My maternity leave prospects

When I got my job, I felt like I had won the golden ticket. There is a nice benefits package, a lot of holidays, good pay, and talk about job security! Okay, I still thank my lucky stars on most days. We live in a fabulous house overseas, and I'm a librarian. People do not do this for the money.

That being said, I'm floored by the maternity leave policy. While forward thinking employers are giving their staff paid maternity leave, I not only don't get that, I have some pretty draconian policies on how I can take leave.

Basically, there's no way to have twelve paid weeks. If I were a longtime employee (either I got the job right out of college or I had children relatively late in life), I would probably have accrued some annual and sick leave. Let's say I've been working her for five years and have never taken any annual leave—that's about 80 days of annual leave. Hot dog! I was careful and saved for my future. But wait! I can only carry 30 days over from one year to the next. Darn.

But wait, I have sick leave! Sick leave doesn't ever expire, and I can accrue as much as I can carry. Unfortunately, according to the literature, I can only take sick leave if a doctor certifies that I am incapacitated. The site suggests that most doctors, being more softhearted than my employer, will allow that it takes six weeks to recover from childbirth.

So if you do the math, if I save my all of my leave days, I can take about 2 ½ months of paid leave. If I'm me, and I have taken some annual leave to see the amazing area I have moved to (and see my family when I go back to the U.S), I'll have about 3 weeks of annual leave saved up when the baby is born. Add the six weeks of sick leave, and that gives me nine paid weeks off. This is assuming that I don't have issues with my HR requiring certification and my doctor saying that I don't need six weeks.

Yes, I can take leave without pay. Clearly this system was designed for women with well off spouses, not sole breadwinners or even vital halves of a two income household. I can save up some money for a rainy day, but I don't know if I can save enough to cover my insurance premiums during this time, which is also required of employees who are on leave without pay. Not getting paid doesn't seem like much of an option.

Korean women are expected to take a year off for childbirth and caring for a baby. (If they're lucky, that is. A lot of them are not welcomed back.) Korean employees in my organization get that year in paid leave. I know my employees will be more than uncomfortable when I work until I pop, and come back when the baby is two months old. Actually, my most conservative one asked me when I would stop working, and I said the second or third week in November.   He replied, "November first!  That's too late!"  Yeeahhh.  This one also requested that I not hire a woman with a child under one, so I think nothing I can do (short of growing a penis) will make this guy happy.  But they'll all have to deal with it.  I have a feeling it won't be the first time I have pushed them outside of their comfort zones.