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Comment by high_derivative | Hacker News Reader

Well this may be a controversial stance, but her baby passed at birth. There was no maternity leave to take any more.

What there was to take maybe was a bereavement leave.

Maybe it will help for me to pass on how it was explained to me, as the father. Maternity leave is for recovering from the trauma of birth, and for taking care of the baby. Paternity leave is for helping the mother through the trauma, and of taking care of the baby. Unless it goes very smoothly, the mother had her body ripped apart and is also in a precarious mental state (postpartum depression, etc). Combine that with losing the child and you have someone who’s physically and mentally broken and possibly a danger to herself. I can’t even begin to imagine adding any bureaucratic difficulties to that. Ensure the bereaved mother takes her leave and also gets psychological counseling. The non-pregnant parent should also take leave to help the pregnant one recover physically and also to heal Themselves psychologically. Losing a child often destroys a relationship, so they should have space to heal and communicate.

I wish rules like this were simply baked in at the societal level. Having companies manage maternity leave creates misaligned incentives, which are so often the root of abuses.

What was needed was to be human even if just for a moment. Employees acting on behalf of companies tend to do the very worst things that they would never condone if it happened to them or someone they love. In this case the obvious thing would be to give the person as much time off as needed to recover, not to ask her to come back in because there wasn't any maternity leave to be taken. This whole adherence to 'the letter' rather than 'the spirit' is highly annoying.

Spoken like someone who's never been through childbirth!

Not that I have either, but having seen it a few times I don't think I'd recover quickly even without the bereavement. The blood being mopped up - literally with a mop - after my wife's episiotomy was like something from a horror movie.

I don't think they let you drive for 6 weeks after a caesarian in the UK.

I'm in the US and a coworker came to work the next day after giving birth. There is no time allotted for maternity leave and she had already used her vacation time at the beginning of the year before she was pregnant. I was at a charity event with the CEO and he was laughing about it saying."she was born to breed."

the differentiation that needs to be made is for recovery vs bonding. it sounds like the company in question has that now. bereavement would be good to cover folx that otherwise wouldn’t have this (eg miscarriage). but going from 8 to 6 weeks for the last weeks of pregnancy and first weeks of postpartum is pretty brutal.

it took me 5-6 weeks after giving birth to be able to drive again for short distances. won’t even go into the other indignities and needs in that period.

To be pedantic:

Maternity: the period during pregnancy and shortly after childbirth

She birthed a child. This cuts a little close to denying that.

I'd assume there would be some physical recovery, but agree that while tragic, bereavement is more appropriate.

That's not a controversial stance, it's negligent and ignorant. A mother is a mother in the fullest sense at least months prior to the baby being born, and doesn't stop because of a miscarriage.

Sure, but the bereavement leave for a child should be much more than 8 weeks. And it costs so little to provide since it is relatively rare in the developed world.

This seems a little naive. No company offers more than 8 weeks of bereavement. Most places I have seen are about 3 days. So 6 weeks is extremely generous if that is the benchmark.

Yes, what I’m saying is that 3 days bereavement for the death of a child is pathologically inhumane, even if it is depressingly common. It’s not “naive” to call out terrible things, even when they’ve been so around that we have come to think of them as “normal.”

While no doubt someone will never fully emotionally get over something so tragic, sometimes the best thing for you is to get back on the horse and your work and your life and move on.

Having bereavement leave does not preclude returning to work. It precludes being forced to return to work when one cannot.

Exactly. I had 30 days bereavement leave when my mother died but decided to return to work after a week. It was a world of difference from just having the week.

There are practical reasons for bereavement leave, too. My father-in-law passed away suddenly. He was a CPA and died during tax season. Wrapping up his business, organizing a funeral and executing his will took my wife a couple weeks.

I'm not arguing against bereavement leave. I'm making the very real point that moving on is a choice and that 8 weeks or 80 weeks isn't going to make a difference. At some point you have to move on and going back to work is one of the best things to get your mind off of it. But this is really pedantic so that's all I say to this point.

She spent 9 months pregnant and then gave birth. You can’t just go to work the next day, whether you’re in mourning or not.

It's not controversial, it's the HR literal interpretation of their policy. I cannot stress enough that HR is NOT your friend. They only care about protecting the company's ass. Never confide anything to an HR person, it will go straight to management and they will use it against you.

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