paid, and an additional 26 weeks unpaid (my employer just bumped the paid leave portion to 38 weeks). The secondary caregiver gets 2 weeks paid, and can take up to 52 weeks unpaid. The primary caregiver can also give some of their parental leave to the secondary caregiver.
yikes no. I think most of the developed world doesn't either, fwiw.
Not at all! for paternity that's pretty low, but for maturity I'm not sure how that would work. What if I had someone had a complicated birth that kept them in hospital for the week they had off. Do they just slide back into work on the Monday after? What happens to the baby in this situation?
My company gives 4 weeks for mother and 2 weeks for spouse. No, one week is heartless.
that’s ridiculous.

Here in NZ the law mandates 14 weeks paid leave, and the company must hold your job so you can return to it after 12 months, they can’t fire you or make you redundant during that time (effectively 38 weeks unpaid leave)
I’m having flashbacks to when I was consulting, flashbacks of the first time I had analyst who had a baby. HR told us both the company had 12-weeks maternity leave. She had the baby. My team celebrated. HR promptly took her off the payroll and put her on public assistance (FMLA). So this super talented person finds herself with practically no income as a brand new mom.

Anger doesn’t begin to explain my response.
@jwgoerlich For us it wasn't the full 12 weeks but had a similar experience and it was a true lesson that HR is here to help the company, NOT the employees. 🤬
The last place where that was relevant to me had an "unlimited" pto policy that also covered parental leave. I took four weeks and my manager who had a kid around the same time took 1 week. He made it clear that he was sure one week was plenty.
my kids are 11 and 9 now, but when my son was born, I think my wife got 12 weeks and I got 3. When our daughter was born, my wife wasn't working, and I got 3 weeks. I added an extra week of PTO both times. Both my kids went through the NICU, so I needed the extra time. It was a wild ride. Our insurance back then was amazing, I think it cost us a total of $200 in copays for each kid, NICU included.

Thank God we are done with having kids because now that I'm self employed, if I don't work, I don't get paid, and our marketplace health plan doesn't cover much of anything.
I honestly don't know how someone could get through having kids with less employer support and a marketplace health plan.
speaking as one who had four kids, two in college/grad school and two while self employed and using marketplace insurance, it definitely comes with a lot of hard compromises. Our first kiddo was while my wife had great insurance through her work, and due to some clever supplemental insurance usage she actually got paid to have the baby, and had about 2~months of maternity leave. I really had no leave as a student working at a teen treatment center, but they tried to be as supportive as they could. There was no real time off for the 2nd kiddo for me; again I was in grad school. And working for myself for the last two meant I had better flexibility during the days but still I don't think I took off more than a week or two each time...
I wish we lived in a system that supported families better, and stopped the stupidity of for-profit greedy healthcare.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
um... NO... a week is NO WHERE NEAR enough!!!!

Now... that said, the policy here is "FMLA... concurrent with banked PTO and short term disability"
what fresh hell? that's worse than my company....I didn't think that that was possible.
16 weeks for the birth parent, and also 6 or 8 wks for each parent, depending on where they live San Francisco has the extra 2) . This is for people in the US.
We have a really good parental leave policy that applies to both parents. A week of parental leave is absurd. Might as well not offer the benefit at all.
no. Just fucking no.