Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

EY Senior Manager Finds That Work Won’t Do Itself While He’s on Parental Leave

Here we go with this again. EY is really trying to pull out its paternal leave and wave it around in everyone’s faces, aren’t they?

Here we go with this again. EY is really trying to pull out its paternal leave and wave it around in everyone's faces, aren't they?

In a recent Washington Post article, we meet this guy, a young dad who wanted to be there for his kid's first few weeks on Earth. So he took advantage of his firm's parental leave program to do just that:

Marc Carlson, a senior manager at Ernst & Young in Detroit, took two weeks of the company’s standard paid parental leave for dads when his daughter, Rebecca, was born last year. Then, when his wife, Diana, went back to work as a physician, Carlson declared himself the primary caregiver and took the maximum four additional weeks of paid leave.

Carlson, 35, changed diapers, took Rebecca for walks and struggled for what seemed like hours to get the uncooperative baby to drink from a bottle.

“From the beginning, my wife and I really wanted our child care to be shared. And I wanted to be engaged with my kid,” Carlson said. “I was a little hesitant about taking the full six weeks off. But I wasn’t worried about the stigma, or whether it would affect my career advancement. I was more worried about the mountain of work I’d return to.”

Interesting. I don't see any mention of that in the shiny fluff pieces about how accounting firms care so much about everyone's flexibility.

For those of you who have taken leave (paternal or otherwise, we want to make sure we are including everyone here because inclusion), how bad was the pile of crap waiting for you when you returned to work? Worse than the pile of crap waiting for you in your baby's diaper?

 

Latest Accounting Jobs--Apply Now:

Have something to add to this story? Give us a shout by email, Twitter, or text/call the tipline at 202-505-8885. As always, all tips are anonymous.

Comments are closed.

Related articles

TIL EY Has Commoditized Space

Is there any limit to the robust and ever-growing suite of services offered by professional services firms? Apparently not. As we’ll learn in a sec, not even the sky is the limit. It was less than a year ago that EY put $3 million Aussie bucks into a space business in partnership with Swinburne University […]

EY building

With Project Everest on Pause, Let’s Pause a Sec to Shed a Tear For EY’s Reputation As Transaction Advisors

Not a good look, you guys. Then there’s this — unconfirmed and now removed — post on Fishbowl a couple days ago: “This will be resolved within weeks, not months, because we not only need momentum across the deal but we need clarity for all our stakeholders,” said Patrick Winter, EY’s Asia-Pacific managing partner a […]