The Parental Leave Playbook. Sue Campbell

Introduction

      Congratulations! You are about to enter one of the most transformational periods of your life. By picking up this book, you are acknowledging the joy and challenges that lie ahead of you. Parenting is incredibly rewarding and extremely difficult. Habit experts will tell you that big life transitions (graduating, moving, getting married) provide opportunities to reshuffle your routines and establish new norms. Becoming a parent is the fast track to personal growth, a chance to rewrite your entire life. (If you don't want to hear that right now, don't worry; it's not a strict requirement.)

      Like most of my clients, you are probably excited and a bit anxious. You can't wait to welcome your child and you want to be thoughtful about what this means for your working life. Whether you always knew you'd be a parent or you aren't quite sure how you got here, you are at a crossroads moment, and the way you move forward will have lasting implications for your career and your personal life. I will help you transition between, and then integrate, two potentially opposing sides of yourself—your familiar, more career or work-identified self and the other more family-identified self that will be growing with you—so that you can move forward with confidence and clarity to create the next phase of your life, while deepening your commitment to yourself and your career goals.

First, as your coach, I need to level with you.

      The culture concerning parental leave in the United States is a mess. We are the only developed country in the world without a national paid leave policy to support families welcoming a child. The “American Dream” that you can achieve anything with enough hard work leaves parents scrambling to make all areas of their life work, with little to no practical or social support. Due in part to the breadwinner/homemaker model we have clung to for generations, we have no federally mandated paid leave or childcare subsidies. Most employers give no thought as to how to build in practical support for new parents. And we certainly do not have a cultural or procedural infrastructure to help you use the transition to parenthood to rewrite your life for the better and align yourself with your highest potential and purpose.

      Most new parents expect their manager or human resources representative to give them a company intranet link that will make the whole parental leave process clear and the transition to working parenthood smooth as silk. Most workplaces don't have such an intranet site. Most managers are usually clueless about how to handle an employee about to become a parent.

      An expectant mom I worked with recently, a congregational leader named Rachael who was due in three weeks with her third child, shared a perfect example of this kind of institutional shortcoming: “HR told me I have to find the short-term disability forms and submit them, and there is usually a 30-day lag before I'll receive the 60% pay reimbursement. I don't know why they expect this to be my problem. I have a contract that says I have eight weeks of paid leave. I don't care how they figure that out, that's their job. I just need to know I'll be paid when I'm away, and not with a pay cut or 30-day lag. If they need me to sign something, they should send it to me, not make me find it.” Her understandable frustration does not factor in the reality that most organizations in our country don't understand (or don't care) that their employees expect parental leave logistics to be the organization's responsibility. In other words, she's right that it shouldn't be her job to sort out a disability claim, but if she wants it done, it has to be her job.

Although I envision a world where making the transition from working person to working parent is a fully transparent and supported process that benefits all of society, we are not there yet. Not by a long shot. The burden of learning how to prepare for a child while keeping your career on track falls on you. You will need help, and it will be up to you to organize and ask for that help. To make this a successful transition at work you'll have to do a fair bit of “managing up.” Should it be this way? No. But if you take ownership over your leave experience, you'll avoid a lot of frustration and heartache and have a far better chance of carving out a deeply satisfying life going forward.

      That's where this book comes in. As the founder and CEO of the Center for Parental Leave Leadership (CPLL), I have spent over a decade working with organizations ranging from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies. While helping guide managers and expectant and new parents, I have seen a pattern emerge. Though the experience of becoming a working parent is a profoundly individual one, there are 10 milestones that everyone must pass through successfully in order to navigate this time frame well. How you and your manager interact with each other in terms of these 10 critical milestones, which I refer to in this book as touchpoints, will have an oversized impact on your parental leave experience—for better or for worse. If I've learned anything, it is that the more you are aware of and supported through these touchpoints, the greater the likelihood that you will enjoy one of life's most meaningful events.

      I want to help you use this experience to improve not just your home life but your work life, too. Though it may seem inconceivable from where you stand now, becoming a parent changes your identity, not just your day-to-day life. I will show you when to stay alert and use the insight and passion that will ignite as your family expands to develop in the direction you choose. I'm here to shine a spotlight on these moments to help you realize the opportunities inherent in this transition to build a life you love, at work and at home.

This may involve a shift in your thinking, or bucking cultural norms. Too often, we are expected to deprioritize, or even hide, our personal lives to advance at work. I have a friend—let's call her Asha—who was one of the first in our group to get pregnant. Every time I saw her, she would ask me to rate how pregnant she looked. Her goal: to not look pregnant at all. She was young and starting her career in a male-dominated field that required her to give expert advice to senior-level executives all day long. Although she is one of the warmest, kindest, most brilliant people I know, she believed that in order to be taken seriously she couldn't give off even a whiff of vulnerability. To avoid being seen as a “soft” pregnant woman, she spent real energy contorting herself to fit a very specific image: the competent businesswoman. She bought dark suits that fell just right and used layers to hide her growing bump, she changed her tone and cadence to become more direct, she used makeup to hide her changing skin and tired eyes, and she even thought of ways to deflect questions that got too close to uncovering her pregnancy. She solicited friends who could cover for her.

      This charade consumed her, and at the time we both believed she was successful at it. She hid her pregnancy from her work world until she was over 5 months along. But what I have come to see is the many ways she failed herself and her workplace community. She couldn't share her excitement. She put up false boundaries that felt inauthentic to her and kept her from bringing her all to her work. She endured real stress, affecting her health and wellness. Those senior executives she worked with didn't get to see that someone could be brilliant and effective while at the same time being pregnant and, yes, vulnerable. Their bias, unconscious or not, went unchallenged and thus was not given a chance to change.

Another friend I'll call Jarvez told everyone at work early on about his wife being pregnant. Right away he seemed to get more leeway and understanding if he fell behind or didn't meet a goal. His coworkers even admonished him if he stayed too late at the office, telling him to go home because he wasn't going to get much more time alone with his wife. These stories exemplify what researchers call the “fatherhood bonus” and the “motherhood penalty.”¹

Indeed,