PREGNANT WOMAN GETS JOB. NEWS??
There is never a right time to have a baby but what bad timing to be offered your dream job in the last trimester.
No wonder new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (left), six moths pregnant with her first baby, has arranged to take two whole weeks of maternity leave.
Blink and one of the world’s leading tech companies won’t miss her. That’s what she’s hoping anyway.
I hope we laugh one day about how this made headlines around the world: Pregnant Woman Gets Job.
Yahoo was praised for its progressiveness in taking such a bold leap. Mayer herself called it “evolved thinking” that her new bosses took her on in her state.
A step up from the days when pregnant women had to lie about it, sure, but evolved?
Pregnancy is a temporary condition and, despite outdated and disproven opinion, one that doesn’t impact one iota on a woman’s brain capacity or her ability to get to work on time.
It’s the baby that is here to stay and only when employers and governments start recognising that, facilitating mums to hang with their newborns until they are good and ready to come back to work, should they be applauded. For me that was nine months.
Jacinta with her two boys Jasper, two and a half, left, and Otis, one.
With my first baby, I naively requested six months maternity leave, a hodge podge of paid leave, holiday leave, and cracking my fixed-term deposit, knowing I could adjust the time accordingly once I knew what I was in for.
What I was in for was a love affair that knocked me for six, so grateful that I didn’t have anywhere to be except at home with him.
I needed to be there to breast feed, settle, recover from my emergency caesar and get around in my PJs in a sleep-deprived, unwashed hair haze. But I also wanted to be there. Nothing could have prepared me for the overwhelming biological pull to be anywhere else but there.
To lie in the backyard tracing his toes. To sit up most of the night, just the two of us, when he wouldn’t sleep for love nor money. So I stretched it out a little longer. With my second baby I put eight months on the form, then rounded up to nine.
I was lucky to be able to do that, to linger on my maternity leave and not have to think about the outside world for a bit.
How much time to take off work with a new baby is dressed up as personal choice but it so rarely is. For a huge majority of women it’s financial. Paid maternity leave is a new phenomenon in this country and even then it’s paltry: minimum wage for 18 weeks.
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12 Responses to this article
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Janine Fitzpatrick July 20, 2012
I know it’s been applauded as a revolutionary step for a company to hire a pregnant woman, but in reality, given she’s only having a 2 week maternity leave, it’s not actually taking the pregnancy into account. It is ignoring it, pretending she is just like any other newly appointed exec – just having a little holiday. It just seems to me even with all the financial resources and support in the world having a baby is an emotional and physical act that brings a range of complexities into your life. It seems sad to me that even though hiding the pregnancy wasn’t necessary, continuing on as if the birth hasn’t occurred still seems to be essential.
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Margaret July 20, 2012
I am all for mothers going back to work and good on, any company who support them. But… 2 weeks maternity leave?
Can any of us remember how we felt 2 weeks after delivering any of our children…I prefer not to revisit that period. The physical exhaustion and post op pain, and plain old lack of sleep was far beyond anything I imagined! Remember happily the warm fuzzy matenal rush and a new fresh baby like yesterday. That’s some suppoort team she has at home. Good luck to her. I wonder how it will all pan out?
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Lynne July 20, 2012
Relieved I am not the only cynical female. Two weeks maternity leave seems to be for the organisation’s benefit most of all. “I really want this job and I am sorry about the inconvenience but would you mind if I took 10 working days off to have a baby? I’ll have my smart phone with me and we can face time from the labour ward”. While it could be seen as a postive for females I really doubt that was Yahoo’s motivation.
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Tracey July 20, 2012
Marissa Mayer is in a different league – anything that comes out of her mouth over the coming year that includes Yahoo (ie the company she now RUNS) is going to be about impressing the markets; anything she says about herself (ie the woman who now RUNS Yahoo) is going to be about impressing the markets.
At this, I’d imagine that she is a bit excited with herself and her fab achievement – and given how well she’s done so far, expect she’ll be able to figure out the next phase of her life – and if that includes taking her iPhone into the delivery room, outsourcing to a wet nurse or rounding up her personal community to help hold it together, I reckon she’ll do just fine!
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Annie Also July 20, 2012
“There is never a right time to have a baby”….What the hell?
It is not like having a dog, or a holiday or a drink or a….blah blah….
Having a baby is what life is about.
I wish this woman had not gotten pregnant if all she thinks about is ‘getting back to work’. Poor little bugga, her child….”Mummy loved me so much she went back to work”….I am disgusted.
Time flies and by the time your child is15 you blink and your best job is over.
Pathetic woman. -
RobynMarie July 21, 2012
Annie Also you are a brave woman, but I agree. If you choose to have a baby and you can have a baby – wonderful! Will Marissa’s child know that she is her mum? I feel sad for both of them. But hey, she has ennough money to get the very best nanny. Either way, this story has been done to death, lets all move on.
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anonymous July 21, 2012
I am just so happy that we live in a world where she has a choice!!
This is nothing new! How naive to think that you just sit around at home feeding, gazing at and bonding with the baby. Most of us also do the jobs that could easily be outsourced (by women like this with no budget limits and no desire to be a housekeeper as well), like washing, cleaning and cooking. Hell, some of us even run family farms where you don’t ever get time off!!! The cattle still need to be fed and watered and worked- or they will die! Women with their own businesses will most definately take less than 2 weeks off, coz it might not be there if you walk away from it for 6 weeks!!!!!I believe that she will be able to have a full compliment of staff to attend to the care of herself and the baby. I’ll also bet that if she has to go to the offices that Yahoo has the very best in childcare facilities on the face of the planet- if they didn’t before I imagine they soon will be! This lady will probably have bubs brought to her at the whim of the baby’s needs for her to feed and a bit of cuddle time, then taken away( to possibly the next room for the nanny to attend to). I think this lady will have it all worked out! So many other women who own their own businesses or work from home have done the same for such a long time.
Don’t forget there is probably a father on the scene who will do what do many other dads out there do and be involved! Possibly OMG a stay at home dad!!!!
Good luck to them! They don’t yet know what they are in for but I’m sure they have everything at their disposal to make it work for the best interests of all, mother, father and baby.
