It’s rare for me to find myself deeply regretting something I’ve done, but when it comes to my parental leave regrets, the lessons hit deep. I’m usually a “fail forward” kind of gal, but this one stayed with me, reshaping how I see leadership and empathy around parental leave.
Despite that, I found myself sitting on my couch with a lovely coffee on a sunny day, crying to my partner.
OK, well, not just crying. I was dry heaving, trying to speak between gasps as tears rolled down my face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I… just… can’t… believe… I… did… that… to… him,” I sobbed.
How My Career-First Mindset Cost an Employee More Than I Realized
A couple of years earlier, my company had gone through a reduction in force. We had a team member who’d been passed around from department to department, manager to manager. He was disenfranchised with the whole organization, and I didn’t blame him.
That did tend to show up in his work, and my leaders had flagged that maybe he wasn’t fully in it anymore. He was about to go on paternity leave with his first child when we decided we needed to let him go.
I’ll never forget making that call and telling myself, “At least he’ll have 14 weeks of pay to find another job.” I told myself this was a mercy, that I was saving him from being let go later, once he was in full father mode, rather than now.
Before you decide I’m a monster, I fought to keep his paternity leave and his earned severance intact. At the time, that’s what I hung my hat on to still call myself a good person, days after his wife had delivered their baby girl, when I made the call to tell him the news.
I never thought twice about that decision again. Not until the morning I described above, inconsolable, reliving it out of nowhere.
That morning, my hormones were crashing, I was more tired than I’d ever been in my life, and I was attempting to nurse my newborn son.
“I… didn’t… know…” I cried to my partner.
The Reality I Didn’t Understand Until I Lived It
How can you know what you don’t know? If you haven’t lived through it, you cannot fathom the all-consuming months of parental leave. Everyone talks about the lack of sleep and the unrelenting responsibility of keeping a tiny human alive, but it’s easy to brush that off as just another parent complaining about a long vacation from work.
Until I lived it, I didn’t understand the 24/7 anxiety that takes over your brain. Or how hard breastfeeding actually is. Cracked nipples? Mastitis? Please. Those are the easy parts. The real thing is the 2:30am Googling “why is my baby kicking the air while he sleeps,” or waking up in a dead panic after thirty minutes of sleep, convinced you need to check that his chest is still rising and falling.
Not to mention you’ve instantly acquired a new identity, your relationship is on the back burner, and why does he keep pooping? This is the fourth diaper this hour. Is his blood sugar okay? Is he gaining enough weight? Is he eating too much? Not enough? Is this reflux? Is this colic? Keep water out of his ears, or wait, is it fine if water gets in his ears?
And I objectively had an easy, chill baby.
Why Parental Leave Is Not ‘Time Off’
If you’re an ambitious, child-free professional, you probably glazed over the last three paragraphs. If you did, I don’t blame you. But you’re missing the entire point.
I went back and forth for years on having kids versus not, always putting my career first, sometimes silently judging the people who seemed to just know they wanted kids. I understand exactly the mindset I’m asking you to question, because it used to be mine.
I deeply regret not taking the time to understand that parental leave isn’t time off. I wish I’d done more for my employee instead of justifying to myself that I was doing him a favor. Even if I still had to let him go, I wish I’d stepped up in other ways for him and his growing family.
My Parental Leave Regrets as a Boss
It would be easy to say I didn’t know what I didn’t know. What bothers me is that I could have tried harder to know.
He went on to find an even better job. Our relationship wasn’t damaged. He even freelances for us now. I’d love to tell you that’s because I made it right somehow. I didn’t. He landed on his feet because he’s good at what he does, not because I gave him anything close to what he actually needed in that moment. I don’t get credit for how his story turned out. I only own the part where I got it wrong.
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