Why do parents feel guilty about taking parental leave?

Why do parents feel guilty about taking parental leave?

Not because we don’t deserve it.
Not because we don’t want it.
But because we’ve been taught that work is the ultimate proof of our value.

Parental leave disrupts that narrative.
It brings forward the idea that time away from work is inconvenient at best and a sign of weakness at worst.

And even when companies have generous policies on paper, many parents still carry a heavy, quiet guilt. Not just for being away, but for feeling like we owe something in return.

Like we should:

🕰️ Come back early
🙅 Go to heroic efforts to minimize the burden on the team
📈 Prove we’re still "all in"
💼 And never, ever ask for too much

Because deep down, we’ve absorbed this message:
The longer you’re away, the less dedicated you must be.
The more leave you take, the more you “owe”.

So we rush back. We overperform. We downplay how hard it actually is.
All to repay a debt we never should’ve incurred in the first place.

The guilt is not personal.

It’s structural.
It’s cultural.
It’s baked into the way we define loyalty, ambition, and success.

To fix it we need more than policies. We need leadership that recognizes parental leave as part of the career arc, not a detour from it.

We need to make room to acknowledge you can be incredibly grateful for supportive policies without feeling guilty about utilizing them.