My spouse and I have recently been talking more about starting a family. There’s a good chance we’ll stop preventing soon though we won’t exactly be “trying” either.

I currently work as a software engineer at a fully-remote startup. Its a pretty small company without an official paternity leave policy, but I emailed HR and they indicated they had given other people 2 weeks of PTO for paternity leave. My question is; if you were in my position, would you consider looking elsewhere for companies that have more paternity leave? I’m not sure what amount is normal or good, but a previous search yielded dads talking about months of paternity leave being too short, which got me worried. Then again, since I am remote, maybe I am more worried about this than I need to be? My wife has chronic fatigue so I expect she will need plenty of help from me especially with a newborn.

I have worked for this company for about a year and feel neutral about staying. It is somewhat chaotic like any startup, but it also seems to have the best chance of success out of any of the startups that I have worked at. I could maybe find better pay elsewhere, but I am not interested in chasing money alone. Another concern I had was if I started looking and got a new job I wondered if there might be some delay before I was even eligible for parental leave, but again I have no idea if this is a realistic concern.

I’m pretty sure the real answer to the title is no amount of time is “enough”, but hopefully you all can help me form realistic expectations. I’m excited and terrified at the idea of having kids and I also tend to agonize over decisions and over-preparation, so any and all advice is welcome. Thank you!

  • Its up to 22w in Australia, so 2 is definitely not enough. But, you are remote, and I presume that comes with a lot of flexibility, so unless you switch jobs to one with somehow more flexibility, it might not be worth it.

    Also, definitely worth checking if the new job will actually let you take parental leave early on, sometimes you need to be at a position for at least a year or more before it unlocks.