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?
