Thing to Ponder: Pregnant Women in the Workforce

I know that in other countries, pregnant women can get "paid time off" because they're pregnant. Although if the woman chooses to work, I guess thats her choice.

Now here in America, I think some may get paid time off, but not always. In fact the women want to work or have to work. I think there has been cases of women who have been threatened to be fired or have been fired because of it. Or if they take the time off, they are like if they were fired, because the company won't pay them for the time off. So the woman goes to work because she needs the money.

Others work no matter what. I member watching this thing on youtube that a woman in a show (I think Phantom) continued to be in it till the day she was to give birth.

My personal thing for me is that if my wife is pregnant I wouldn't want her to work simply because I don't want her to be stressed or get hurt or anything. If its a desk job..eh..maybe. But even that is a stretch. I think that around the 7 month period is probably when (depending, but on her choice) of when she can stop working, and yeah get paid time off.

But the real decision I guess is for the husband and wife to decide if she will still work.

What do you think? Should pregnant women be allowed to work? And should they get paid time off?

 

Of course they should be allowed to work. As for getting paid time-off, that should only come in the last stages of the pregnancy, which I'm guessing is different for each woman. I'm not a woman, and I'm not married, so I don't really know. I didn't even know this was an issue, I assumed vacation days or sick days or maybe even maternity leave would cover those last few uncomfortable days/weeks of a pregnancy. I think we need a female perspective in here!

 

I guess it would depend on what your benefits are like at your job. You should be entitled to some kind of maternity leave. Aside of from that, in the United States there is something called State Disability and you can actually receive state benefits for up to a year. It isn't full pay but it is close to it. While on State Disability your job has to keep you employed for up to 6 months. If you do not return by then, then that job can terminate your position. In the U.S. there are different avenues for benefits, just got to look for it. Some women get become so ill during pregnancy that she simply cannot work. It's not her fault, and for the safety of the pregnancy, she probably shouldn't if she can get the benefits and timing right.

 

I think both men and women should be entitled to paid maternity and paternity leave--6 months for each. It would cover the first year of development and encourage male participation in child rearing. Plus, it's fair. But we live in a country where a week of paid vacation a year is a "benefit" so yeah, this will never happen.

 

Here's one topic where gender inequities go both ways. One could suggest that a significant maternal leave benefit compensates for the glass ceiling, but that doesn't evenly apply to everyone. Some women put their careers ahead of having children, especially in Japan. Some will have more children than they can financially support.

I'm also unsure as to where the money comes from to pay for maternity leave. I would appreciate knowing whether it's from medicaid, out of the corporation's pocket, or a combination of the two. If the money comes out of a corporation's budget, then it would greatly discourage them from hiring young women for that very reason. I genuinely don't believe in giving women paid sick leave because they're pregnant, but corporations should be expected to grant time off to women for their 'motherly' responsibilities. I'm probably biased in this regard because I rarely take time off (I got perfect attendance all throughout high school, by the way) and don't think it's appropriate for people to get paid for work they don't do. That's not to say I don't believe in allowances for time off or lifting of sanctions, but I honestly would prefer a higher per/hour wage over paid time off. Sometimes accidents happen and people find themselves short of cash and unable to work, which is why you have paid sick leave; but I feel people should be encouraged to take responsibility for themselves.

This may sound pro-corporation or anti-working class, but I'm not. What corporations don't invest in paid sick leave would go towards their employees' pay checks.

Unfortunately there are two states where they have real maternity problems, Japan and Italy. In these states there is a demographic imbalance, mainly attributed to women having fewer children and with longer life spans for the elderly. In such states, extending maternal benefits would be beneficial for the stability of their societies. Otherwise the world can due with many fewer people. In countries like the US, I think an appropriate course of action would be to grant benefits to women only for their first child.

If working women decide to have a second or more, there should be virtually no maternal benefits the second/third time around... and here's why. If they are financially stable and can reasonably maintain more children, then they should be able to get by without a few months of paid leave. If they/she can't have a child under such circumstances without paid maternal leave, then they/she shouldn't be having a second child unless they know they're financially stable. It's always best to error on the side of caution, and most states can due with fewer people. Those who cannot afford more than one child should not be having a second, therefore it's good to discourage giving such incentives beyond the first.

 

Just because something is discrimination doesn't mean that it is necessarily bad. You need to ask whether or not it is justified.

For example, you would likely look at things differently if you were hiring a long-term employee than if you were looking to hire someone for a short-term contract. It's easier for a business to absorb the absence of an employee during day-to-day operations than it is to have a critical team member absent during a contract rebid, or just before a product delivery date. Each has a different impact on the business, and you can't expect an employer to treat the latter like it's the former.

Similarly, it makes rational business sense not to hire a woman who is currently pregnant, especially if you are dealing with time sensitive projects. If you know that one candidate is going to require a prolonged absence (for whatever reason) and you have a tight schedule, you need to pick the person who is more likely to be able to help you meet that schedule. Is that fair to the pregnant woman? No, but to force them to hire the pregnant woman isn't fair to the employer either. In the end, the effect on the employer would be larger and affect more people.

All of this is not to say that the mere possibility of pregnancy should be sufficient to not hire someone, but simply to point out that it's not something that you can just ignore.

Kimball Kinnison

 

It's not discrimination if you favor a male with the same credentials as a woman. It's not as though one can just downright reject someone based on gender, but if you were considering one of dozens who applied for a particular position... you're probably going to have women who are already mothers, unmarried, or otherwise more favorable candidates. It's not like they're just downright going to reject potential/to be mothers, but they would certainly consider it before hiring.

I don't get where you're coming from on this. I'm saying that if a working family can make ends meet with a mother/father tending to the children while the other continues in the work force... then losing paid maternity leave should not be a factor. If a working mother is expecting to get tens of thousands to support the family for that time she's out of the work force... if a family can't work without that, then it's not financially wise for them to have another child.

I would support the notion for maternity leave with a single child, but the second or third are increasingly like an embellishment.

You're not getting my point. I'm not talking about those teen/accidental pregnancies; I'm talking about parents not building up a nest egg before they decide to have a child. Discouraging maternal leave is like adding incentives for potential parents to wait on having a child until they're financially/emotionally prepared. One of the most significant problems with young/single parents is that they start off their family very early and often run into problems of which are multiplied in difficulty because they lose their jobs/get divorced and still have children to take care of. If they aren't well established, then they would have nothing to fall back on. If a family wants more children and they're financially stable for two/three/four kids... it's entirely up to them.

 

I'm with Yuthura on a fair part of this. For example, I find it utterly ridiculous that I get paid time off for a part time job (due to unions in the city of LA). My mom has always thought it's ridiculous that she gets paid vacation time on a part time job (she works local school district). I think that goes across the board in about how Yuthura outlines; higher wages, and allow people to miss work if need be, but not simply paying them for time they're not working. Obviously, a job that pays hourly is a different beast than a job thats a fixed salary.
Personally though, I'd MUCH rather be paid more and have the ability to take time off work if need be than have a paternity leave option.

 

Again, though, it varies depending on circumstances, and not just involving women who are currently pregnant.

A lot of people work as contract employees or as contractors. If you are an employer with a 1-year contract to deliver a product or service, there is a higher risk to your contract if you hire a woman who might get pregnant, even if she isn't pregnant now.

My own experience with my wife's recent pregnancy illustrates this sort of risk. A little over a year ago, my coworker (the other system administrator on my team) quit so he could travel Africa for a year. Even though we immediately started looking for a replacement, it took the better part of a year to find someone who could pass the background checks. A few months after he left, my wife got pregnant. When we announced that last June, one of my boss's first questions for me was "What will we do if the servers go down while your wife is in labor?" Even after we filled the position, it still required months of training to get him up to speed so he could handle "on call" issues. During that entire time, my boss kept asking me "what if your wife goes into labor?"

This is especially critical for us because we provide 24/7 support for Air Traffic Operations. When our servers go down, planes don't exactly fall out of the sky, but a lot of people react as though they do. If we hadn't been able to hire a second admin and train him in time, we simply wouldn't have been able to afford for me to take any time off when my son was born last month. (As it is, when I took a week "off" to go to a family reunion last year, I still had to work every day through a cell phone Internet connection, just to keep things running.)

We were lucky and able to dodge that bullet. If things had been just a little different, it could have been very bad for us as a company, possibly causing us to lose our current contract when it comes up for rebid.

Kimball Kinnison

 

I think his point wasn't that it's cheaper the second time around, but that if one is having multiple children, one should either be in such a position to be able to afford to not work as needed, or shouldn't be continuing to have kids.

I also don't see the surgery analogy. My job isn't paying for me to have surgery, whereas it would be paying for a woman to have maternity leave. Unless you're also going to suggest that women pay some sort of pregnancy insurance premium (which seems ridiculous), it's not equivalent.

And I think that's the sign they should either move or get a better job w/ better training. Not all jobs are MEANT to be jobs where you support a family off of it, imo. One should either be content with that, or improve job skills, not have kids so that the job that already wasn't enough money is now not enough to provide for even MORE people. It's simply irresponsible.

 

Ok, I suppose the relevant thign here is... are we talking paid or unpaid?

I may be misreading him, but he seemed to be saying he has an issue with any paid time off when he said he doesn't "think it's appropriate for people to get paid for work they don't do"

If they can't afford those options, then I question if that's a healthy environment for a child. Yahoo has an article here that says "conservative estimates peg the cost of raising a child at $9,200 to $10,300 per year to age 17". If you can't afford increased education or moving, then how does one afford the cost of raising a child? If my statement of "you shouldn't have a kid you can't afford" is an issue, then I'm not sure how the reverse, of "it is ok to have a kid you can't properly take care of" isn't of greater concern. Which isn't to say affordability shouldn't be worked on, but it would parallel that I think college should be cheaper, but still think that just because it SHOULD cost less, it's still irresponsible to get into large debt because of it.

 

I wanted to go with some fixed numbers from a source and that's what I found, although if you'd like to put forward a different source, by all means. USDA puts it at only slightly less.

And, I'm by no means saying those 3 would be concurrent, but that the first two should happen, if needed, before the third does. And a kid can be loved plenty, but still is going to have costs associated. Clothes, food, medical care, etc. That's all part of "cared for", and based off of any numbers I can find, if you can't afford any fashion of education or to relocate to somewhere better, then you can't afford the cost associated with a kid.
I'd also point out.... a mortgage is generally considered part of one of those costs, since housing is a part of it. What's enough space for 2 people isn't enough space for 3+.

 

Well, although this again comes back to, are we talking necessarily paid maternity leave, or just the ability to leave the job around the time of giving birth then having the job to go back to as a guarantee?

 

Not hiring me because I might get pregnant is 100% gender discrimination and I do not really understand how it can be interpreted as anything else.

 

Alright, what's the difference between favorability and discrimination? If you have multiple people aiming for the same position, you'll chose the one who best fits with the position. If you've got a person with a mental condition who outwardly appears threatening(like one person I know) and applying for a position that involves working with other people... would you really be discriminating if you favor another person who's just as qualified? It could be argued that the person's disability in itself many not hinder his ability to work, but it could impact how the others are able to work with him. Now this person I'm thinking of happens to be very bright, seemingly having a photographic memory, but I can say that his mannerisms make him difficult to be around. His behaviors are also not conducive for working with others.

This is favorability.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/03/24/dnt.pregnant.cop.fired.WAGT?hpt=T2

This is outright discrimination, and fits perfectly with the topic.

 

And to broaden on AF's previous post.

I believe the state gives a woman disability leave for her pregnancy. This falls under the same category as any disability leave where there will be a temporary time when the affected will be unable to work.

Not hiring a woman for a position because she might get pregnant is akin to not hiring someone for a job who is into desert racing because he might get into an accident or someone who is into sports because they might get hurt in their adult softball league. Disability is disability.

What you are suggesting is illegal because pregnancy falls under temporary disability and is treated the same.

Look at it this way...they child isn't what causes the disability...its the preparation of a medical procedure, having that procedure done, and the recovery time from that procedure.