A few million news cycles ago, which is to say a couple of weeks ago, we heard about Elizabeth Warren’s experience with pregnancy discrimination. When she was 19, she took a job teaching in a public school. She loved it and was good at it. But when it became known that she was pregnant, the job was no longer hers. Whether you believe she was forced out or voluntarily resigned says a lot about your political affiliations; ultimately, it doesn’t say anything about the reality of what happened to Warren, and after a flurry of heated op-eds, that national conversation has fallen to the wayside.
But had it continued, we might have embarked on a broader discussion. Pregnancy and childbirth can have a negative impact on parents in the workforce even when no outright discrimination is involved. Many people have stories of how having a baby affected their career paths. I’ve got one, too. And I’ve got three spoilers for you: 1.) Women are affected more than men. 2.) It’s not for the better. 3.) As in so many cases, the lower-paid you are to begin with, the more you stand to suffer.
When I was 30, I interviewed for a job at a women’s college. A few days after that interview, I learned I was pregnant. I made a quick calculation — should I call and let them know about this new information? I didn’t. I knew it would be illegal for them to rescind a job offer, but if they hadn’t offered me the job yet, I figured this news could count against me.
I didn’t feel any guilt about my decision not to tell them. That’s because I had no plans to leave when my baby was born. The job seemed perfect in many ways for a new parent — it was only 17.5 hours a week, allowing me to continue writing on the side, and the amount of daycare my baby would need was minimal. I had every intention of staying, were the job offered to me — which it soon was. I happily accepted.
Then I met with the human resources department, and learned that the college offered a different set of maternity benefits for faculty and staff. Faculty got many more weeks of paid leave than staffers did. A few months later, when I started investigating daycare options, I learned just how expensive the on-campus daycare was. To sign my child up there would have nearly wiped out my entire salary, even for the few hours I would have needed it. I might have stayed solely for the health insurance. But the employee contribution to my premiums were pro-rated because I was part-time, requiring far more out of my pocket. It literally didn’t add up.
So, after the baby was born, I quit. It was my decision, of course. No one forced me out. But I didn’t leave the job because I’d fallen in love with my baby (although I had); I left because I wasn’t an idiot. I’ll bet you that if you faced the same set of options, you would decide to leave, too.
None of these details are anywhere on my resume. A future employer might reasonably conclude that I “chose” to “stay home” with my baby, and technically I did. I recognize that there was real privilege baked in to my circumstances. Because I was able to up my freelance writing and editing work, I didn’t immediately have to look for a full-time job, and wasn’t forced to make do with substandard childcare.
But even someone with my level of privilege is faced with a stark reality upon giving birth. Other industrialized nations support new parents. Ours doesn’t, and the burden falls disproportionately to women. Standardized paid parental leave, universal childcare, and single-payer healthcare, things that are offered in many other countries, would have changed the history of my career path. My “choice” to leave was a choice in name only. Many women like me “choose” to “stay home” because it’s the better of two imperfect options. And then women forego years of work experience and pay raises, so when they reenter the workforce, they’ve lost meaningful ground.
It’s a setup. The laws are somewhat better today than they were when Warren got fired, but even then, much of the discrimination was less than overt, giving people plausible deniability later. To be clear, the college I worked at did nothing illegal. My point is that even when the laws are ostensibly nondiscriminatory, our culture around those laws is still inherently sexist, classist, and anti-family.
That baby I was pregnant with? She’s now 18 — legally a grown woman. When we give birth to our children, we hope to give them all the opportunities the world has to offer, and I have tried to do exactly that. But our lack of decent family policy means this country offers fewer opportunities to some than others. That was true when Elizabeth Warren was 19. It was true when I was 30. And it’s still true today.
Naomi Shulman’s work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post and Yankee Magazine, as well as on NEPR and WBUR. Follow her on Twitter: @naomishulman.