my boss won’t let me tell coworkers that I’m pregnant

A reader writes:

I am in an unusual position at work and I wondered what your point of view on this would be.

For context on this: I work remotely and almost never see my coworkers in person. If I did, this situation would be a lot sillier than it already is.

I work for a close-knit, very interdependent team in a small company. I first told my manager I was pregnant once I finished my first trimester, so that I’d get permission to attend appointments. He asked me not to tell my coworkers until he and my grandparent manager had figured out a plan for my absence. Assuming it wouldn’t be long, I was happy to wait.

But it is now less than two months until my maternity leave begins. The date has been formally confirmed with HR but not added to any calendars at my manager’s request. I have asked my manager a few times over the past few months if I can tell my coworkers, and he has said each time that he needs to talk to my grandparent manager. This is a small company and communication is pretty close and constant, so it seems odd that it has taken months for them to have this conversation.

Now that there is so little time left, my theory is that they don’t plan to hire any cover for me, and so they will let my coworkers know only at the last minute so they can’t argue about it.

I know this doesn’t affect me much personally — apart from the weirdness of having a secret! — but I will be gone for a full year and this is coming ahead of our busiest time of year, so I think finding out so late will be frustrating and demoralizing for my coworkers.

All of this said, I know very few other parents, and so I have no idea if this is actually normal in a workplace. What is your take on this?

No, it’s not normal! This is extremely odd.

Frankly, your manager was out of line in making the initial request to you not to share the news. You’re pregnant! It’s up to you who you tell and when, and you shouldn’t be asked to hide that. I could maybe see if the news came right in the middle of a bunch of upheaval and your boss asked you to wait a week or two until they’d had a chance to bring some order to that chaos, but months have gone by! If this was ever reasonable, it has long ceased to be so.

Personally, I’d just start telling people! If your manager calls you out on it, say, “Oh, I’m seven months at this point — didn’t think it made sense to keep it a secret, or that I even could” or “Oh, it just came up naturally; it’s big news, after all” or “Oh, since I’m so close to my due date I didn’t think it was possible not to mention it at this point.”

In fact, I wish you hadn’t been asking him all along if you could tell your coworkers, because that shouldn’t be up to him anyway, and I wish you hadn’t said anything to indicate you were willing to give him that power.

But it’s your news to share, it’s reasonable to share it, and you have plausible enough deniability that you figured of course he didn’t expect you to hide a third-term pregnancy that you can just proceed as if it’s a given that of course he wouldn’t expect you to do something so unreasonable.

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