Mothers share why paid maternity leave matters
“Women who become mothers are left to grapple with changes—in lifestyle, but also in emotions, motivations, and questions of purpose and identity,” writes Amber Lapp, changes “that we feel acutely but are little understood by a world in which the expectation too often is that you take your six weeks of leave (if that) and bounce back to life as before.” One single mother she interviewed who would have preferred to take six months of leave shared that after five weeks of unpaid leave after the birth of a child, she tried to go back to work, but her workplace sent her home because of her doctor’s advice to take six weeks.