Large and In Charge

I think you are right on a moral and ethical level, particularly if you're applying for a job with a small company that's running on a tight budget. But if you're pregnant and need a job and know that your pregnancy should not legally be allowed to be taken under consideration, I can totally see why in practice you would choose not to say anything.

The law is designed to protect the pregnant woman, not the company, based on the principle that the company can afford the financial loss more than the woman who won't have maternity leave if she doesn't get a job. I think that this is just another example of how our laws are designed to place high burdens on employers instead of the government. Same thing with health insurance--it makes no sense for employers to have to shoulder the burden of this cost, and for people lacking a job to go without coverage.

Also, I think that the real problem in the example that you gave in your piece is that the woman chose not to return to work after maternity leave. Which, while also an issue worth discussing, is really separate from the initial question of whether you should 'fess up during the interview.

You, work it, Mom-to-be ;) How fun is that? Never gets old, I tell ya!

It's not really a separate issue because this woman applied for the job without telling anyone she was pregnant, and then she took the full maternity leave with no intention of coming back. Telling your employer that you're coming back to work but then finding that you can't or don't want to is a separate issue, yes, but hiding a pregnancy, taking maternity leave, and then telling your employer on the last day of maternity leave that you're not actually coming back to work next week (which is what this woman did)..that's really uncool. Perfectly legal, but uncool.

On the other points, though, yes, universal healthcare as set up by the government would solve all kinds of problems for both employees AND employers.

My question is this: where do you draw the line, time-wise? Obviously getting a job at, say, 8 months pregnant, or even 4 months pregnant, utilizing maternity leave, and then never returning is a little shady. I suspect this is why FMLA, as I understand it, stipulates that a women must have worked for 12 months for a company to qualify for (a legally protected) maternity leave. But what if you don't know you're pregnant when you get the job? Or what if you get pregnant after having worked for just a few weeks? Should you have to tell your employer if you're not pregnant but are actively trying?

There's too much of a gray area. Women shouldn't be expected to disclose their pregnancies (or their hopes to become pregnant in the near future) when interviewing for a job. A woman might get turned down for a job, subsequently have a miscarriage or find herself otherwise infertile and thus have no baby, and the person who was hired instead of her has a baby nine months later. Now the woman has no baby and no job, and the employer is still screwed because the person they hired instead had a baby herself. See all the wierd scenarios? The reality is, working women of childbearing age commonly get pregnant. They also commonly return to work as productive employees, and those women shouldn't be penalized in any way because some women choose not to return to work or may take advantage of company leave policies.

This is why I agree that it's tremendously bad form to take your maternity leave (implying that you play to return) and then never come back, especially if an employer has been kind enough to give you a maternity leave you haven't legally earned (i.e. one that comes less than 12 months after you started work).

I think the real issue, as Jess mentioned, is that women should be upfront about whether they plan to work for a potential employer for years to come (perhaps with the occasional maternity leave) or whether they are looking for more short-term employment. Whether a woman is pregnant honestly SHOULD be irrelevant to this question, because who's to say what her post-delivery plans are? I know a woman who had a baby and was back at work the same afternoon (she was a professor and had an exam to administer -- and yes, presumably she also had an uncomplicated delivery).

Sara, I totally agree. Again, the bottom line is this: Don't be shady! No one is saying "If you're pregnant you don't have a right to work"; I'm just saying that there are responsible ways to go about the process. If you suspect your pregnancy is going to cause a problem for your employer--be it a scheduling issue, a cash-flow issue, whatever--you probably shouldn't interview there in the first place. I'd say the same thing about someone planning to get married and go on a month-long honeymoon a few weeks after getting hired. (This also happened to the company I worked for. In this case, the employee came back and was very valuable for a very long time, so the risk paid off.)

For women who don't plan to return to work, though, getting a temporary or short-term job at a company that can handle quick turnover is just the more responsible, and smarter, thing to do.

I think we all agree here. Women who are just looking to make some extra cash in the weeks after they have the baby by getting a job at a company with a generous maternity leave policy when they know full well that they won't be returning are definitely being shady.

Still, I can't imagine that that's the majority of cases, especially given that paid maternity leave isn't even mandated by the federal government. In cases where the woman has full intentions of returning after her maternity leave, even if at some later point she changes her mind, I think that in practice it makes perfect sense for her not to raise the issue at the time of interview. Once the job offer is made, she can discuss options with HR or whoever calls to offer her the job.

Fascinating discussion -- as I didn't disclose my pregnancy to many of my clients, and did just what one of the commenters described, slowly tapered off all new projects so my workload upon return was newborn-manageable.

The great thing about web work is the portability.

The day after I returned from the hospital, I was able to successfully participate in a conference call where none of the attendees knew of the new birth.

But that's just me. I would be destroyed if an employee did the shady maternity leave thing.

Great discussion!

Great post, Leah.

I experienced the Shady Maternity Leave thing firsthand at my first job out of college. Who gets screwed the most? The co-workers stuck with all the extra work - DURING the maternity leave (because mama is coming BACK, right? Um, NO.) and THEN during the process of trying to hire a replacement. Let me tell you - Dude - FOUR (FOUR!!) months of being stuck with one less person totally sucks the air out of your social life.

Warning: I am going to wave the Martyr Banner here. When I found out I was pregnant, my husband and I knew I would quit to stay home full-time ("stay" hahahaha, I WISH I got to "stay" home. WTF?). Anyway, I fully had intentions of telling my manager a full month BEFORE MY DUE DATE that I would not be coming back (even though I could have totally played the Shady Maternity Leave game and make out like a bandit).

In the end, because of the job situation, I left 3 months before my son was due, but regardless, I did not play the Shady Maternity Leave game. Why? Because my husband is an entrepreneur who is operating his 2nd business. We see firsthand the effects of employee shenanigans. Folks, employers do not always have deep pockets. Often, they are just your Average Joe trying to support their families.

Wow, I am surprised to hear of a non-profit that not only pays for maternity leave, but does so even for employees who have been employed for less than a month! I have been trying to get pregnant for a while now and would not dream of sharing that with potential employers and I do not believe this sacrifices my integrity. It was hard enough to get a job after being laid off and 7 months of searching; the last thing I could afford was limiting my job options even more by sharing my personal baby plans.

I meant employed for less than a year...

Will head over to the site to check it out, thanks. I think that fog will have burned off before I arrive, but a little coolness would be nice. Here in Toronto the temp will feel like NINETY NINE today! Smog and heat alerts abound. So yay.

I think the most obvious downside to the shady maternity game is that people have long long LONG memories when it comes to those type of shenanigans, putting your last employment reference at risk (as exemplified by cagey's memory of someone pulling that at her first job out of college. People will hate you. For a long time.).

Most women don't stay out of the workforce permanently after they take their 2/howevermany years off. It's a stupid decision, in terms of the bottomline, to pull these types of tricks on the people who'll serve as your last set of professional employment references. It's also extremely risky to lie and say you didn't hold a job when you did (at least for my industry, legal).

It goes beyond uncool. For the majority of women, I think it's a poor long-term economic choice.

People who pull that type of shit are generally on the borderline of having personality disorders IMO. A person of even moderate sense should be able to assess the risks of their decisions since humans are supposed to be long-term thinking self preservationists and whatnot. I can't imagine being dumb enough to have to have something like that explained to me.

Honestly taking off for maternity leave scares me. As I am the only graphic designer for the school I don't exactly have someone else to pass the work onto while I am off on leave. Even on vacation I'm expected to work.
Playing the game only hurts women who are coming back to work. Many of us just don't have a choice. Believe me I would love to quit for a year or two, but it just isn't feasible and I need to know my job (same job) is still there.
I worked so hard to create this position and earn the trust of my coworkers. Leaving for 3-4 months I'm not certain what will happen. Of course at the same time I'm 33.

This post makes me remember places that I have worked, where women returned from maternity leave and suddenly could leave right at 5:00 (while the rest of us had to sometimes work late in the evenings or on weekends). They also got the big promotions.

The issue that hasn't been raised here yet is health care. I think your example sounds shady, but would we be more inclined to accept a planned short-term job masquerading as a planned long-term job if that job is the only feasible way to attain health care as a pregnant woman and for an infant? All us free-lance Americans know that COBRA is a horrible deal and if you have a lapse in coverage getting rejected is a real possibility (a UTI! gasp! No insurance for you). Also the gap for us middle-class folks between who is eligible for 'free' government care and who is making ends meet enough to go to the doctor is not insignificant--I think everyone not on the corporate track knows college grads who don't bother with insurance, thinking they'll just cut costs that way while they're establishing their career. You often have to work at retail jobs like Starbucks and Target for a certain amount of time (though there are different rules for different companies) before you can get their insurance, and I can imagine a whole range of pregnancy possibilities that would make that kind of planning ahead impossible. And if you're in one of the non-profit or free-lance industries and facing thousands of dollars of bills (ultrasound! blood tests! C-section! premature infant! so freakin expensive!) I can imagine getting crafty.

I'm not sure how I feel, but I do know that a) deception sucks, and b) people get selfish when their health and the health of their children is at stake and I am more inclined to forgive them. That our government makes these choices necessary even for those of us who shop at Whole Foods on occasion bothers me a lot.