Women are expected to have a "return to work" plan outlined before their maternity leave starts. That is like booking a hotel for your winter get-away before you have picked a destination.
When it comes to work and pregnancy, women are forced to make decisions and set timelines around something completely foreign and forever life-altering. Too often talks with employers focus on "when" a woman is coming back to work, not "in what capacity." And women tend to say yes to full-time duties if the only other option is quitting altogether. This leads employers to feel misled when a woman changes her mind to be at home.
No woman knows what it is like to be a mom until she becomes a mom. It is insane to think a woman will know whether she wants to work full-time or part-time or not at all until her stomach is deflated, her stitches are healed, and she is awake (albeit sleep-deprived) at 2:47 a.m. Maybe then, and only then, she will know what she wants. And maybe she won't.
New mom Lizelle commented that she laid out a plan to go back to work after three or four months post-partum, but "after spending a little over a month with our baby girl, I am having second thoughts about commitment / involvement, FT / PT, cash rich / time poor, and the list goes on."
Some women have to head back to work after the baby is born for financial reasons. Some want to head back, or think they do. Others may not want to return but are afraid they will forfeit their benefits if they say so.
Perhaps when women feel protected and that they have options, they will be able to be more honest about their plan with their employer and with themselves.
And there is also the related issue of how much information to divulge to potential employers. A friend of mine getting her first job out of law school didn't mention to her new employer, during the interview process, that she was pregnant and waited to tell them until he had been at the job a couple of months (and was four months pregnant). She felt it would hurt her chances of getting the job if they knew before hiring her.
ReplyDeleteI interviewed for jobs when I was pregnant and felt stressed about what I would do if I were offered a job. Would the employer resent that I had withheld the information? I was pretty sure that an employer for whom I had worked 6 months would not give me the 6 months maternity leave I would want (feeling while pregnant that 3 months ould not be enough for me to adjest to being a new mom) The whole situation made me feel it would just be easier not to be offered any job.