Robert – FMLA and What’s Best For My Family

I was working at a local newspaper when we found out my wife was pregnant with twins. As the due date came closer, I began laying the groundwork for taking my paternity leave. I never suspected it would be so difficult. I have always been somewhat cynical, but this still came out of nowhere for me.

During this whole process, I became quite familiar with the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), specifically its weaknesses. We’re the only civilized country on Earth that doesn’t offer parents paid family leave upon the birth of a child. FMLA gives you 12 weeks of unpaid time, which is not exactly an incentive to have children. It’s an incentive to go back to work earlier so you can afford diapers. This didn’t strike me as an accident.

The trouble started when the HR lady (we’ll just call her HR) told me that the company policy stated that I had to use up all of my paid time off before I could use any unpaid time (including FMLA). This includes three weeks of paid vacation (that replenished on January 1) which I waited six years to finally accumulate. When I heard that, it made me nervous … I was potentially looking at a situation where I used vacation time and FMLA time all at once and then had no time off for an entire year. With two babies, that wasn’t a scenario I wanted.

When you’re expecting children, especially your first, you worry about everything. What if one of them was born with some kind of chronic illness, an illness that would require me to have time off at some point later in the year? Some of this was just bad luck. If the babies had been born in December, I would have already used my paid time off and it would have replenished with the new year. Until the family leave situation gets better, a piece of advice—conceive your children early in the calendar year.

We spoke to a labor attorney we knew through my wife’s job. He told me that FMLA was effective for a year and that I could use it intermittently as I saw fit. That calmed my nerves and I felt like things would settle, but I was wrong. The company used increasingly nonsensical (and likely illegal) rationales for why I absolutely could not do anything with my time off except use an entire year’s worth at once. The situation kept escalating and I had a harder time keeping my cool. I referred to company policies with words like “sadistic” and “despicable.” When they had the temerity to claim I worked for a “family-oriented company,” I made a joke about the Manson family, which likely dug me in deeper.

Just when it seemed the whole thing might go to court, our attorney informed us the company had given up. What we suspect happened is that, at some point, the matter was brought to the attention of the company’s lawyer, who advised them to stop before they got themselves sued for FMLA retaliation. So that was the end of it. The boys were born and I took six weeks off, knowing I could take more off later if I needed to. But when I did go back to work, things weren’t the same. I was disengaged and resentful. HR asked to see photos of the kids like nothing had happened. When we were getting to the end of my wife’s leave (which was longer and administered without any drama—she works at a church), we began to look into daycare costs. The projected annual cost of daycare for two babies was several thousand dollars more than my annual salary. In other words, someone had to stop working and I was happy to volunteer.

Eventually, I looked for other work. I’ve had part-time stuff that comes and goes, nothing lasting. Some of that is bad luck, but some of it is also fear. I worked six years at poverty-level wages and when I needed my employers to help me out, this is what happened. It makes me reluctant to make that sort of commitment to a company again, even though we don’t intend on having any more kids. They hold us in such low regard and yet we’re supposed to make huge sacrifices for them. Something is just off about the whole arrangement between employees and employers in the USA, with this issue being only one example.

I don’t know what will happen to me career-wise, but I don’t regret choosing what was best for my family.