One of the reasons I left my desk job in 2015 was because I was calling BS on one of the common workplace policies in the US- unpaid maternity leave. It’s no secret that unpaid maternity leave sucks, and is absolutely asinine. Here’s why:
1) What family-values?
Isn’t it ironic that a country that is focused on the idea of strong families with core values sucks so bad at letting people start their families? Yes. The answer is yes.
2) Coworkers lose, crappy HR teams ‘win’
Personally, I can count at least three women I know who did not return to work after their maternity leave ended (and I’m pretty sure they knew the entire time they weren’t coming back to work). For the departments who were expecting their coworkers return, this can be an unpleasant surprise and leave teams shorthanded, with very little notice. But for HR and the company overall, there’s very little lost as they haven’t been paying these employees for a several months. The employee loses their benefits, and that’s one less thing that the company has to pay out.
So in reality, it gives women coming back from maternity leave very little to actually come back for – besides the job itself. Then teams become unexpectedly swamped, and everyone’s job satisfaction suffers. Common sense dictates that this can be avoided with common decency, but when the overarching team of unpaid maternity is a lack of decency to employees, even the kindest ones aren’t considering what’s the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ thing to do when contemplating returning from unpaid maternity leave.
3) Having a baby changes employees, forever, period
Doesn’t it seem backwards that these companies get to pay people absolutely nothing, while they are still technically employed with them, in exchange for a promise of having a job when you’re ‘done’ with the early stages of parenthood? At the end of maternity leave, no one is ever ‘done’ parenting, obviously. They become parents and their entire lives change forever. A significant change has happened for the employee – priorities shift on their end, and they’ll never be the same employee the company had before they left. This is important, because unpaid maternity leave essentially delivers a negative psychological message surrounding the employee/employer relationship – one that states they’ll make no signifcant changes and that they expect that in return from the employee.
4) Some women don’t want to go back to work after a maternity leave
I believe you are NOT a bad parent if you return to work, at anytime, after having a baby. I believe every woman is different, and we are not to judge that decision, no matter how far on each side of the spectrum someone’s decision on this topic lies. But what I do believe is that many women return to work before they are ready to leave their children at home.
One day I was in my ex-workplace’s restroom and bumped into a manager who had just returned from maternity leave. She had tears in her eyes, and when I inquired as to if everything was OK, she looked at me and told me ‘I miss my little girl.’ I hadn’t even thought about maternity leave yet in my life until that day, but because I had worked with her in the past and was fond of her, something changed in me that day about how I looked at maternity leave. My heart broke for her and I’ll remember that moment forever.
I don’t know if I’ll be ready about 4, 12, or 100 weeks, but I do know that I do not want to be separated from my newborn until I am ready – and your crappy unpaid maternity leave policies aren’t going to change that for me.
5) It’s too short
I want to spend more than 12 weeks with my newborn. I want to hang out with them, as much as possible, when they start really developing language and relationship skills.
6) Millennials aren’t buying it
Sorry Charlie, call us spoiled and entitled all you want. But too many of us saw with our own eyes what it was like growing up in a multi or single-parent household where our out-of-the-home working parents were stressed about that very fact, and could do absolutely nothing about it (Ahhh the ’80s, the era where a woman actually LOST a lawsuit where she was fired for being pregnant). Fortunately for us, we can do something different, if we choose. But no thanks to the steadfast appalling unpaid maternity leave policies.
7) Other places are doing it right
Sweden introduced mandated cross-gendered parental leave in 1974, (a significantly long ago in the timeline of women in the workforce) and Iraqi women were getting full-pay during maternity leave. Europe requires all companies pay employees for 20 weeks of leave.
8) It’s an outdated concept
The US is one of only THREE countries in the entire world that do not require paid maternity leave, next to Oman and Papua New Guinea. This stat, alone, should enrage women in the US. And it should enrage the employers in the US – enough to where they offer paid maternity leave regardless. But only 12% of Americans have access to paid maternity leave., and the only law we have is 1993’s FMLA that allows 12-weeks of unpaid leave without losing your job (to only the qualified 59% of the workforce). Gee, thanks. See ya soon, exhausted and broke!
9) We want it so much, we are paying for each other to take it
Rhode Island, Massachusetts, California, and New Jersey actually have PUBLICLY FUNDED maternity leave programs. This alone shows employers how important paid maternity leave is, but because they don’t have to listen, most of them aren’t doing anything what the popular opinion is.
10) Unpaid maternity leave affects the gender pay gap
We already know that women still get paid less than men. The wage gap is tighter closer to college-aged employees, before kids show up and steal the show from the companies. Then it widens as women are forced to take unpaid maternity leave to hang out with their newborns for a bit. The painful fact that women deal with and these companies ignore – a lady’s peak earning time and her childbearing era coincide. When you realize that, it becomes a lot clearly why chicks get .77 on that dollar.
11) Your expenses go up when you have a baby
This fact is completely ignored by many employers, who turn a blind eye to the reality of procreating. If employees expect you to incorporate your job into your life, they need to reciprocate and accommodate for the natural changes in your life.
12) This emotional and enraging posts about the very topic, from both Mashable and TechRepublic.
13) It makes me feel like I’m going to be punished for getting pregnant
I panic when I think about the possibility of not being able to afford daycare, which was always worsened by the fact that I KNEW I’d have to take unpaid maternity leave. What exactly was I expected to be doing?
14) Some of the most well-known tech companies offer it, so others should too.
These would be Google, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Apple, among others. Companies that are constantly applauded for employee satisfaction and who smaller companies try and emulate their policies after.
15) We can work from home now
The internet has allowed new moms to continue to work as quickly as they’d like after giving birth, a quick step away from their kids’ nurseries. THe incentive to survive your work commute to get back in the office is suddenly not looking so hot when so many parents are able to earn their leaving during their kids’ down time, without ever seperating from their kids.
This wasn’t intended to be a political post where I’m outraged the federal government doesn’t mandate this- this is my justification to companies who don’t offer paid maternity leave, and a simple explanation why I left the desk job work force. Unpaid Maternity leave sucks, and it shouldn’t just be a bonus – it should be the bottom line for the companies that hire us.
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