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Kelly Rissman
US News Reporter
AND“You won’t see me for an incredibly long time,” Adele confessed with tears in her eyes at her recent concert.
Addressing the crowd during her final show in Munich, Germany, the Grammy-winning artist said she wanted to leave and “live the life I've been building,” after three years of non-stop performing and touring. “I'm going to miss them terribly,” she added.
Now, I like Adele as much as the next guy, but I'm not a huge fan. And yet, her announcement was a punch straight to the solar plexus. What was that feeling? Melancholy? Loss? Abandonment? No. It had the unmistakable green hue of pure, unadulterated music. jealousy.
Hearing his words, I felt a kind of longing for exhaustion come over me. Oh, to be able to stop working and disconnect “for an incredibly long time”! Or even for a medium time! Anything beyond the standard amount of annual leave would be nice, to be honest.
In fact, her “stop the world, I want to get off” sentiment sparked such longing that it was nothing short of a Damascus moment, shedding the piercing light of clarity on other confusing feelings she’d been grappling with lately. Because while Adele, the globally acclaimed, multi-millionaire singer that she is, can afford to gently step off the daily grind “just because,” there’s only one viable way for most other women to do the same.
As a woman in my late twenties, I’ve watched friends get pregnant and briefly disappear into the newborn ether many, many times. They often come in batches, three or more at a time, mysteriously timed in the same way menstrual cycles do. It’s never really been a source of envy for me—I’ve had no children but am largely happy with my life in all its variety and fullness. Whatever mild tug of greed I might experience beneath the overwhelming joy is, selfishly, reserved for my relationship with the mother-to-be: knowing that our friendship will inevitably change; that she’ll have less time and energy for socializing after hours or for deep, meaningful things late at night; that it’ll be a while before she can get a brief, uninterrupted interlude where her attention isn’t constantly monopolized by sticky hands tugging at the hem of her dress.
But by the last round of scones in and out of the oven, something had changed. When a coworker sheepishly made her announcement, including her due date in the new year, I was overcome with a wave of nostalgia. When a college friend WhatsApped me her 12-week ultrasound, I held back tears on the train. When I met a local friend and her three-month-old baby at a coffee shop on a weekday afternoon, enjoying their second coffee-and-cake date of the day, I ached in places I didn’t know I had.
The day that everyone said would come was finally happening, no doubt. My biological clock, much later than expected, had finally come to life and sounded the alarm. Those balls, which had been in my body for a long time, were crying out to be dusted off and put in the bat.
And yet… It wasn't the babies themselves, or even the thought of them, that attracted me. I wasn't driven crazy by smelling their heads or crying over their impossibly small clothes; I wasn't begging to be allowed to hold them or imagining myself cradling my own baby in my arms, serene and smiling, like a painting of the Madonna and Child. I definitely wanted to be involved in this whole procreation thing in some way. But what part exactly?
Adele's farewell speech was the key to solving the puzzle. She wasn't jealous of these women for becoming mothers. She was jealous of their year away from the workforce.
Don't get me wrong: I know That maternity leave is not a “year off,” “baby vacation,” or any other wildly offensive description suggesting it’s some sort of vacation. I have enough friends and blood relatives who have been through the ordeal of childbirth and what follows (and been brutally honest about it) to know the outcome. We’re in for an exhausting period of sleep deprivation, defined by intense boredom, endless bodily fluids, hysteria, and bouts of depression along with the completely overwhelming “love like you’ve never experienced” part. The mundane monotony of keeping a completely helpless human being alive, coupled with a constant, paralyzing, underlying fear for their safety, is about as far from a “vacation” as you can get. And, as many have discovered while deep in the trenches of the early years, work can end up feeling like the real “vacation”; a welcome respite from the 24/7 nature of raising a baby.
I wasn't jealous of these women for becoming mothers. I was jealous of their year away from the workforce.
But there was something undeniably appealing about the idea of waking up, after a poor and exhausting sleep, and receiving no emails or Slack messages, no Zoom or Teams invites, no urgent voicemails from someone high up asking if the monumental error that appeared in your copy was defamatory or just plain wrong…
The idea of leaving your brain in the ashtray for months, without the need to think strategically, use corporate jargon or pretend to be constantly “on” in every meeting, that That was what my heart secretly desired. What I really wanted, after more than 15 uninterrupted years of full-time work, without even a week off between jobs, was a sabbatical. Or, as the writer Amy Key so poetically put it, a “maternity leave of the soul”; a time to “step outside our work structures, habits, and expectations to see what we can find there. I want my non-parent friends to have the chance to work on their novel or build a garden or retrain in a new skill or convalesce or campaign for something they are passionate about.”
We're not alone. Workers are increasingly prioritizing finding employers who offer additional benefits, and citing sabbaticals as a way to combat burnout and gain new experiences, according to a report by the magazine The GuardianA survey by HR software provider ADP found that 20 percent of employees would accept a sabbatical in lieu of a pay rise; HR firm Adecco named them as one of the top five workplace trends. This goes hand in hand with the rise in popularity of all types of flexible working, from working from home and hybrid working to compressed schedules and four-day weeks. In the aftermath of the pandemic, there has been a lasting shift in workers’ desire to find and protect a better work-life balance.
Shasa Dobrow, an associate professor of management at the London School of Economics, has found in her research that employees' job satisfaction progressively declines over time. In contrast, it spikes when they change jobs or organisations. Sabbaticals can “mimic” this effect without a company having to lose a valuable employee forever: “We think it's the spark of novelty and change that comes from activities like sabbaticals that can help people experience an increase in their job satisfaction,” she said.
The number of companies offering sabbatical leave has also risen from 38 per cent in 2022 to 53 per cent this year, according to a recent report from the Chartered Management Institute. But while 71 per cent of UK employees would consider taking sabbatical leave if given the option according to a survey, 35 per cent couldn't afford it if it was unpaid. And unless workplaces actively encourage workers to take up the offer, there's a risk they'll be discouraged from asking for it anyway. “Create a culture where employees feel encouraged to take time off. It's about valuing wellbeing,” advised COO and HR head Claire Fletcher when speaking to HOUR magazine.
It doesn’t say much about our options that the only realistic way women can imagine securing a break from the rat race is by giving birth, particularly given the current issues around paltry statutory maternity pay, the exorbitant cost of childcare, and a culture in which we are still discriminated against for being mothers (research by Pregnant Then Screwed found that 54,000 women a year lose their jobs simply for becoming pregnant, while 390,000 working mothers experience negative and potentially discriminatory treatment at work every year).
As the “great resignation” becomes a trend that goes hand in hand with the “quiet resignation” and we continue to place more value on our lives outside of work, sabbaticals could be the answer to improving staff retention and the antidote to burnout-related issues. In the meantime, those of us who want to work 12 months outside of work should probably consider becoming world-famous singers, before resorting to having an arbitrary baby.
