In my business, a pregnancy ends field work until the return from leave, so the taxpayer pays for someone else to pick up slack for about 11 months.
In the US Navy, pregnancy immediately halts deployment on a ship, and again someone else is FORCED to sea duty outside normal rotation.
Neither of these practices is likely to change because voters don't deal with the situation.

My experience in the workplace as someone with no children is that I am frankly sick to death of covering for certain coworkers, male and female, who constantly have childcare issues, sick children, events they have to leave work to attend for their children, etc. my time is perceived as less valuable, and perhaps my life is perceived as less valuable, than that of my coworkers with children.

If I were a hiring manager, however, gender and parenthood would not enter into my decision-making. Not only because that would be illegal, but because in my experience women of childbearing age and women and men who already have children make excellent employees and coworkers. My issue is simply that some parents use children as an excuse to be away from the office often, and it's an excuse that employers seem very willing to except. If a mom wants to play hooky and she says her child is sick or a dad says he can't come to work because he is chaperoning a field trip, that seems to be just fine. It's interesting that managers who have children seem to accept these excuses with less grace than those managers who do not. I would assume that managers with children got to be where they are because they did not miss a lot of time and a lot of work functions in favor of staying home with their children, and if they don't understand why their employees do. Managers without children, on the other hand, seem to see parenthood as some sort of mystery or higher calling and seem much happier to let their employees do whatever they say they need to do when it comes to their families.

What makes sense? FMLA, where companies are required to offer it, allows 12 weeks off unpaid. I don't make a distinction between someone taking this 12 weeks as maternity/paternity leave or taking those 12 weeks because he or she is seriously ill or injured. Beyond that, I don't believe that pregnant women or parents merit additional consideration.

Quick note, this entire response is coming from a phone so please excuse any glaring writing errors.

Came across this article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/10660612/Women-are-almost-42-per-cent-more-likely-to-take-sick-days-than-men.html
It doesn't mention if they exclude maternity leave, I suspect they do. But almost 50% more sick days off is significant.

As to personally I have a story. I used to work for Naval Research Lab. They being gov't had an extremely generous vacation + sick leave policy, They also had a shared sick leave policy, if someone had used up all their leave, others could donate extra leave to them. When I left I had a month and a half of sick leave saved up, looked over the list of waiting recipients, all women, at a military research lab with probably 5 men to every woman.

generally wary of hiring a woman of childbearing age ... experience in the workplace?

When my wife interviewed for her last job, she told the hiring managers that she didn't want kids, so that wasn't a problem.

2 years later, she was on bed rest for pre-eclampsia...

I dunno, how do countries with lots of maternity leave do it? There've been a few articles about the Scandanavian countries recently in which they discuss the fact that after the first year (which is usually off on maternity leave) there are virtually no SAHMs (suggesting people do indeed hire these women)... how do they manage it?

NicoleK, I would be interested in any studies you find that address that question.

I know at least 2 smallish business owners that will not hire any woman under 45(preferably 50) for any reason whatsoever. Of course they will interview them etc. They try very hard to find women over age 45 so they can not be accused of sex discrimination(they actively search for them).

My husband prefers no women under 40 in my husband's stores. We've had so many issues with younger women working there versus men. We're also small enough to not have to follow all the leave laws.

That said, I was one of two people in my particular work group (almost exclusively women) who had young children not in at least junior high. Somehow I managed to be the only one not missing work for my kids, the one exception being when my son had surgery on a Friday and I took part of the day off. The other women, including those without kids were always missing work and calling out sick and I was expected to pick up the slack and cover for them repeatedly at work. Yet somehow I was the one that got laid off and they did not, although I suspect that was because I had been with the company longer and had the highest wage.

I used to always manage in interviews to mention I did not have kids, because I know a lot of women who use it as an excuse to slack off and disappear from work repeatedly, and I don't blame managers for not wanting to deal with that.

Well, I have kids, I have taken maternity leave and I currently work outside the home full time, as does my husband. But I work for a company in which almost everyone has kids. There is tolerance for people occasionally leaving a bit early to go to their kids' soccer game, or working from home to stay with a sick child, as long as the work gets done. Work doesn't get done? Not good, no matter what the reason.

My take on this has always been that if you want to rise to the top of a given company/industry, you have to be willing to work long hours and take on time-consuming assignments. You're going to be able to do that effectively if 1) you have no children or 2) you have children and have a stay-at-home spouse (or one who has a very part-time, very flexible career). I don't have a burning need to be at the top of the company -- I want to do a good job with what I'm given, and my managers generally seem happy with my work (and tell me they are happy with my work ethic), but there are certain positions that just aren't going to work well with the fact that I don't want to work around the clock. But at a large enough company, you need a certain population of people who are good employees, but who don't want to be CEO one day. I'm part of that population.

I have concluded that the only way to have childcare issues not occasionally affect your job if you're part of a two-career couple is to live in the same city as both your mother and mother-in-law who are both not working and dying to care for your offspring. Every other arrangement is occasionally going to fall through. Daycare? Great until your kid gets sick, plus limited hours. Nanny? Great until your nanny gets sick, plus much more expensive. The key is to do a good job and be willing to go the extra mile in general, so that when the nanny has a car accident on the way to work and can't make it in, your boss is fine with you taking a conference call from home while your kids are distracted by some unaccustomed Disney Junior.

I will point out, though, that the maternity leave in the U.K. (where this study was conducted) is far more extensive -- and tougher for a business to handle -- than that in the U.S. I am somewhat amused by the people who insist that the U.S. is committing a human rights violation (or almost) by not guaranteeing European/Canadian-level maternity leave. Guess who has the highest birth rate? It's not the Scandinavian countries -- it's the U.S. Maybe that's a coincidence, but I don't think so. Longer maternity leave may make existing parents happier, but it doesn't seem to encourage more people to become parents. If you're concerned about your society's ability to support an aging population, ample parental leave doesn't seem to be the best strategy...

"I dunno, how do countries with lots of maternity leave do it?"

No studies but my guesses.
Let's take a look at Norway, it's a small country, about 5 million people, smaller than NYC. Smaller populations are easier to socially manage. If someone starts abusing the system society notices and does something about it, without everyone crying racist.
They are a major exporter of oil/nat gas with nice trade agreements with the rest of EU. Giving them a trade surplus. Some things are easier to do when money is coming into your country.

Labor relations is a realm in which social mores interact with economic forces. Investing workers with a claim to leave times as a function of their status as workers helps set general social expectations re the balance between work and domestic life.

What you have here is a leave time contingent upon the employee's sex and life-cycle, so it creates a differential in the imputed value of the employee. The decision-making of the employer is only a problem in the context of a legal regime wherein decisions on hiring, promotion, compensation, discipline, and dismissal are second-guessed by lawyers. Strip the lawyers of their franchise to meddle and allow employers to make the actuarial calculations which work for their businesses.

When I left I had a month and a half of sick leave saved up, looked over the list of waiting recipients, all women, at a military research lab with probably 5 men to every woman.

News flash. Men and women have different objects at work, interact with the workplace in different ways, and have strong preferences regarding the sort of work they wish to do and wish to learn. That's to be expected and is generally benign. The trouble is that the law allows attorneys to extort money from employers in fear of jury trial crapshoots, and the law carries with it the assumption that men and women are interchangeable.

The Democratic Party, in its capacity as the electoral vehicle of trial lawyers, has insisted on gender-norming of performance scores in the military and public safety occupations, as if these agencies did not have real goals and had to be conscripted into someone else's social fantasy.

@marion-re human rights violations for lack of maternity leave:

I have friends that post that on Facebook. I guess if we had paid leave we probably would have tried to get pregnant much sooner (which may have been better for my health and I would have had a better chance for another; maybe that is their argument).

In the US Navy, pregnancy immediately halts deployment on a ship, and again someone else is FORCED to sea duty outside normal rotation.
Neither of these practices is likely to change because voters don't deal with the situation.

It's likely that voters are not concerned with the matter. It's the business of officials to make these decisions in the public interest. The corps of Democratic pols is shot through with purblind ideologues and the Republicans on issues like this are craven in the face of the media stirring up trouble.

> I dunno, how do countries with lots of
> maternity leave do it? There've been a
> few articles about the Scandanavian
> countries recently in which they
> discuss the fact that…

…The fact that their international defense is paid for and provided by the United States of America?

Is that what you were going to say? That not having to worry about that allows them to pretend to be a socialist success story?

Is that what you were going to talk about?

No?

> News flash. Men…

Too late, we hate you already.

Because "News flash."

Also, Words.with.dots.to.convey.pomposity.

As if!

> the one exception being when my son
> had surgery on a Friday and I took
> part of the day off.

Forgiven!

The fact that their international defense is paid for and provided by the United States of America?

Sweden's never been a formal ally of the United States. That aside, the difference between American allocations to military expenditure (~4.7% of domestic product since the end of the Cold War, with year to year variations) vs. Scandinavian expenditures (~1.4% typically) is dwarfed by higher per capita production levels in the United States. Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland have a per capita income 25-33% lower than ours. Norway has a higher income, but the entirety of the difference and then some is attributable to natural resources rents.

While we are at it, since the end of the Cold War, between 70% and 85% of American military manpower has been billeted in the continental United States. About 4% was billeted in Germany, last I checked, and IIRC Germany has about 5x as many American servicemen resident as the European country next in line.

> Sweden's never been a formal ally of
> the United States. That aside,

Naw, keep it right there in the center: They haven't needed to be. That's kinda the point... American dominance has brought peace and comfort to people who don't like us very much, and who aren't going to carry their own weight anyway.

> the difference between American allocations
> to military expenditure (~4.7% of domestic
> product since the end of the Cold War, with
> year to year variations) vs. Scandinavian
> expenditures (~1.4% typically) is dwarfed
> by higher per capita production levels
> in the United States.

Have no clue what you're about here. Yes, Americans get more done. Stipulated, m'kay?

> About 4% was billeted in Germany, last
> I checked, and IIRC Germany has about 5x
> as many American servicemen resident as
> the European country next in line.

Again, what precisely is your point?

BTW-- Here's my favorite summer 2014 quiz! Can you identify these honeys without Google image searching? They sure look fertile, don't they?

Crid, my points are perfectly straightforward. I can explain this to you. I cannot comprehend it for you.

I mean, yeah... We were big in Germany, but not just on behalf of Germans:

The concept of a major tank battle along the Fulda Gap was a predominant element of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) war planning during the Cold War, and weapons such as nuclear tube and missile artillery, the nuclear recoilless gun/tactical launcher Davy Crockett, Special Atomic Demolition Munitions, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, and A-10 ground attack aircraft were developed with such an eventuality in mind.

> my points are perfectly straightforward.

Naw, yer not makin' a lick o' sense.

Besides, you didn't answer my Summer 2014 Foto Quiz.

work for a company in which almost everyone has kids. There is tolerance for people occasionally leaving a bit early to go to their kids' soccer game, or working from home to stay with a sick child, as long as the work gets done.

Marion, that pretty much describes my workplace.

Personally, as a 30-year-old childless woman, I do not mind "covering" for people. Here's why: In the past year or so I've covered for someone on maternity leave as well as my boss when she took disability leave to be treated for cancer. And, when a (male) coworker suddenly needed to take a week off for a child's medical emergency, I learned his job and covered for him.

As a result, I learned four people's jobs, got to interact with our CEO a LOT more and used that experience to weasel my way into a promotion that required several years more experience than I had and a raise in January of this year. Plus doing all those favors helped me out a lot when it came time to divvy up my workload so I can go to Japan for 2.5 weeks in October.

Admittedly, I work at a company where hard work and taking responsibility are rewarded. I imagine it would suck to work for a place where someone did exactly what I did and didn't get anything ni return for it.

Art Deco, don't confuse poor widdle Crid with details about different countries. Germany, Sweden, whatever, it's all the same to him. Give him a pat on the head and tell him he's a good boy.

Besides, you didn't answer my Summer 2014 Foto Quiz.

Which part of no one wants to do your stupid quiz didn't you get? You really are slow.

On topic - I'm childless and will remain so. Yes, my colleagues sometimes need to duck out early for their kids. So do I for date night with my partner. As long as the work gets done and everyone pulls their fair share of the weight, no one gives a shit. In twenty years, I've never had a bad experience with someone abusing their "kid advantage" to get out of work. Heard of it, yes, seen it no.

Slater & Gordon

That's enough to make me turn off. In the Anglosphere, they are well known as ambulance chasers of the highest order. Methinks they've just identified their next class action.

LTW- You're not from America. You're not an American.

At my current employer I have no problem. At the last place it was definitely a problem. I would say about 25% of the women didn't pull their wieght with the kid excuse. One really bad offender worked closely with me...we were each others cover person yet she was never able to cover me. She was on a reduced hour contract (e.g. ~30 hours a week) so she was limited and she only came into the office on tuesday and thursday...Friday was totally off ... because she had personal things to due. Then her kid had soccer practice on Thursday so she started cutting out early on Thursday. Which meant I had to cover her work that was not done for that week. When I talked to my manager "I was not being a team player and I needed to straighten up or hit the road" The resolved itself with after a new trouble ticket system was put into production...the CIO noticed I averaged one 1 cover take and 1 cover resolve for her per a week...she had 2 contacts, 0 takes, 0 resolves for the year (e.g. the help desk only reacher her twice to cover for me and both times she had said she could help the customer before they turned the call over to her).

Oh noes! Crid found me out. Imagine my dismay.

We just need to be clear about you. Other kinds of people aren't as good as Americans... Even though they show up sometimes in our salons and fora, because their own are so boring.

We need to remember who's who and what's what.

I know plenty of people who have gone in early all week so they could take a couple hours off one afternoon to make it to Susie's class play. In many cases, the extra hours are beyond what is taken off. I think of this as a good thing.

I also know many people who abuse the system - whatever the excuse is (kids, pets, you name it). The problem isn't staying home when little Susie is sick - that's life (and many people do that for elderly parents, very ill spouses, etc). The problem is people who abuse the system. These people will do it because they can. It has nothing to do with having kids.

That said, I can understand people who don't want to hire young women. It is expensive to train an employee, no matter the field. There is a certain period when they just aren't fully productive (plus interviewing, training that takes other employees' time, etc).

The internet knows no borders Crid, so apparently I'm free to comment unless our hostess bans me. Admittedly, baiting you is fun and draws me back.

You might want to think about securing your own southern border before worrying about me invading your fora. We've dealt with economic migrants and stopped the flow. Let me know when you achieve that.

You being better than other people and all. I'm sure you can achieve that.

That said, I can understand people who don't want to hire young women.

Shannon M. Howell, I agree with you to a point. My experience is coloured by the way my job works. Basically, if you get it done, everyone is happy and no one cares about the details. You did some from home? Who cares. Hours? Not really important. Is it fixed? Well done!

I've often said if I had a job in retail I'd last a week before I got sacked. I wouldn't hesitate to hire a young woman for the sort of work I do as long as they had drive. But I guess that doesn't apply everywhere.