Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Tonka
Nearly every and i mean upwards of 95% of the women i know who were working prior to being pregnant, in a career mind you, took their PAID maternity leave, and at the end of the term, when their employers were expecting them to return, decided to quit. As an employer, i can tell you that experience makes you want to start finding a replacement as soon as you know the employee is pregnant. lucky for me, only 1 of the 3 women who worked for me when becoming pregnant has done this. But i know many many women who have done this and many many employers who have experienced this.
I'm not saying i disagree with you, but the door swings both ways. It really sucks to hire someone, invest in them, train them, educate them, only to have them quit after you paid them to be absent for 3 months after they had a baby.
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In most cases, the mother's salary is covered by short-term disability insurance so the excuse of "paying them to be absent for three months" doesn't really apply, especially when coverage typically lasts only 4-6 weeks in the first place. Additionally, the reason many mothers opt not to come back is that they failed to realize just how young a 12 week old child is, making the act of turning them over to a provider very difficult. That is one reason why extending the length of leave would help to solve the problem of many new mothers not coming back. It's hard to look at our 12 weeks with a straight face when many countries in the modern world offer a full year or more (UK, Denmark, Canada, Sweden, etc). My wife's employer was a smaller company and she had been there less than a year so they basically told her to pack it up and get out, which is perfectly legal in our system. Keep in mind that this is our second child and she returned to work 12 weeks after our daughter was born.
Maternity leave is a prime reason for the existance of temporary workers. I'm not talking C-level jobs, but most tasks within a company can be completed by a temp worker, especially if they are trained by the expecting mother prior to her leave.