Tell Us About Your Experience With Going To Work After Having A Baby

Parental leave in America is...not great.

Despite being one of the richest countries in the world, the United States’ parental leave policies are…not great.

TV Land

Countries like Japan, Austria, and Hungary offer more than a year of paid leave (and most developed nations offer at least some paid leave), but here in the States, unless you are a federal employee, you’re probably not guaranteed any paid leave at all.

Netflix

US companies with over 50 employees are required to give parents 12 weeks unpaid leave…but if you work at a smaller place, well, you better hope you’re at a cool company (or live in one of the few states that addressed this problem).

All of this means that many American parents don’t have great parental leave experiences, and if that includes you, we want to hear about it. For example, maybe you got 12 weeks, but it flew by and you didn’t feel ready to return to work.

Jose Luis Pelaez Inc / Getty Images

Or maybe your job required you to be back on the job even sooner than that, and you didn’t feel like you got any leave at all (or maybe you literally didn’t).

Courtneyk / Getty Images

Perhaps your financial situation forced you back to work too soon because you couldn’t afford to be out unpaid.

Thanasis Zovoilis / Getty Images

Or maybe you’re a dad whose work had little (or no) allocation for paternal leave, and you really regret not being able to bond with your baby and help your partner.

NewQuest / giphy.com

Tell us your unsatisfactory parental leave story in the comments below — with as much or as little context as you want regarding what you do for work and how much leave you did or didn't get — and it could be featured in a future BuzzFeed Community post!