Chapter 34. Unboxed and Unscripted

“Congratulations!” the screen announced in big, bold letters. Fake glitter cascaded behind it.

It was 6 p.m. on a Friday, and I was about to shut down my work computer for the weekend. Most of the desks around me were empty. Somewhere in the distance, a vacuum cleaner had started its nightly rounds. I used the quiet moment to tackle a task I had been procrastinating on for weeks: figuring out parental leave for when Jaidan arrived.

If I had still been working at the small nonprofit I left in 2022, I could have simply leaned over to the next desk and asked our accountant to walk me through the policy. She probably would have sighed, opened a spreadsheet, and explained it all in ten minutes.

But in a multinational company with hundreds of thousands of employees, there was no Barbara from accounting. Instead, there were several dense PDFs, a labyrinth of HR policies, and an intranet microsite that looked like it had last been updated around the time people were still saying “the cloud” with excitement. As soon as I opened it, the celebratory message popped up.

“Welcoming a baby is a wonderful moment for families, and we understand that it can also be a stressful one. At our company, we’re here to help you make the ride as smooth as possible.”

I kept scrolling.

“Now, to get started, tell us which of these two options applies to you.”

Below the message were two boxes waiting to be clicked.

I read them once.

Then again.

My heart sank.

Option 1. I am giving birth.
Option 2. My partner is giving birth.

I stared at the screen, waiting for Option 3 to load.

It didn’t.

Well, so much for a smooth ride, I thought.

I could feel my veins starting to boil. Somewhere, I imagined a developer feeling very pleased with himself as he built this page—confidently designing it for what he believed to be the full spectrum of human families.

Two boxes. Problem solved.

I tried calling the HR number, hoping to reach a human being, but instead got a recorded message reminding me that office hours were from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.

“How can they be so narrow-minded?” I said to Jaime later, still fuming as we got on the 7 train.

“It’s probably just odd phrasing, not the actual policy,” Jaime said. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“I do worry about it,” I said. “What if I somehow slip through the cracks and end up with no time off?”

“I doubt that’ll happen,” he said as we came out on Vernon Boulevard and started walking home. Then he stopped. “Let’s go to the supermarket. We need a carrot.”

“Oh, right,” I said.

We walked down the produce aisle to the corner where the carrots were stacked in plastic bins. The fluorescent lights made everything look slightly overachieving—the tomatoes redder, the cucumbers shinier, the carrots aggressively orange.

I picked one up and turned it in my hand, still replaying the HR website in my head.

“You know what really gets me?” I said. “Two options. That’s it. As if the entire universe of families fits neatly into two little boxes.”

Jaime reached into the bin and picked up another carrot. He held it up next to mine like a jeweler comparing diamonds.

“Well,” he said, squinting at them, “if it makes you feel any better, the carrot system isn’t much better.”

“Huh?”

He gestured toward the display.

“Look around. Regular carrots.” He lifted mine slightly. “Baby carrots.” He nodded toward the bagged ones nearby. “That’s the whole classification system. Apparently the entire carrot community fits neatly into two categories.”

I stared at him.

“Somewhere,” he continued, “there’s a carrot scrolling through this section thinking, none of these options apply to me.”

I laughed despite myself.

“Maybe the same developer designed both systems,” I said. “Families and carrots. Two boxes should cover it.”

That did it. The anger that had been simmering since the office finally dissolved into laughter somewhere between the celery and the radishes.

We examined a few options with an absurd level of seriousness before settling on a particularly handsome specimen—straight, bright orange, and roughly eleven inches long.

“Perfect,” Jaime said, dropping it into the basket with the quiet satisfaction of someone who had just completed a very important mission.

At home, we took it out of the bag, and I held it in my left hand while Jaime took the photo.

“Week 23!” we wrote to Marina, sending the selfie. “Sixteen more to go!”

“It’s certainly starting to feel like it!” Marina replied a few minutes later, along with a selfie of her own in front of a mirror. Her baby bump was noticeably bigger than when we had seen her in Fayetteville.

“Jaidan is starting to keep me up at night too,” she added. “He was kicking nonstop at two in the morning. Next time he does, I’ll try to record it for you!”

I took a moment to process it—not that long ago, we were in Connecticut, hairnets on, looking at a tiny speck through a microscope, crossing fingers and toes and hoping it would stick. And here we were now, talking about a baby that could bounce and kick at twenty-three weeks.

That weekend, we went to a gathering at our friend Lorena’s apartment.

One of our dearest friends in New York, I first met her in grad school, where we bonded over long essays and long weekends at the library. She later went on to do inspiring peacekeeping work for the UN, often spending months deployed in some of the most dangerous conflict zones in the world. A few years back, we convinced her that Long Island City was the perfect neighborhood, and she became our neighbor. Since then, we’d grown even closer.

Whenever she was in New York—rather than saving the world somewhere in the Central African Republic—she’d spend weeknights having drinks with us or grabbing dinner at one of our favorite local spots. She also had an impressive rotation of friends from all over the world who showed up at her gatherings and turned her living room into a tiny version of the General Assembly.

When we arrived that night, Jaime brought a bottle of wine.

I brought my grievances about corporate America.

Within ten minutes, I was standing near the kitchen island explaining the HR website debacle to a small international audience.

“That’s silly,” said one of Lorena’s European friends, tilting her head slightly. With the Nordic accent, it was hard to tell whether she was sympathetic or mildly amused. “In Sweden, parents can get up to sixteen months of paid leave.”

She shrugged.

“How else can you take care of a baby?” she added. “What if you don’t live near family?”

“In Spain it’s four months for each parent,” said the guy next to her, jumping in before I could respond. His voice carried across the room, and his hands moved so energetically that I briefly worried he might knock over Lorena’s wine glasses.

“When my wife had our son,” he continued, “she took the first four months, then I took my four. After that we both took a little unpaid leave. But it’s protected by law—you can return to your job.”

“So basically,” I said, “you got almost a full year with your baby.”

He nodded, as if this were the most normal thing in the world.

Across the room, another guest leaned over the back of the couch.

“You’re lucky you live in New York,” she said.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“New York has Paid Family Leave,” she explained. “Your employer has to give it to you. I think it’s ten or twelve weeks.”

“Even if you’re not the biological parent?” I asked.

She hesitated.

“That… I’m not actually sure about.”

Sigh.

Somehow, we had arrived at a party with wine, cheese, and international diplomacy—and left feeling worse about parental leave than when we arrived.

“How did we end up as a society where we don’t think it’s important for parents to spend time with their newborns?” I said to Jaime as we crossed the street back toward our building. “At least in the first year.”

“Yeah,” he said. “People panic the moment you mention social benefits.”

I raised my hands in mock alarm.

“Radical socialism!” I said. “How terrible.”

On Monday, I went in early so I could call HR before the workday started. At 8 a.m. sharp, I dialed the number.

“Su… sur… surrogacy?” the associate on the other end attempted, pronouncing the word carefully, as if encountering it for the first time in his life.

“Yes,” I said. “It means a gestational carrier is carrying our child, so neither of the options on the microsite applies to us.”

There was a pause.

“So… your wife is not pregnant?” he asked.

“I don’t have a wife,” I said, feeling my patience begin to slip.

“Oh. Your girlfriend?”

“My husband,” I said, this time a little more sharply.

Another pause.

“Oh! My apologies, sir,” the associate said. “Please hold for a moment while I review the manuals.”

The line went quiet. Then the hold music started—a looping instrumental that sounded like it had been composed specifically to make time move more slowly. Every few minutes, it was interrupted by cheerful prerecorded announcements about exciting updates to our employee benefits.

After twenty minutes that felt closer to three days, the associate returned.

“Sir,” he began in a noticeably more formal tone, “our company is deeply committed to diversity and inclusion. We strongly encourage employees from underrepresented communities to join one of our employee resource groups. In particular, we have a vibrant L.G.B.T. network that provides mentorship, community events, and leadership opportunities across the organization.”

I waited.

“And?” I said.

There was a small shuffle of papers on the other end of the line.

“And… we are proud to support all employees,” he added.

It was becoming increasingly clear that somewhere on his desk there was a script—and that gay people had not been included in the section about parental leave.

“That’s great,” I said. “But I’m actually calling about time off when my baby is born.”

“Oh! Yes, of course,” he said quickly. “In that case, I’m happy to share that we have excellent fertility benefits. I can transfer you to a specialist who can explain how we cover I.V.F.”

“I don’t need I.V.F.,” I said. “We’ve already done I.V.F.”

“Oh… I see. Please hold again.”

The music came back on.

I did not get the answers I needed that day.

Or the next.

It took dozens of calls—and a small graveyard of open and closed HR tickets in the system—before I finally gathered enough pieces of information to assemble something resembling a parental leave plan.

“The good news,” I reported to Jaime that night over dinner, “is that I can take twelve weeks off.”

“That’s not bad,” he said. “Not Sweden good—don’t be silly,” he added, mimicking Lorena’s Nordic friend. “We are a free-market country after all.” He looked up from his plate. “What’s the bad news?”

“Half of it is only paid at a fraction of my salary.”

In New York, the state stepped in to cover up to 67 percent of your salary for twelve weeks if you took family leave. But that percentage was capped. In practice, unless you were making a very low salary, the replacement rate was much smaller.

Jaime did the math in his head.

“So if we don’t want to lose income,” he said slowly, “you’d only take six weeks?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’d have to go back to work when Jaidan is less than two months old.”

He leaned back in his chair.

“Let me ask our HR person about my leave,” he said. “We’re a nonprofit. Maybe they’re a little more… humane than corporate America.”

They weren’t.

When Jaime did some digging, he discovered his situation was even worse. As a man, he was only eligible for two weeks of paid family leave. He could still take the full twelve weeks, but that would mean receiving only a small fraction of his salary for almost three months.

Eight weeks in total—that was as much as we could take without taking a pay cut, and only if we staggered them. If we wanted to be home at the same time, that number dropped even further.

We were already paying higher rent. Soon we would be paying for daycare, along with a long list of baby expenses we hadn’t even discovered yet.

And here we were, having to choose between spending time with our newborn and making ends meet.

Ridiculously, we still felt lucky. At least we had some paid leave.

Millions of parents across the country had none at all. Not a single paid day.

How did they manage?

How would we?

One thing was suddenly clear.

We had to find childcare.

And in New York City, that turned out to be a problem of its own.