Congratulations, a new person is in the making! We hope you are feeling well and that you can prepare yourself for this new life in peace and good health. Having a child often has quite an effect on your work, whether you want it or not. How will you organise your new balance once your little one has arrived? Here we give you some useful information to be prepared and to be able to make good choices.
Maternity Leave
The government entitles you to a total of 16 weeks' maternity leave. You can choose to take 4 to 6 weeks of pregnancy leave before the due date. And the remaining weeks (with a minimum of 10) are then given to you after the eventual childbirth as maternity leave. And even though it seems like a long time, there are plenty of women who say that the weeks fly by and you really need that time to get used to your new home situation. If you know in advance that the time with the baby can't last long enough for you, please contact us. Look, if you want to add an extra week, be our guest, we won't even discuss it. But if you are thinking of an extra couple of weeks, it would be useful to take a look together at what your wishes are. This could be done by taking up some parental leave, you can read more about that below.
Parental Leave
With young children, you often have a lot to deal with. In our country, the law states that you are entitled to (unpaid) parental leave in order to combine the tasks of being a parent with your work. How you organise this is largely up to you and your employer. However, a few guidelines have been established for the right to parental leave. We list the most important ones so that you know what they are and can decide whether you would like to make use of them at some point. On the website of the national government and the UWV you can find a lot more information about this in case you want to know more about the ins and outs.
➤ You are entitled to 26 times your contracted hours per week of parental leave for each child under the age of 8. So if you work 40 hours, you are entitled to 1040 hours of parental leave in total.
➤ You can take 9 working weeks of parental leave as paid leave.
➤ The rest of the parental leave is a form of unpaid leave.
➤ You can take parental leave in one go or spread it out.
If you are thinking about taking parental leave, please discuss this with your manager.