How Much PTO Do You Have, and How Do You Use It As a Working Mom?
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We had a great discussion about paid vacation days over at Corporette a few days ago, so we thought we’d do a companion post here on CorporetteMoms to talk about using PTO as a mom. As we all know, many companies in the U.S. don’t exactly have family-friendly policies in general, so we thought it’d be interesting to see how readers use their paid time off in the context of various family situations.
For example, when your kid is sick, what kind of leave do you use? In her post on sick kids and work schedules from several years ago, Kat noted the following:
One lawyer I knew years ago told me that I should always say that I was sick, not my (then future) kids, because I wouldn’t want my boss to question my childcare arrangements and parenting relationship (i.e., which partner stays home).
Here are a few more questions for discussion:
Do you now use your vacation time differently than before you had kids? How? Do you take fewer vacations or more vacations (I mean, it could happen?) now that you’re a mom? Shorter trips, longer trips? Farther from home, closer to home? Are you OK with your kids missing school for family vacations?
{related: how early do you plan your family vacations?}
If your child is sick and can’t go to daycare/school, or needs to take a “mental health day” from school (some states, like Illinois are allowing that now!), do you take a personal day, use vacation time, or take a sick day? Are you the default parent for staying home from work when your kid is sick (or when there’s a snow day), or does that usually fall to your partner? If you work from home or have the option to work from home, is your kid at the age where you can actually get work done if they’re home sick?
Do you feel that your employer provides adequate paid maternity/paternity leave, adoption leave, and leave for LGBTQ+ parents, if any? For your maternity leave, did you have to cobble time together from different sorts of leave? (When I had my son, I was working part time — after leaving my second, (somewhat-physically-active) job during my pregnancy — and I think I used vacation time, short-term disability after my C-section, and perhaps FMLA? That was 12 years ago, so it’s kind of a blur!)
{related: maternity leave and staying connected to the office}
Before counties/states started loosening rules for kids staying home from school after COVID exposure, how did you handle your kid’s absence(s) from school if/when they were exposed? If your kid has had COVID, how much school did they miss, and how did you handle that with your job?
I’m an academic, so it’s basically like having “unlimited” PTO. I only have 4 hours/week of direct contact-hours with undergrads. Everything else can be rescheduled as needed. And I only teach 28 weeks out of the year.
In reality, I usually take 4-5 weeks of vacation, plus three day weekends a few times a year. I’m usually doing some work-related reading on vacation, but otherwise I really unplug. My partner and I swap off for kid sick days, working round our meetings.
My org has great benefits overall but I don’t think time off is the best. At 5 years with my organization, I have 22 days of PTO (started at 18 days in year 1). However, we accrue only 5 days of sick time teach year (like one hour per pay period, it’s awful if you get sick and it takes months to get any back). On the plus side you can’t use pto or sick time if you work any part of the day so it’s no problem to manage appointments etc. We have only 6 paid holidays. Currently do not have any paid parental leave but the state will soon require it. When the kids were younger I would take pto if they were off, if it was a day my spouse wasn’t off and my parents couldn’t cover, but now we usually just try to make it work.
I work in higher ed. We have a very flexible WFH policy which means I rarely burn PTO for sick days / appointments – I usually only take a PTO day if I am truly gone all day and will not open my email. We have 30 PTO days plus 14 holidays (7 of those are holiday closure between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day). We also have 10 summer Fridays (half days) from mid-May to the end of July. My mother in law lives close by and typically is happy to take care of our kids if they are sick at home, especially if it is more that they need rest and not something like Covid or the flu, for example – but she can really only take one at a time, so if both kids are out sick, one of us would have to stay home because two kids can be a little overwhelming for her. We typically take week-long vacations for fall and spring breaks, travel for two weeks in the summer while I work remotely for one of the two weeks, and take a decent amount of time off around Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I get 12 company holidays, four 1/2 days before major holidays, 20 vacation days (up from 15 now that I’ve been with my company for 5+ years), 3 personal days, 10 sick days. My PTO does not roll over year to year, so I use it all up around winter holidays if there’s any time left.
For vacation: Typically we do a week at spring break, a week summer vacation, and at least a week around Christmas/New Years, plus some long weekends throughout the year. My kids self-sufficient enough that with remote work, I don’t necessarily need a day off if the kids are out of school (although preference is always for DH to take a day off and actually engage with them), which is really helpful for conserving vacation time for actual vacations.
My husband is a federal employee with nearly 20 years and counting, and has much more vacation and sick leave than he can use for family vacations with me, so he’s the default if there’s an unplanned kid sick day, snow day, or random day off school/with no after care. We split responsibility for planned kid medical appointments so I can use up sick days.
I have 25 PTO/sick days per year (all in one bucket), 10 or 11 holidays, 3 flex holidays and this year some extra Covid flex days. 5 days carry over (and I usually end up with carryovers). My biggest problem is actually taking all of my time due to work demands, but I do try my best to not leave anything extra at the end of the year that doesn’t carry over. This year, I’m planning 1 and 2 week vacations over the summer, a couple of long weekends here and there, and hopefully 1 week over Christmas. In my ideal world, I would take the full month of August off like they do in Europe (it’s also my slowest work month), but alas…America. Our leave is about 14-16 weeks maternity (STD is here), 8 paternity – I want to eventually get us to 20 weeks, which is generous for this country, though standard in most of the Western world, and is certainly something a F500 that says it cares about diversity can afford. Husband is at a smaller company with unlimited leave, which he actually does take!
I trade off with my husband for sick kids at home – our jobs are flexible enough and post Covid lockdowns where everyone was home, while also working, this isn’t even something novel for us to do, especially as the kids get older. Or my dad is available (I know we are fortunate).
Just got to 25 PTO days a year (now that I’m 5 years in had 20 days previously). We also get 10 holidays and 5 days per year for covered leaves if needed. We have to use our PTO for illness but can usually have flexibility to work from home or make up hours another day during the week if desired. I try to take 1-2 weeks a year and longer weekends for the rest (such kids bdays, etc.) and save a few days for illness. Now that I have the extra 5 days will likely look to take 3 full weeks a year. We don’t travel ver far if at all but looking to potentially start that once a year soon. I feel I take more time off (used to get payouts of unused time in the past) now that I have kids because I need the break.
I get 26 days per year of PTO in a single bank. I use up most of it on kid-related stuff–school closures, doctors’ appointments, sports tournaments, etc. The rest typically goes for one week of actual vacation and a few days over spring break and Christmas. I WFH no matter how sick I am because I do not have enough PTO to spend any of it on myself.
My husband’s company recently switched from something like 30 or 35 days PTO to “unlimited” PTO. He has always refused to take PTO for any kid-related reasons. He also gets a bunch of extra holidays but insists upon spending them “relaxing” instead of doing household chores or kid-related stuff.
Please don’t hate me… 24 days plus Easter closure (6), Christmas closure (depends, but typically 9-11), and assorted bank holidays.
St Patrick’s Day, and the 11th-12 of July because… Northern Ireland gets rowdy for St Patrick’s day and sets stuff on fire on the 12th…this year we also get an extra day for Jubilee.
Unlimited sick time, although I’m an academic and no one really tracks our time? 6 months paid, 6 months half pay in the event of something catastrophic.
My husband gets 36 days off but has to use more over Christmas as his service runs for part of the time. He also gets 5 days of dependent leave, but now we can get a decent amount of work done with a sick kid. We tend to alternate sick days.
It’s always felt generous but we’ll need to be more strategic once my son starts school in August. Annoyingly, my autumn break and spring break don’t coincide with my son’s, so we’ll need to do holiday camps and call in grandparent help as I’ll be teaching those weeks.
I have generous PTO, especially vacation and sick leave. It’s one of the reasons I stay in an unfulfilling, underpaid job:
22 vacation days + 3 personal days
Major holidays + a weeklong closure between Christmas and NYE
Unlimited sick leave that can be used for kid illnesses as well
Other types of leave like bereavement leave that I fortunately haven’t had to use
6 weeks paid parental leave (which I stacked with 6 weeks of sick leave and 2 weeks of vacation leave for a 14 week maternity leave) – wish this were better, but since I’m done having kids it doesn’t affect me anymore
I use all my vacation leave on travel, since I don’t have to burn any of it on illness. In the post-pandemic era, I normally don’t take vacation or personal leave for daycare closures. We just do our best to work with the kid at home. We made it work for six months involuntarily, we can survive a day or two here and there. We love to travel and post-pandemic are aiming for 4-5 weeklong vacations per year, plus a handful of long weekends (mostly to visit family and close friends).
Re: missing school, my husband is adamantly opposed. I don’t think it should be a regular thing, but don’t think it’s a big deal for a kid to miss school (especially in elementary) for a bucket list trip that really needs to happen during the school year for weather-related reasons. My husband is a professor on an academic calendar, so we normally travel at school breaks anyway, although his breaks are longer than the K-12 breaks. I will miss being able to travel in May when kiddo starts K, since that’s a really lovely time of year in much of Europe and North America.