I realize that I'm being bitchy, but really...

My employer has a policy related to the donation of personal/vacation time. People who have a stockpile of days and would like to donate them to someone in need can do so. It's a nice policy that allows us to support our colleagues when they face severe medical or family difficulties.

Every so often, the benefits department sends out an email with requests from people. They can describe, to the extent they choose, their issue and state how many total additional days they are in need of to take care of things. Over the years people have requested days due to battles with cancer, car accidents, heart attacks, severely ill children/spouses, various major surgeries, etc. - the kinds of catastrophic health events that turn lives upside down. I rarely use all my own days, and have always gladly donated to colleagues facing extreme difficulties.

However... there's one type of request that REALLY irks me. There may be some who will say I'm being bitchy, and while they're entitled to their opinion, this is MY blog and I write it so that I CAN say whatever I want.

Every time a "Leave Donation Appeal" email goes out, there are always several whose content is along the lines of "I'm having my first baby. I'm a first year teacher and I don't have enough days yet to take a six-eight-ten week maternity leave..."

It's called FAMILY PLANNING, girls. Do you really think it's appropriate to take on an intense profession such as classroom teaching and then get pregnant a few months into it? Leaving a classroom full of children is not the same as leaving a desk or retail job. Trying to tend to an infant while worried about the classroom you left behind is pretty unfair to that new baby as well. OF COURSE you don't have enough days - you've barely been on the job, you haven't EARNED them! To ask those who have worked for years to support you financially (which is literally what those donated days do) because you chose to start your family two months into your teaching career is pretty darn presumptuous.

I am certainly in favor of mothers (and fathers, for that matter) spending time with their new babies. It's essential for healthy development. However, I am NOT in favor of young women who use the resources of the school district to theoretically begin a career as a classroom teacher but then turn around and start having babies before they've been on the job for half a year. A lot was invested in getting them into the classroom, and if they want to enjoy the fact that the job DOES come with good, family-friendly benefits, perhaps they need to be conscious of EARNING those benefits rather than asking me to give them what I have worked for.

So I'll gladly be donating days to the veteran teacher having long-overdue back surgery, and to a colleague dealing with metastasized cancer, and to teacher dealing with a traumatic event who needs a couple of weeks to be with her family. But for the young ladies who didn't make it through the first semester of their first year of teaching before starting the baby race - sorry, but no.