^^ too clever, @SevenDad !
do I have to go full term?
I don’t have the habit of reading comments of news stories unless they are from a “defined audience” - for example, parents and alumni commenting on a school newspaper. I went to read some on Yahoo news. Yes, many horrible resentful crude ramblings. It’s like an intimate visit to a pigsty. I suggest those who haven’t paid that visit not go! And they don’t make sense. Even if the Obamas were not the first family, they’d be super smart and highly successful professionals, and they are legacies to a few top Ivies. Their children undoubtedly have their intelligence genes and evidently Mrs Obama cares a great deal about her children’s education. It shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that Malia is attending a top college unless that someone is plainly ignorant and hateful. Sigh…
@Charger78: I can take no credit…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/meternity-leave_us_57277507e4b0f309baf158b6
Then this very funny counterpoint:
http://yackler.ca/want-maternity-leave-without-kids-ok-heres-go/
Umm,… how many companies have maternity leave? I don’t mean FMLA.
Mine did not have maternity leave. I took 6-week STD Short Term Disability at 2/3 pay and another 6 week off. Same one as you get if you had a major surgery.
(Come to think of it, mine employed mosty male, 90%, so maternity leave may not have come up.)
So sabbatical (1 year at half pay) was a much better option 
I went abroad and took both kids along.
We started to have paternity leave this year. Too bad we are not having another baby! 
I actually qualified for a six-week, full-pay sabbatical at one company. Unfortunately, I had a one-year-old when I took it and complained bitterly that I spent the entire time at home babysitting. Colleagues gently told me that watching your own kid does not constitute babysitting. Who knew?
Any trip that includes kids is not a vacation, sabbatical, or any definition of a good time in my book. Those are called “family trips” and are best avoided until the kid can pay his own way.
I have to disagree with @ChoatieMom : I’m sorry that the days of family trips are a thing of the past. Traveling with an adult child is fun [although it will be a while until she can afford the places we like to stay]; exploring with a younger one was a blast. Watching a morning Euro2000 football match with 8-year-old D while Mom slept in? Priceless. Going to Les Miz and The Mousetrap and, lord, I forget how many shows? Ditto. Carrying 3-year-old in a backpack around the Lake District when she was too tired to walk? Unforgettable. Okay, the tween years could be [were] difficult, but there were still some good times [like showing her the decrepit Registrar’s Office on the Isle of Skye where her parents got married – talk about laughs all around].
watching your own kid is called parenting not babysitting.
I went to a place where full-time live-in nanny was affordable and rarely did laundry nor cooking so it was a luxury. I did not have to pay an arm and a leg for overnight sitters or summer camps, i.e. babysitting.
Where I work, we get a paid 6 week sabbatical every seven years. It can even be combined with (4 weeks) vaca time.
Gap year seems to be getting more and more popular. I’m a big fan of the concept…
Hotchkiss, I believe, even has a gap year coordinator/counselor on their staff.
I’m not buying your story, ChoatieMom. I know you loved every second of that babysitting gig.
Actually, I didn’t. It took me two years to accept the fact that I was a parent. Kiddo came along twenty years after ChoatieDad and I became a couple. I was four months pregnant before I had a clue. Anyway, there is a huge difference between loving your child and hating parenthood. I’ve never understood why anyone, having been through it once, would ever choose to have a second child. Different strokes.
As for family trips, we’ve taken exactly three. I’m waiting for ChoatieCadet to turn 21. Now THAT’S when the fun starts.
Well, accidents happen, and there are mommy brain, temporary amnesia, etc. I was also 13 weeks pregnant when I realized we were having another one. Nursing a baby doesn’t really prevent pregnancy.
Yup, I love my children to the moon and back but have been saying that if I had peeked into the future, any moment in the first four years of my parenthood, I would not have had children. I never had four hours of continuous sleep first five years while working full time with two children. After first five years, things did become a lot more fun and sane.
Coworker’s kid was accepted at Dartmouth. Kid has until June 1 to tell the school he wants to take a gap year (is waiting to hear from a 3 month travel program before making final proposal to school). If approved everything is in place for him to start Fall 2017 (including same FA offer). He is coming from LPS so has been researching programs on his own.
@MA2012 I’d encourage your coworker’s son to just do the gap year. If that particular program doesn’t work out there are literally a world of opportunities available.
I love every stage of being a mother, particularly those early years. I have been fortunate, however, to have a husband who is a wonderful, engaged father so that helped tons. I’m looking forward to being a grandmother although that is likely years down the road.
@ChoatieMom I had my tubes tied after my first one…when I was 23! I love her dearly and wouldnt’t trade her for the world, but I also knew that one was all I wanted and one has always been enough!
@doschicos , I am with you. I loved those early years (though I could have used more sleep!) and enjoy the different stages of being a mother. I tried to convince dh for years to have a third, to no avail. Dh, though he loves the kids dearly, is definitely looking forward to the empty nest; I definitely am not!
I can tell you this: when mine left for school, I wished I had at least one more left at home.
@doschicos - I think this boy will do a gap year - I wanted to explain the process as I understand it for someone who asked earlier on the thread. Apply to college, accept spot, then apply for gap year. If this program doesn’t work he has other options he is considering.
After reading a few of these comments, I no longer feel guilty for enjoying the fact that my one and only is away. I love him, yes, but it’s nice to have that empty nest.
Not me. I would rather my kids grew up to be bums who lived with me forever.
@MA2012 - son did a gap year with a friend, all self-directed, in Chile and Argentina. Maintains that it was one of the top five experiences of his life. He’s 26 now. He did have a college acceptance in hand, however.