Maternity Leave

Policy and Practice

Victoria Gordon, Beth M. Rauhaus

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367180409
• eBook ISBN: 9781000740875
• Topic: Economia
• Subtopic: Economia del lavoro

What does it mean to be a successful working parent? And how do working parents cope in the United States, the only developed nation with no paid parental leave requirement? Despite some positive advancement in the voluntary adoption of paid parental leave, many organizations over the past 25 years have instead decreased paid leave benefits offered to employees in the United States, choosing instead to let unpaid leave under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) serve in its place. This regression in practice is perhaps the greatest unintended consequence of FMLA and surely was not the intent of Congress. Maternity Leave: Policy and Practice, Second Edition approaches parental leave from a variety of perspectives: legal, political, social, institutional, organizational, and, most importantly, from the personal perspectives of the women and men interviewed expressly for the book.

This second edition offers two new chapters: the first puts the issue of maternity leave within the context of work–life balance issues, and the second explores case studies from states, cities, and private organizations. Incorporating new census data, related reports, and academic studies, authors Victoria Gordon and Beth M. Rauhaus utilize relevant and cutting-edge research in their exploration of parental leave, and they enrich this research with the individual stories of ordinary working parents as well as those who choose not to have children. Assuming no prior specialized knowledge, this book can be assigned on a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in politics, public policy, public administration, gender studies, and human resource management, and will equally be of interest to parents, policy makers, and C-suite managers.

1
Introduction: What Have We Done to Our Daughters?

MATERNITY LEAVE—AN UNRESOLVED CONVERSATION?

Sometimes the research journey begins because you read an article or a book and something just does not ring true—or the topic simply attracts your interest when a conversation or event contradicts conventional wisdom. Our research journey into maternity leave policy and practice began when on two separate occasions in two different parts of the country, two women from two very different academic disciplines confided two very similar stories. The first young woman was considering not having a baby because it might be “frowned upon” by her colleagues who would be voting on her promotion status. The second woman—also a nontenured female assistant professor—confided that she had not taken any maternity leave after the birth of her child because she did not want to be “judged harshly” by her colleagues. The first thought after hearing both stories was, “What have we done to our daughters?”

Maternity leave was to be expected by mothers (and fathers) and supported by enlightened institutions, wasn’t it? The common assumption was that maternity leave was offered by all organizations of most any size and utilized by women in all fields and professions. It might be reasonable to assume that a very small company might not offer paid maternity leave, but in a smaller organization, there might be more flexibility and room for negotiating time off. Surely, this issue of maternity leave had been resolved long ago by employers and their employees.

At the time of the second conversation, Dr. Gordon had become a grandmother for the first time. Her daughter worked for a pharmaceutical company, and her daughter told her very early in her pregnancy what the maternity leave benefits would be for her. She was eligible for 12 weeks of paid leave, followed by an option to return to work part time for an additional eight weeks of flextime. All told, she would potentially have up to 20 weeks to be home with her new baby. This was an employer-supported leave period—a time to recover physically and to bond with her baby—with the promise that she could return to her job at the end of the leave.

While Dr. Gordon recognized that her daughter was in a very fortunate position to have so much time off available, she started to wonder about what was going on in higher education that these two other young women were having such a different experience. Was this purely an anecdotal anomaly? Or was the private sector doing such a better job of providing benefits for employees? More importantly was the nagging question: Were all the sacrifices made by women of Dr. Gordon’s age, generation, or era—all done in the name of “having it all” in terms of career and family—for naught? Had the last fairy tale for young women evaporated? And more to the point, why had no one noticed? Why was no one talking about this?

In the interest of full disclosure, Dr. Gordon entered this research project feeling a little indignant, partly because aside from her daughter’s experience in the private sector, she had witnessed in her own academic department at a public institution of higher learning her female department head supporting young male faculty as they became first-time fathers. She offered them time off, through the option to teach online courses or bi-term courses, a reduced teaching load, and the like so that they could enjoy being new dads and bond with their infants. Were most other institutions unenlightened when it came to maternity leave? Thus Dr. Gordon started on her quest for understanding maternity leave in the 21st century. Her goal for the first edition of this book was to unravel the mystery of maternity leave—what are the myths, and what are the realities?

The year 2018 marked the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Family and Medical Leave Act, and while improvements have been made and maternity leave is being talked about, there still is no universally adopted paid time off for maternity leave, and women are facing the same obstacles that were presented in the first edition. Our approach to this second edition is not to eliminate any of the information previously presented but to update, add to, and place this material within the context of the concept of work–life balance. Our hope is that if armed with enough information, both men and women will be encouraged to introduce this conversation into their workplaces and that we will finally see some collective action taken across the nation.

ARE MATERNITY LEAVE EXPECTATIONS AND REALITIES MISMATCHED?

The overarching research question that guided this project was: “What are the perceptions and experiences of participants about their utilization of maternity leave benefits?” Secondarily, we wanted to understand if organizational policies and employee perceptions match. If not, what is contributing to this disconnect? In effect, we wanted to understand if informal cultural beliefs and norms are more influential in employee decision-making regarding the use of maternity leave benefits than are the formal policies available to them (Barnett 1999, 147). What obstacles get in the way of developing sound and consistent policies across universities? Finally, we wanted to understand if there are truly differences in perceptions and experiences of women across private universities, public universities, and within the private sector—specifically in the pharmaceutical industry.

This book is organized into 12 chapters.

• Following this introduction, Chapter 2 describes work–life balance and its importance to organizations and employees.
• Chapter 3 provides an overview of legislation related to pregnancy and maternity leave.
• Chapter 4 explores trends in birthrates, fertility rates, employment patterns, and the relationship to the types of maternity leave offered and taken.
• Chapter 5 explores the topic of women’s health issues and policies in the workplace.
• Chapter 6 describes the research approach used to conduct this study and offers a summary description of the participants.
• Chapters 7 and 8 present profiles of the women studied and focus on the individual interviews presented in the women’s voices. Included in Chapter 8 are the themes and patterns that developed from the interviews: inconsistencies in administration of maternity leave policies, timing, transition back to work, child care, breast-feeding and pumping, and unmet needs and professional concerns.
• Chapter 9 focuses on the voices and perspectives of those who are absent from the core interviews: women who have children at a young age; a couple who both took leave but faced challenges because she was self-employed and his leave was not supported by his supervisor; men who did utilize paternity leave; women in same-sex relationships who started families; women who chose not to have children; administrative views; and stories about why some colleagues may be unsupportive of maternity leave.
• Chapter 10 provides a brief comparison regarding maternity and paternity leave policies in other countries as compared to the United States.
• Chapter 11 provides an overview of selected federal, state, local government, and private sector family leave policies and offers some best practices examples for consideration.
• Finally, Chapter 12 offers some conclusions and practical recommendations for policy and organizational change.

It is hoped this book not only will shed some light on the mystery of maternity leave—both policy and practice—but also will encourage others to join this important and timely conversation.

REFERENCES

Barnett, R. 1999. A new work–life model for the twenty-first century. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 562: 143–158.

2
Work–Life Balance

DEFINING AND REFINING WORK–LIFE BALANCE

Work–life balance is a term used to describe how individuals achieve and maintain an appropriate balance between professional or work responsibilities and their personal responsibilities. Workers, regardless of gender, contribute to the workforce and many have additional responsibilities at home; this can create tension as they try to prioritize or juggle competing demands. The pressure of balancing time, energy, and the very real need to earn a living wage often causes conflict for an employee, which is further exacerbated by increasing demands to be a good spouse, partner, parent, grandparent, daughter, son, friend, or care-giver. Demands from employers to be an exceptional worker are often coupled with societal expectations to be an exceptional “everything else to everybody.” These demands can create unhealthy expectations for those who subscribe to the maxim to “have it all” and then struggle to both achieve and maintain a work–life balance.

If you ask workers to define or describe how they achieve work–life balance you will get myriad responses, but these responses often boil down to a common theme of time, time management, or some variation on a desire to work less and play more. In contrast, research into this elusive phenomena of work–life balance often focuses on the extent to which organizations are supportive of work–life balance by creating and implementing benefits available to employees to utilize.

The meaning of the term “work–life balance” is debated, as some scholars argue that the concept implies a trade-off between personal and professional responsibilities and does not necessarily effectively describe the challenges of employees’ experiences when attempting to achieve that balance. Rather than balancing work and life responsibilities, scholars suggest that successful individuals are focusing on a more realistic approach to the tension between work and life through integration, harmonization, and articulation of the competing spheres (Gregory and Milner 2009; Burke 2004; Lewis, Gambles, and Rapoport 2007; Lewis and Cooper 2005). Due to social, economic, and technological changes, and coupled with a decline in birthrates and an increase in the aging population, the concept of work–life balance will continue to be an important policy area to be addressed by lawmakers and employers (Gregory and Milner 2009).

Over time, changes in the workforce and in technology, as well as evolving social norms, led to the term “work–life balance,” which replaced the traditionally used concepts of “work–family balance” or “employee–family balance” or “family-friendly benefits.” These terms more narrowly emphasized achieving and maintaining an equilibrium between professional and family duties, or more specifically, parental obligations. When this equilibrium is upset, the resulting work–family conflict “tends to hit women harder because of societal norms and expectations that women bear the larger burden of family responsibilities” (Alkadry and Tower 2014, 17). Historically, American society has expected men to work in a professional capacity and be primarily responsible for earning a living wage to support the family unit, while women were seen as responsible for upkeep of the domestic sphere. The traditional “work–family dichotomy was based upon rigid and demanding workplace requirements with no allowances for family demands,” and this dichotomy was established due to male-dominated work environments that were supported by female-led homes (Kim and Wiggins 2011, 728; Saltzstein, Ting, and Saltzstein 2001).

Prior to women entering the workforce in greater numbers, public policies and human resource practices addressing work–family balance were not a priority. Organizations were concerned with male employees bringing frustrations home from their workplace, which could result in “detrimental effects on the family” or might result in negative effects on the employee’s productivity, resulting in absenteeism, low efficiency, or worse (Giraldo 1980, xviii). Thus there was a concern and recognition from employers of the effect that burnout might have on employees personally and professionally; this was often referred to as work–family conflict or tension.

As the number of women who became wage-earners increased, stereotypes of the family unit, gender roles, and work roles were challenged and work–family conflict or tension became even more evident to employers. Now, for the first time in history, there is no gender difference among young adults seeking more professional responsibilities in their occupations, whereas heretofore young women reported less desire to have more professional responsibilities than young men (Galinsky, Aumann, and Bond 2011).

This is due in part because family composition has changed a great deal. Working mothers have become the norm; stay-at-home fathers, single-parent workers, and same-sex couples have become more common. There is an increase in workers caring for both children and aging parents, and sadly—in many cases due to substance abuse by parents—even grandparents raising grandchildren. Working fathers have reported a significant increase in work–life conflict over the last 35 years, as many have increased their workload within the area of household and child care responsibilities. Now, men also struggle to achieve and maintain a balance (Aumann, Galinsky, and Matos 2011).

Despite men reporting this increase in work–life conflict, there is still empirical evidence of women more often coming home from work only to start on their second set of duties—their second shift (Vanderkam 2015, 199). In Finding Time: The Economics of Work–Life Conflict, Boushey explains, “the world of work and the needs of families always seem to be in conflict—and it’s been this way for decades” (2016, 8). These challenges affect both the family unit and the workplace but especially the employee. Thus organizations began to incorporate human resource practices aimed at helping employees achieve a balance between work and family.

The creation and implementation of family-friendly policies is an essential element of achieving gender equity and supporting the advancement and progress of women in the workplace (Feeney and Stritch 2017). Research of family-friendly benefits are categorized into four areas: (1) dependent care; (2) flexible work arrangements; (3) leave programs; and (4) work–family stress management (Mulvaney 2014, 461). Examples of such practices include child care policies, including referrals and subsidies; telework or telecommuting; alternative work schedules, including compressed workday or workweek schedules; family leave; sick leave banks; employee assistance programs (EAPs); and health and wellness promotions. The federal government has long recognized the importance of work–life balance and provid...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Introduction: What Have We Done to Our Daughters?
• Chapter 2 Work–Life Balance
• Chapter 3 Background: Understanding the Legislative Intent and Symbolism of Public Policies
• Chapter 4 The Evolution and Devolution of Maternity Leave as an Employee Benefit
• Chapter 5 Women’s Health Care and the Workplace
• Chapter 6 Research Approach
• Chapter 7 The Interviews: Profiles of Women and Their Perceptions and Experiences
• Chapter 8 The Themes: How Women Cope With the Myths and Realities of Maternity Leave
• Chapter 9 The Other Voices
• Chapter 10 An International Comparison’The Other Kingdoms
• Chapter 11 Progress: Baby Steps
• Chapter 12 Conclusion: Can the Fairy Tale Be Realized or Should It Be Rewritten?
• Index