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Charles Wheelan, Ph.D. The Naked Economist

Charles Wheelan, Ph.D., The Naked Economist

Maternity 'Leave' Doesn't Mean Forever

by Charles Wheelan, Ph.D.

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Posted on Friday, September 28, 2007, 12:00AM

The other evening, I heard my wife mumbling to her computer, "I've about had it with this maternity leave stuff."

By way of background, we have three children. My wife has worked more or less full time for the past 20 years. Like me (and just about everyone else in our generation), she wishes it were easier to balance work and family.

A Policy Tweak

If you guessed that her maternity leave mutterings were an assault on the tightfisted human resources policies of corporate America, however, you'd be wrong. She's tired of women taking advantage of generous maternity benefits and then quitting almost immediately after they go back to work.

"It's unfair to the companies, and it's bad for other working women," she says. I think she's right on both points. A simple tweak to maternity leave policy could make companies and working women (and their families) better off. Maternity benefits should be more generous -- but also more finely targeted toward those women who ultimately return to work.

But before I defend that solution, let me persuade you that there really is a problem. The issue of "fairness" is always in the eye of the beholder. And any issue related to children, working women, and/or gender tends to smother logic with emotion.

So let's examine the paid leave phenomenon in a slightly different context. Let's assume that Bob falls off his roof while cleaning leaves out of the gutters and lands on a spiked wrought-iron fence, leaving him unable to work for a significant chunk of time.

What About Bob?

Bob is a model employee; his firm absolutely wants him back on the job when he's able to work. Assume that Bob is entitled to short-term disability, which replaces 60 percent of his wages while he's recovering from being impaled on the fence.

But Bob's benevolent employer offers him more than the bare minimum required by law. His firm pays him his full salary and extends his leave beyond what his doctor says is necessary for his recovery. Obviously Bob's job is held open, requiring colleagues to cover for him and precluding a search for his replacement. Bob's employer continues to pay the premiums for the health insurance policy that has covered most of his accident-related expenses.

Bob's coworkers take up a collection and buy him a get-well gift. He comes into the office once during his recovery to show off his scar (and a segment of the wrought-iron fence that the emergency room physicians let him keep). People in the office like Bob, and they think his scar is cool. But on his third day back at work, Bob tells his boss he's quitting. The life-threatening wound and several months at home thinking about it have convinced him that he doesn't want to work anymore.

Then people in the office like Bob less. They feel taken advantage of. And although I created Bob, and am sympathetic to his fence wound, I don't like what he's done here either.

Back to Maternity

"It's not called a 'maternity bonus,'" my wife reminds me. "It's called a ‘maternity leave.'" She has a good point: The word "leave" strongly suggests that you're coming back.

I'll concede that what's "fair" to employers and coworkers in this situation is debatable. But the basic economics of why generous but indiscriminate maternity benefits can make working women worse off are more straightforward. The basic analysis goes like this:

1. Maternity benefits are expensive. And the more generous the firm in this regard, the more expensive the policy.

2. Even an expensive maternity policy makes perfect sense if it helps to retain valuable employees. But the more often a firm gets "burned" by an employee who accepts generous benefits (beyond what's required by law) and then quits, the less sense the policy makes.

3. The more generous the policy, the more it hurts to get burned.

4. If enough women accept generous maternity benefits but don't ultimately return to work, some rational firms will decide that expansive maternity benefits just don't make financial sense.

There are two crucial insights here. First, when women receive maternity benefits (again, above and beyond what's required by law) and then promptly quit, the decision doesn't merely affect their own firm. In the long run, it'll also affect the workplace environment for other women, which is why I found my wife grumbling about this issue to her computer late at night.

Second, the more generous a firm is with maternity leave benefits, the more expensive it is when an employee takes the package and then doesn't return to work for any significant period of time. It's a sad irony that the firms with the best intentions pay the highest potential price.

Some Good News

There's a simple fix that's fair to firms and to working women -- both those who go back to work after having a baby and those who don't. Maternity benefits (and paternity benefits, should we ever get that enlightened) should be paid gradually over time after an employee comes back to work.

Suppose a firm wants to offer a maternity leave of 6 months at 100 percent salary, rather than the bare minimum of 6 weeks at 60 percent pay. Great. But why not fold those benefits into an employee's paycheck over the year in which he or she comes back to work -- or two years, or whatever? That's what my wife would like to see.

Some companies currently pay benefits during maternity leave but then require employees to pay them back if they don't return to work. The practical effect is the same, though it feels more warm and fuzzy to give extra benefits to women who return to work than it does to demand things back from those who don't.

In either case, the point of the policy is that any benefit above and beyond basic short-term disability goes to those workers who return to work, and not to those who don't. It puts the "leave" back in maternity leave policy.

Return Dividends

It's crucial to note that many women have no idea whether they'll return to work after having a baby. So it makes perfect sense to take leave and then decide. Fair enough. But it's also fair that those who don't come back should get less from the firm than those who do.

"I'd like to be able to offer a much bigger carrot to those women who come back," my wife explains. "And I can only do that if I don't have to give the same package to those who don't."

After all, the point is not to give Bob a send-off bonus because he had a roof accident; it's to offer a benefit that makes it easier for him to recover and come back to work.

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380 Comments

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  • Yahoo! Finance User - Friday, January 4, 2008, 11:08AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    I think a lot of this is hypothetical. Do any of us really know any companies that give 6 months off at 100% salary in the US? Because if more than one or two exists, I'd be stunned. There's really no good solution to this issue. I think it's fair enough if a company asks to be paid back, but they will also have to deal with people leaving even earlier and probably with less notice. If someone is talented and the company wants to keep them, the company may have to be willing to let them work from home or have a more flexible schedule. The company does benefit immensely from keeping someone they have trained and keeping them working (since the average cost to train someone new is surprisingly sky-high), so it's not a one-way street, as this article portrays it. A good company wants to retain talented people and more flexible policies will create more loyal employees who stay for the long-term. Women will have babies. We just need to figure out how to handle the whole situation better.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Wednesday, December 12, 2007, 4:10PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 2/5

    feels like Wheelan is hiding behind his wife . . if he believes in what he is writing he doen't need to have his wife validate it because he's concerned about being labeled a misogynist. But in any case, I think maternity leave is a complicated issue and I believe many employers are well aware that new mothers may not return to work and therefore their motives in providing this benefit may be related to (as some people have previously mentioned) the "gender equal image" they wish to project for their company. The truth is that professional wages are still not balanced for men and women so in some sense this benefit just fills in a wage gap (however inadequately). Also, Mr. Wheelan fails to see that this so-called abused benefit helps finance the good mom's who would like to raise their children to the best of their ability. As a working professional who has no children, I nevertheless see raising children to become productive citizens of this country a priority and who cares more about that than their parents? Certainly not random daycare workers. The companies providing these benefits are providing a service for the general good of our society and are investing in our future population.

  • KerryB - Sunday, December 9, 2007, 11:46PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Well written, solid, grounded, and sound ideas presented here. Too often being in America = Expectations of entitlement.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Monday, November 26, 2007, 1:37PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 4/5

    As a new mom who recently returned to work full-time and an MBA, I couldn't agree more. It's a solution that's fair to all involved - working moms, moms who don't return to work, employers and other employees. American society as a whole has a severe entitlement affliction - "I am therefore I get." Hogwash! Employers who can find a way to provide above average compensation for employees who return from maternity or disability leave will undoubtedly benefit in the long run by hiring and retaining the best and brightest workers. It's a win-win!

  • mommylaw - Thursday, November 15, 2007, 3:36PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    This article is terrible. The real problem in our country is not the few companies that offer some maternity leave and women who chose not to return after such a leave but the bad options for part-time work and working parents so that moms can come back to work after having children. Plenty of women would be happy to continue at their jobs after a maternity leave if the employer provided affordable childcare and options for work life balance. The fact that your wife agrees with your views doesn't make them more acceptable.

  • Norma - Saturday, November 3, 2007, 5:05PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    I strongly disagree with this idea. Women should not be compesated because they decided to go back to work and stay. Most of these women have no other choice financially. They need to stay employed.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Wednesday, October 17, 2007, 2:04PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Great Article, Mr Whellan offers a solution that would be very simple to implement yet would solve a very complex problem. I am tired of doing my co workers work while they are off, only to have them return months later then quit.

  • Yi - Monday, October 15, 2007, 1:56PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 2/5

    Our society was once focused on the good of the family, especially children. In the case of this article, one gets the usual egalitarian drivel, "What's in it for me?" or "What's good for the bottom line." Any parent will tell you that having children is not always "good for you." Yet, children are a gift from God and our society does well when it encourages people to have children. Whether one looks at it from an economic perspective - more kids = new ideas and more taxes to shoulder the burden to provide for the elderly, or the social good - kids keep societies healthy and perpetuate mankind. Unfortunately, we live in a hyper-selfish environment where "What's in it for me?" and "Looking out for #1" doesn't jive with having children. While this might be fine on a personal level, selfish attitudes have metastized into the corporate world. Thus, companies become focused on equality rather than the good of the company, or society, making raising children much more difficult as one must not only juggle the demands of family, but the anti-children policies of their employers. Meanwhile, 20 years from now the same people who chide working parents for "using too much maternity leave" or "taking an un-equal share of benefits" will be the first to complain about Social Security being flat broke or the ever-pressing need for immigration since the caustic, anti-child environment we live in today failed to produce enough children to pay for their elaborate government benefits.

  • jo - Saturday, October 13, 2007, 9:07PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    from an economic standpoint any maternity leave benefits at all are a terrible deal for an employer.So is disability pay or workers comp or anything above the minimum. required...You dont need a PHD to figure that one out...If you want anyone to return you have to stop giving going away presents and start giving them raises for coming back. ...Its just common sense.but I guess they dont teach that in school.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Thursday, October 11, 2007, 6:02PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    As always, Dr. Wheelan distills logic from reasoning and addresses an important issue that others either avoid or address with emotion. Economists are certainly behaviorists focused upon explaining cause-effect. Charlie, you did it again! Well done!

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Wednesday, October 10, 2007, 3:44PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    Firstly, the US has some of the worst maternity benefits of the civilized world so when a company is generous; it usually just barely meets the need a working mom. This article did make interesting points concerning making more of an effort to give more to those who come back, but really what mom wants to come back? Unless she has to. And then to pay the benefits over time is really, well cruel. Seeing as now you are asking women to do with less while they have the baby and need the most support; while you wait to see if she'll come back to pay more. I tell you what; instead of all the benefits wrangling... offer a new mom excellent child care options. Like on-site child care. Because really, when you lose a new mom 95% of the time you lost her because she didn't like her child care choices. Concentrate on fixing the root of the problem not rewarding and punishing a mom for making a very difficult economic decision. And, C'mon, Bob didn't have to find childcare while he was sick so that's not even a fair comparison.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Tuesday, October 9, 2007, 3:54PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    The author tries to inject logic but cannot go beyond the lone argument of "not coming back is cheating the company". I think the company that chooses to provide extra benefits is doing so _exclusively_ because it's in their interest to do so (public image, plus retaining good people etc). This is the capitalist stronghold and any "unuseful" activity would be quickly killed. So I don't see any "unfairness" in employees quitting after the maternity leave. almost every other country has better maternity laws than the USA (including paternity ... hey there's that other half we missed). So over all - author feels more than thinks. The bob example is a red-herring...

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Tuesday, October 9, 2007, 2:49PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    Not a good argument. More like a bitter article passing judgement on someone who chooses to stay home with her baby instead of work. I would argue that our economy has a 2 ton carrot for coming back to work - our reliance on two incomes. Get over it.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Tuesday, October 9, 2007, 10:14AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    The USA, along with some other wealthy countries mandates almost nothing for maturnity leave. Our economy makes gods out of performance and money and puts kids a distant third. Myopic and sad

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Monday, October 8, 2007, 11:36AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 3/5

    I read and re-read this article as well as the comments several times before deciding I needed to comment. First of all, despite the author hoping that readers would hold off the emotional knee-jerk reaction, many posters have written out pure emotion and I'm not sure that those folks have really considered his points fairly. For those employers who want to reward valued employees and retain those who might otherwise leave after having a baby, I can only imagine that it must be frustrating when new mothers take the added benefits and then leave. The author makes a good point about that--by law, employers aren't required to do a whole lot, so those who take on the responsibility of doing what's best for their employees by offering additional benefits should be commended. As for those women who choose to have children, take advantage of those benefits and then leave (and I mean those who planned this approach from the beginning) well, they are ruining it for the rest of us by souring their employers on generosity. Let's face it--part of the reason employers would go above and beyond for new mothers is to lure them back after the baby is born and things settle down a bit. The sad irony here is that the women who can't afford to leave work to be full-time moms are probably those who work at places that offer the bare minimum of maternity leave and no added bennies while the women who take advantage of the situation probably had the financial situation to not work in the first place. Anyway, I don't see anything wrong with the author's suggestion of either having women pay the benefit back if they leave or receiving it after the fact. At many jobs, if you use your vacation time or benefits for the year before you've worked that year out, you end up owing your company. I see no difference here. I'm female, feminist and pro-motherhood, just so everyone is clear on where I am coming from...

  • mark - Monday, October 8, 2007, 9:17AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    I have to say, some people really miss the point and it must be annoying to write an article with some valid points to have them dismissed outright because of emotion. I thought the point was very clear and was not a threat to maternal benefits. That for those companies that provide added time and benefits, there should be some skin in the game in the form of some returned loyalty to the company. If you dont want to come back that is fine... it is your choice and an important one at that, but why should your company pay for it? At the same time reward those new mothers with some extra time off because eventually it will pay off for you and the mother. It was not an attack on motherhood and apple pie. It did not say there should be no maternity leave for mothers which some people seemed to take it as. The tirades on the importance of motherhood and how being a mother trumps all other responsibilities totally misses the point he was making. That is a discussion at a national level....does the U.S. want to pay to raise babies like the more socialist countries. If you feel that way why would you even be working and why do you think you should be subsidized for it by your company?

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Sunday, October 7, 2007, 9:44PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    So let's see. You are somehow supposed to feel obligated to a company that has to have a law force them to provide minimum benefits for maternity leave. This is the same corporate America that needs laws to protect employees from discrimination. I would like to know if there is a study out there that shows that more women take 'advantage' of their leave by not returning to work, then of the women that are pressured into returning early, or generally treated differently (negatively) by coworkers and employers because they are mothers or expecting mothers. True, it is a personal choice to have children AND RAISE THEM. The obligation should be to the child. Whether that benefits the company or not, you can ask anyone who has ever been laid off if the company felt obligated to them.

  • Kindred - Friday, October 5, 2007, 6:07PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    The absurd level of Social Darwinism present in both this elitist snobbery of an article and the comments below disgusts me. Since when is child rearing the sole domain of the rich and upper middle class? Your wife, my dear doctor whom should try working for an instiuition hostile to working mothers without the safety net of your generous, insurance industry supported income, and learn truly what it means to struggle and earn a living that does not provide comfort but necessity. However insulated her thinking is, however, she does touch on one point that is valid- perhaps the company should not be responsible for paid maternity leave. Perhaps instead the tax dollars we pay to the federal government should help subsidize the constituency that feeds it instead of the shareholders of major campaign donators. This has been the case in the real first world- Europe- for the last sixty years, and by some miracle it seems to work. Imagine a world where your tax dollars bring a return on investment measured not by the stock market, but by human caring and welfare. That is true democracy. You and your wife sir, should climb off your ivory tower at least once and see how it is that the real America is forced to live at the expense of your comfort.

  • Empress de - Friday, October 5, 2007, 4:55PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 4/5

    Has the world gone mad? Are we now simply assuming that babies just fall out of the sky magically and completely unplanned, like rain? You'd think, from all the one-star ratings here, that babies just show up in the mail one day -- we've no choice in the matter, we're forced to have them, and everybody owes us a free living just for grunting them out, regardless of what kind of job we're doing raising them! Frankly, Dr. Wheelan's proposal is even more modest and coddling than it should be. Childrearing is a PERSONAL. LIFESTYLE. CHOICE. No employer should be required to subsidize employees' personal pursuits or hobbies, period. Any policy that offers additional leave, pay, and benefits only to a subset of employees (in this case, fertile women of childbearing age who CHOOSE to have children) that other employees are ineligible to receive is discriminatory. Obviously, employees don't consult their employers for permission before they expand their family size, and the choice to breed certainly isn't made for the employer's benefit. So why should an employer offer anything but a friendly wave to employees who choose to have kids? The world population is 6.6 billion, folks! The Earth is groaning under the weight of too much humanity and overconsumption. Let's stop pretending like these whiny mommies are doing anyone, especially their employers, any favors at all by choosing to pump out kids. They're not.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Friday, October 5, 2007, 2:33PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 4/5

    There is an easy and fair solution to maternity leave. It is called insurance. If you are of child bearing age you buy insurance, then there is entitlement because it has been paid for by yourself. If the new mother doesn’t come back to work no hard feelings. You paid for it you got what you paid for no free ride at the expense of your company or co-workers.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Friday, October 5, 2007, 2:05PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    The author is comparing having a baby to "Bob" falling off the roof and getting impaled. Your wife must have had a hard delivery. Your wife's gripe about her colleagues not returning to work may be valid, but accusing most mothers of making this choice in advance of the birth and thereby "stealing" from their employer and coworkers is a stretch. Most women go back to work at 6 weeks or so because they HAVE to. Those who don't have to don't need to steal a 6 week paycheck. My wife's company offered her 6 week leave UNLIMITED unpaid leave, determined in-advance to be an additional 10 weeks. Then it was time to go back, and my wife really didn't want to -- and the company agreed to give her up to a year of un-paid leave, without losing seniority or status... but my wife loves being a mommy -- she had no idea this would happen to HER. Her employer was most generous and 4 years later still calls her now and then and begs her to come back -- but my wife is happy being mommy. We can afford it. At some point, her loyalty to her former employer is still strong, and if she returns to work, her old employer will get first call. The employer showed tons of humanity and in return, this company has a great reputation for treating the team like people. There are always long lists of people who want to work there... Sorry, I don't buy this.

  • ssss - Friday, October 5, 2007, 1:48PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    Dear Dr.Wheelan, You are talking about that generous 6 weeks of maternity leave , right ? I bet no employer goes out of their way to offer beyond 6 weeks unless mandated by law. And the "Bob" example that you have picked up is absurd. If Bob decides he wants to retire, or pursue another job, it is his personal choice. Anyways, it has absolutely no relation to what we are talking about here. Agreed, you had 3 kids, but looks like you never raised them. You are probably rich enough to afford nannies for them, but not everyone can. In the US, in a family of 2 or more kids, it is cheaper for one of the spouses to stay at home to look after the kids, rather than send the kids to daycare.

  • Nellie - Friday, October 5, 2007, 11:44AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    Dr. Wheeler's wife should watch the Motherhood Manifesto DVD from Moms Rising (momsrising.org) before she cries too much more about her plight with regard to Mothers that decide to stay home with their babies. Maybe if we made it a little easier for working Moms, it wouldn't be such a pressing problem. Between the measly six weeks of disability that most women get and the cost of daycare, working Moms don't stand a chance unless they're married to rich doctors.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Friday, October 5, 2007, 11:09AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    It'd be interesting to ask women how many of them honestly intended never to come back, and how many of them made the decision after holding the "bundle of joy" for the first time. In my limited experience, it's nearly always the former, because most women either have figured out that they can afford (and want) to stay home and have already made the decision to do so, or have determined that it won't work financially to do so (or that they don't want to be full-time moms). But even conceding the point that maybe in some cases the decision isn't made until later... it doesn't change the analysis. If a new mother determines while holding the "bundle of joy" that she wants to stay home and not go back to work, then she's obviously made the decision that she can do without the income of her job... so now it's just a question of whether her employer should pay her for some period of time not to work, or not. I agree that any woman in this position is within her rights to continue collecting the paycheck for as long as her employer's maternity leave policy allows (I don't consider it "stealing"), but it really doesn't make sense as a policy for an employer to shoulder this burden for someone who isn't coming back, and Dr. Wheelan's article makes that point. If you have a socialistic view that new mothers deserve paid time off, it would be better for the government to simply kick in something and make us all shoulder it through taxes.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Friday, October 5, 2007, 10:53AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    After reading this article and the comments, I wanted to chime in as a small business owner/manager. This is a real problem. I run a company with 45 employees. I've tried to do the "right thing" and have solid benefits (generous vacation/personal time policy; pay for health club memberships; allow workers to have flex schedules when feasible; etc.), but I changed our maternity leave policy last year... I used to make up the difference between STD (usually pays out 60% for as long as your doctor says you shouldn't be working) and the employee's full salary for 12 weeks. Since most doctors would say the employee could work fairly soon, I would expect to pay 40% for a few weeks and 100% for the other 8 or so. Well, then last year two women got pregnant within a couple months of each other. They were not the president (I am) but not an easy-to-replace-temporarily kind either, like a receptionist. Both pulled this same game of assuring me they were coming back and then not doing so. And I learned later that they told coworkers privately that they never intended to. So now, do the math... My company paid 100% of these women's salaries while they were out. We hired a temp for each's position to attempt to keep things going , which meant paying the usual salary plus markup to the temp firm. I brought the temps in a month early so that the pregnant workers could help train them, so that meant the workers were taken off regular task for some of their time. Plus we all know you can't learn everything about a job in a month, and that temps generally aren't all that good (that's why they're temps; they can't find permanent work), so the temps were probably only about half as productive as the regular workers for the next 3 months, which meant other workers had to pick up the slack. So I paid for extra help for 4 months (the month of training plus the 12 weeks of maternity leave) on the premise that the women were coming back, even though they knew they weren't. Neither of the temps was appropriate for permanent placement, so then I had to start all over and hire new people, and get them trained, so I lost another couple months there with the recruiting process and training the new people. The money paid to the workers during leave was only part of the issue... the add'l money paid to temps and the disruption for everyone else of having to keep a position open for 2 fairly important workers in my organization because of the charade that they were coming back was far worse. Looking back on it, I would gladly have written each of them a check for 12 weeks' pay on their last day if they would just have been up front with me about their plans so that I could have hired a permanent replacement that could have been trained before they left and then I wouldn't have had to pay for 5-6 months of mediocre temps before actually being able to get new, capable people in the door. Sorry for the long post, but Chuck is dead on that ultimately this abuse is bad for working women because a business owner like me ends up changing his policy. Which is exactly what I did... now, we don't have paid maternity leave. You get STD for as long as your doctor says you can't work, and that's it. My business isn't successful enough to pay for employees for several months to hold open their job. No one's gotten pregnant lately, but if someone does, I think I'll tell them that when they come back, I'll bump their salary up... the idea of setting up a system to pay the maternity leave over time is too complicated, but if I raise their salary then they get compensated if they come back, but not if they don't.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Friday, October 5, 2007, 10:15AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    This article is not upto the usual high standard of Dr. Wheelan. The first line of the Bob story says it all. "Bob is a model employee his frim absolutely wants him back" Finding a person like Bob would be difficult and costly. May take a new person years of experience before he gets to Bob's level. It is in the company's best interest to look after Bob while he is off sick and give him the incentive to keep working at the company. What if Bob was an average employee? Would the company do the same? It is the same with women on maternity leave. The company wants her back. They need to provide her and other employees incentives to continue working. The other fact is once a mother holds her baby for the first time, her priorities immediately change. Now everything she does is for her baby. Her baby needs her more than a babysitter. If she can afford to quit then good for her. BUT many mothers will not know this until they have had the baby. Before the baby they were planning to work but once they held close the bundle of joy their plans change. Most men and some women will not understand this feeling.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Thursday, October 4, 2007, 11:16PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    I'm not sure that woman decide to stay home while on leave, but after four months of bonding with their new baby have a hard time adjusting back to their lives at work and still in the maternal (and hormonal) frame of mind, become more inventive and find another way. As far as benifits AFTER the woman returns to work, what good does that do? Chances are the reason she is working is is because the family needs the money, and the money is needed to pay bills that don't go away for during a leave. Not only that but there are more bills with medical costs and the costs of the new baby. To be fair this wouldn't work for a medical leave either when the person needs their pay check more then ever to pay for their new medical bills.

  • Amy - Thursday, October 4, 2007, 5:47PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 2/5

    I somewhat disagree with this article. First off, what company today offers paid maternity leave up to 100% of your salary for a full six full months?? Tell me the name of that company and I'll be the first to apply for a job!! In fact, I'll never quit that company because I can just imagine the other generous things that they would offer to their employees! I've never heard of any company offering that type of maternity benefits!! The most many companies give is what the law requires-- 6-8 weeks of paid maternity leave of either 100% of your salary, or less. I also have heard that many companies state that once maternity benefits are paid in full, you must come back and work for this company for so many months/ years, or else you will have to pay back a portion of your benefits. This seems like a reasonable request. I don't know if this is true or not, but it may help those companies who do pay a lot of maternity benefits and to those few woman who do milk the system.

  • Lauren - Thursday, October 4, 2007, 5:41PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    Charles, forgive me my somewhat Marxist opinion, but frankly, women (and also Bob) are well within their rights to decide to embrace their lives and take a different path. In my opinion, there is no compensation either monetary or benefit-driven that can adequately repay a person for forty hours a week for at least forty years of their life. Companies make up for it in the long run. Believe me. As a Ph.D. you should understand that by and large corporations don't suffer. They'll do whatever is necessary to protect the bottom line. And furthermore, maybe you and your wife should remember that a job still is, just a job. One last note, which admittedly is one of pure semantics, I think the OED's primary definition of the word "leave" is, "absent from duty by permission", and is exactly the scenario in which you find a woman on maternity leave. Nowhere does the definition mention an obligation to return to duty once that time has expired.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Thursday, October 4, 2007, 5:09PM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    This article and the author are totally out of sync with reality. The comparison with 'Bob' is ridiculous. Bob decides that he doesn't want to work anymore at all and not to do something else. The women on the otherhand quit not because they just don't want to work any more like bob but to take care of the child which by itself is more than a full time job. And after having worked in several different organizations, I can safely say none of them offered any maternity "benefits" except that they don't hire someone else permanently for that position in that time. The only benefit you get is in form of state disability which is definitely not 60% of the pay. the max one can get is approx $400 per week. And most of the employers are very inflexible with women returning to work to allow them to continue working.

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