Important Terms

Paid leave is leave from work that is paid

Unpaid leave is leave from work that is unpaid while your job is still reserved for you.

Maternity leave is given to mothers after they have had their child. The length of maternity leave is not set as a standard in our country. The length of maternity leave in the United States can vary anywhere from eight weeks to one year, trending towards the shorter side (Feloni par. 1).

Compounding Interest the time spent away from work accrues against a woman’s advancing career.

Investing in a worker looks like giving them a good environment to work in so that they will want to continue to work for you in the future so that you don’t need to charge many new workers in the future and so your employee turnover rate is low.

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Trending toward longer maternity leave

Maternity leaves that are longer than fourteen weeks are shown to reduce stress of the mother and are likely to lengthen the life of the baby (par. 3 Staehelin). Paid maternity leaves around the world have been being lengthened with national legislation. Countries around the world are looking to promote the health of mothers and provide for their future generations (Feloni par. 1). Companies are seeing maternity leave as an investment in their workers so that they will be happier and more likely to stay.

Career or Child?

Harvard Business review concluded that longer maternity leaves are shown to lead to the inability to advance in the career after returning to work (Collings par. 1). The longer maternity leave a woman takes, the more difficult it is for her to return to the same position in her career and even harder for her to advance her career.

While on leave, she not only missed out on the current happenings, but the experience she would have gained while she was there. Her temporary leave could lead to her previous years of high sustained performance being forgotten. These together accumulated like compounding interesting against her getting a promotion. When a woman takes maternity leave she is more likely to be fired after her return with this chance increasing the longer her leave is. Not only does maternity leave hurt a woman’s advancing career, but it will also alter the view her coworkers have of her.

Women who take a longer maternity leave are often viewed as less devoted to their job not only by their peers, but also by the leading board of the establishment (Hideg par. 6).

These in tandem, make it difficult for a mother returning from maternity leave to shine in her field and advance her career. So the trend towards longer maternity leaves in order to ensure that mothers don’t have to choose between career and child may be sabotaging itself.