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When Natalia Rogaczewska first started working for a political organization in Denmark, she didn't even think about checking its parental leave policy.
But when she was pregnant with her first child in 2014, her employer offered her one year maternity leave with full pay. "My parental leave package was very good. I had a full-year salary," she said. "It was a no-brainer for me to do that."
Rogaczewska, who grew up in Denmark, had her first child in May 2015. She ended up taking nine and a half months of maternity leave at full pay.
Her partner, who is almost a decade younger than Rogaczewska, was still a university student. The birth of their daughter coincided with his study leave and exams.
Rogaczewska told Business Insider they could share childcare in the first three months while her husband was doing his exams and after he finished them, which helped her get some rest when she needed it.
"Not being alone with everything from the very start was very important for me," she said.
As standard in Denmark, working parents are entitled to up to 46 weeks of parental leave.
According to the Ministry of Employment in Denmark website, pregnant women are entitled to 4 weeks of leave prior to the birth of their child and 14 weeks of leave after the child is born. Fathers or co-mothers are entitled to 2 weeks of paternity leave within the first 14 weeks of the child's birth.
After the first 14 weeks, both parents are entitled to 32 weeks of parental leave, which can be extended up to 46 weeks for working parents. Adoptive parents are also eligible, per the Danish Maternity Leave and Benefit Act.
As of August 2022, each parent is entitled to a government allowance for 24 weeks. Of these, 11 are non-transferable if the parent is a worker and must be taken by the parent in the year after the child's birth. Parental leave pay from employers varies.
Rogaczewska told BI her company's maternity leave package was 12 months of full-time pay.
After seven months of parental leave, Rogaczewska said she felt an itch to return to the office. "I was missing work," she said. She thought she'd enjoy parental leave more than she did and was glad to have the option to shorten it.
When she returned to the workplace after nine and a half months of leave, she used the remainder of her 12-month entitlement to work four days a week for around a year.
Rogaczewska found returning to work "smooth and easy" because both she and her partner, who was still studying, had flexible schedules. In the morning, she took her daughter to day care, and her partner picked her up.
When the couple had their second child in July 2018, Rogaczewska's partner was completing his master's and working part-time so could manage childcare around his flexible schedule.
Rogaczewska, still at the same company as when she had her first child, took another nine and a half months of parental leave at full pay, overlapping the first three months with her husband.
She told BI having three months of leave together at the start helped the couple manage two kids. "We had our first kid already. For her to become a big sister is a huge change in her life," she said. Being able to prioritize their first child and their newborn son helped ease the family's transition.
She found returning to work harder than the first time because she had two kids and told BI she felt her workplace planned her return better the first time.
When she returned to work, she said she put pressure on herself to show she was still "valuable."
"I started going deeper and I realized, wait a minute, I didn't become worse. I'm actually better. I have different perspectives. I've developed more," she said.
She said employers need to reframe parental leave as a positive influence in the workplace.
Rogaczewska has since left that job and started a company to help employees and employers manage the transition back to the workplace. She told BI she felt lucky to have had the parental leave time she had.
"In Denmark we have a lot of rights, and the level of social security is high," she said."That is also reflected legally in the rights that you have in connection with parental leave."
She said, however, that Denmark still needs to make progress in improving parents' experiences in the workplace.
Rogaczewska told BI parental leave and how it is distributed isn't the problem.
"It's more what happens when you come back and how that is managed in a relationship between the employee and the employer," she said, adding that workplaces should make the transition easier by promoting inclusion and empathy for new parents.
