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Enormously positive message. I hate that I have to recruit against them! The real question is will men be able to take the 20 weeks without their mid-manageme

Enormously positive message. I hate that I have to recruit against them! The real question is will men be able to take the 20 weeks without their mid-management holding it against them. If someone in the C suite takes 20 weeks, then it will be culturally ok.

lb1lf 10y ago
We had this exact same discussion at my workplace (Large, UK-owned engineering multinational) a while ago; turned out a lot of people expected long leaves to have a detrimental effect on their career, but no-one had anything except assumption to go on. My own experience (working in Scandinavia) suggest that at least around here, career and leave is mostly a non-issue. I am currently staying at home with our nine-month-old daughter; my wife started working again when she was seven months old. I am now on paid leave until May next, and have the following observations: a) While my leave is of a slightly unusual duration (Father normally takes 10 weeks of leave or so - not 28 as I did), it is not unheard of. My line manager actually claims to prefer longer leaves, and I believe him. Reason? Much simpler to plan when you know employee such-and-such will be off work for, say, six months rather than just a couple of months. You might even get away with grabbing a temporary replacement from another department or a temp agency, whereas if I had a shorter leave, he'd just be told to split my work load on my colleagues and stop whining until I was back in the lab. b) To the extent that the top brass ever talks to their minions, anecdotal evidence suggests envy more than derision. My leaves (this being the third one) has come up in conversation with executives on a couple of occasions, and response has been more along the lines of 'I wish I could get away with doing that!' or 'Good for you, I wouldn't last a month!' than 'WTF?' Heck, during my previous leave, I was even promoted in my absence! (A minor one, but still...) c) My male colleagues are supportive, though most choose shorter leaves. The most skepticism has come from female colleagues - who, while amused that I take as much leave as I do, worry about what my wife really thinks about it - after all, society is biased towards females taking care of infants, the first year or two of their lives traditionally being seen as the mother's domain. (No-one has voiced any concerns about the children, though - only about my wife...)
- azernik 10y ago
  Whether or not parental leave affects career prospects depends on cultural and employer attitudes. Even after hearing your experiences in Scandinavia, I still think career worries are a legitimate concern for taking parental leave in eg the United States.
  - lb1lf 10y ago
    Agreed, which is why I mentioned where I work. However, I do work for a company whose management comes from a culture biased more against taking long leaves - or, at least, that is my impression of the UK by and large - and even UK-based managers seem to approve. I guess once such prolonged leave gains just a little bit of traction, management are likely to be concerned that they'll be seen as being behind the times if they oppose it? Just conjecture and idle musings with nothing to back it up whatsoever.
  - alkonaut 10y ago
    That's why it's so important to have tax funded (not employer funded) programs that also have allocated days for each parent, quickly making it first acceptable but soon also expected for both parents to take parental leaves. That is - if it's an explicit goal for society to have parents and men in particular take longer parental leaves. My coworkers and managers would probably start wondering wth my values are if I didn't take at least 4 months with each kid. I'd look like some kind of stone age man to then I hope).
- yread 10y ago
  Congrats on being able to do that. How do you manage? I only take one day a week and I find that it always quite drains me.
  - lb1lf 10y ago
    That depends. a) I've found that I need to quit work cold turkey-style, just be OUT. Working part-time while caring for the toddler just means everyone at work assume I am at work, leading to 100% work load and only X% time to do it in. (Where X is significantly less than 100!) Previous time around, we tried to both work part-time for a few weeks during transitioning from my wife being at home to me caring for the little one - worst mistake we ever made; totally ran both of us into the ground as we in practice wound up trying to catch up on work after the little critter had fallen asleep, trying to meet deadlines. Not good. b) As for being at home full-time, I've found that it works very well, provided (drumroll, important part) I get enough time to interact with adults during the day. True, the little princess is as cute as they get, all smiles (and, if she's not - time for some food and sleep!) and mostly a joy to be around - but what soon gets to me is not talking to someone with a vocabulary larger than 'Da-da!' and 'Tee-hee!'. So - every day, we go out, visit the library, shop for groceries, just chatting up random people we meet - to keep me sane. I've found that works a charm for me. Also, we try to keep to somewhat of a schedule, though obviously allowance needs to be made for her sleep schedule - which is still somewhat of a work in progress. We get up at about the same time every morning, eat at regular-ish intervals, I try to do some chores like cleaning, laundry &c while she's asleep, so that most of the day-to-day chores are done with by the time the older kids + missus come home in the afternoon. That basically means we can spend a couple of hours going over the 7-year-old's homework, play a little, read, whatever until kids' bedtime - rather than having to cram in all chores inbetween or -shudder- wait until after the kids have gone to sleep, giving us a couple of hours before adult bedtime to do adult stuff for relaxing, rather than playing catch-up on keeping the house tidy-ish and clean-ish. Tl;dr: I definitely cannot claim that my recipe will work for anyone, but for me, working in the industry I do, being at home full-time works a charm as long as I get some interaction with grownups during the day, have a schedule of sorts - and the wits to depart from it when need be.
koolba 10y ago
> If someone in the C suite takes 20 weeks, then it will be culturally ok. Given that the average age of someone in the C-suite is approximately 50 (particularly for a company of the age and type of Amex), then chance of that happening is slim to none.

lb1lf 10y ago

We had this exact same discussion at my workplace (Large, UK-owned engineering multinational) a while ago; turned out a lot of people expected long leaves to have a detrimental effect on their career, but no-one had anything except assumption to go on. My own experience (working in Scandinavia) suggest that at least around here, career and leave is mostly a non-issue. I am currently staying at home with our nine-month-old daughter; my wife started working again when she was seven months old. I am now on paid leave until May next, and have the following observations: a) While my leave is of a slightly unusual duration (Father normally takes 10 weeks of leave or so - not 28 as I did), it is not unheard of. My line manager actually claims to prefer longer leaves, and I believe him. Reason? Much simpler to plan when you know employee such-and-such will be off work for, say, six months rather than just a couple of months. You might even get away with grabbing a temporary replacement from another department or a temp agency, whereas if I had a shorter leave, he'd just be told to split my work load on my colleagues and stop whining until I was back in the lab. b) To the extent that the top brass ever talks to their minions, anecdotal evidence suggests envy more than derision. My leaves (this being the third one) has come up in conversation with executives on a couple of occasions, and response has been more along the lines of 'I wish I could get away with doing that!' or 'Good for you, I wouldn't last a month!' than 'WTF?' Heck, during my previous leave, I was even promoted in my absence! (A minor one, but still...) c) My male colleagues are supportive, though most choose shorter leaves. The most skepticism has come from female colleagues - who, while amused that I take as much leave as I do, worry about what my wife really thinks about it - after all, society is biased towards females taking care of infants, the first year or two of their lives traditionally being seen as the mother's domain. (No-one has voiced any concerns about the children, though - only about my wife...)

azernik 10y ago
Whether or not parental leave affects career prospects depends on cultural and employer attitudes. Even after hearing your experiences in Scandinavia, I still think career worries are a legitimate concern for taking parental leave in eg the United States.
- lb1lf 10y ago
  Agreed, which is why I mentioned where I work. However, I do work for a company whose management comes from a culture biased more against taking long leaves - or, at least, that is my impression of the UK by and large - and even UK-based managers seem to approve. I guess once such prolonged leave gains just a little bit of traction, management are likely to be concerned that they'll be seen as being behind the times if they oppose it? Just conjecture and idle musings with nothing to back it up whatsoever.
- alkonaut 10y ago
  That's why it's so important to have tax funded (not employer funded) programs that also have allocated days for each parent, quickly making it first acceptable but soon also expected for both parents to take parental leaves. That is - if it's an explicit goal for society to have parents and men in particular take longer parental leaves. My coworkers and managers would probably start wondering wth my values are if I didn't take at least 4 months with each kid. I'd look like some kind of stone age man to then I hope).
yread 10y ago
Congrats on being able to do that. How do you manage? I only take one day a week and I find that it always quite drains me.
- lb1lf 10y ago
  That depends. a) I've found that I need to quit work cold turkey-style, just be OUT. Working part-time while caring for the toddler just means everyone at work assume I am at work, leading to 100% work load and only X% time to do it in. (Where X is significantly less than 100!) Previous time around, we tried to both work part-time for a few weeks during transitioning from my wife being at home to me caring for the little one - worst mistake we ever made; totally ran both of us into the ground as we in practice wound up trying to catch up on work after the little critter had fallen asleep, trying to meet deadlines. Not good. b) As for being at home full-time, I've found that it works very well, provided (drumroll, important part) I get enough time to interact with adults during the day. True, the little princess is as cute as they get, all smiles (and, if she's not - time for some food and sleep!) and mostly a joy to be around - but what soon gets to me is not talking to someone with a vocabulary larger than 'Da-da!' and 'Tee-hee!'. So - every day, we go out, visit the library, shop for groceries, just chatting up random people we meet - to keep me sane. I've found that works a charm for me. Also, we try to keep to somewhat of a schedule, though obviously allowance needs to be made for her sleep schedule - which is still somewhat of a work in progress. We get up at about the same time every morning, eat at regular-ish intervals, I try to do some chores like cleaning, laundry &c while she's asleep, so that most of the day-to-day chores are done with by the time the older kids + missus come home in the afternoon. That basically means we can spend a couple of hours going over the 7-year-old's homework, play a little, read, whatever until kids' bedtime - rather than having to cram in all chores inbetween or -shudder- wait until after the kids have gone to sleep, giving us a couple of hours before adult bedtime to do adult stuff for relaxing, rather than playing catch-up on keeping the house tidy-ish and clean-ish. Tl;dr: I definitely cannot claim that my recipe will work for anyone, but for me, working in the industry I do, being at home full-time works a charm as long as I get some interaction with grownups during the day, have a schedule of sorts - and the wits to depart from it when need be.

koolba 10y ago

> If someone in the C suite takes 20 weeks, then it will be culturally ok. Given that the average age of someone in the C-suite is approximately 50 (particularly for a company of the age and type of Amex), then chance of that happening is slim to none.