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Latest stories. Yahoo Life UK. Business Wire. Not only are you dead tired and potentially nauseous, but the federal government's maternity leave policy, and that of many employers, makes it uniquely challenging for pregnant women to change jobs.
An estimated 58 percent of companies in the U. In some cases it may be a single week. But just because your company offers it doesn't mean you're eligible. Many employers only extend full benefits, including paid maternity leave , to employees after they've been at the company for a year. That makes it impossible for most pregnant women changing jobs, who, scientifically, are only pregnant for nine months and would therefore need these benefits before they're eligible.
And whether you get paid leave or not, changing jobs while pregnant comes with no official guarantee of whether your new gig will be there when you get back: The Family and Medical Leave Act FMLA , the federal policy that protects a pregnant woman's job or a similar job at the same company for 12 weeks of unpaid leave, also only kicks in after an employee has been at a job for a year and only applies to companies with more than 50 employees.
Wondering whether you're going to be replaced in your post-birth days is a daunting prospect, emotionally and financially, especially when your costs are about to go way up hospital bills, child care, diapers, etc. It can make it tempting to stay at a place where you've already proven yourself and have logged enough time to quality for any benefits. On top of concerns about job security and benefits, job-hunting during pregnancy presents an additional set of anxieties: Will employers judge you on your talent — or disqualify you because you'll be taking a big chunk of time off in the very near future?
Pregnancy discrimination is unlawful, but it's still a persistent source of stress for pregnant interviewees. So why bother applying for a job while pregnant? For some women, having a baby is an incentive to find a more family-friendly company or pay the bills in order to finish college or stay on track in a high-powered career that's all about leaning in.
And, of course, both job opportunities and pregnancies can come out of nowhere — if a job search or an interview process takes a few months, you might end up pregnant at your final interview, even if you weren't planning on it. I got pregnant at 19, 2. I'd never had a sex ed class. I was born and raised in a rural little town called Hatch, New Mexico, and my family is Mexican and really traditional, so they didn't believe in talking about safe sex either. The only options I was seeing were to have my mom take care of my baby until I graduated or quit school, which I didn't want to do.
I was majoring in psychology and education and wanted to go into education, specifically intervention for lower-income communities like Hatch. Everybody laughs at me when I say it, but I didn't want to be another statistic. Coming from a rural community, a lot of girls would get pregnant and give up and go back to their families.
I was thinking about my daughter. If I gave up college and she went through the same situation, she would be like, "Well, my mom gave up, why can't I? My partner, Arik, had come out of the military and was working at a warehouse, but things were tight. I was already working at Payless Shoe Source, but when I got to be around four months pregnant, and I got bigger, I couldn't do a lot of lifting and the schedule was really unpredictable, which was hard with my classes.
I needed something that would work with school and being pregnant, but it's really hard to get a part-time job that will give you time off after labor and guarantee your job when you come back.
Once the baby came, I needed shifts that would get out before six, when most daycares close. I did a lot of interviews, and I would always wait until the end to tell them, "I'm pregnant. They'd say they needed people who could be flexible about their schedule and work long hours if need be. I never got any of the jobs. Out of the blue, I got an alumni email from New Mexico MESA, a nonprofit that helps lower-income high school students pursue a higher education in science and tech, saying they were looking for a part-time office assistant.
It was flexible hours, no heavy lifting. It was perfect. When I went to go interview, I put on a fluffy shirt and kinda tried to hide that I was pregnant. It was my first child, so I wasn't really showing. It just looked like I was fat. I interviewed with the deputy director, and when she asked if there was anything that would conflict with getting this job, I told her I was four months pregnant.
She just said, "That's fine," and even said I could take time off when the baby came. She asked if I planned to return to work, and I said, "Yes. Of course. After I got the job, my life just became really stable.
I thought a pregnant girl recruiting for a club next to all of the sorority girls would throw off a lot of the students, but it didn't. Sometimes I'd feel sick in the afternoon at work, and I'd have to go home. I came back to school two weeks later. I didn't get paid because I was part-time, but MESA was great enough to give me a month off to just focus on the baby and school.
I did a lot of online classes so I could stay home with Arika, and Arik would take care of her while I did homework. Getting the job at MESA enabled me to not only finish school, but actually provide some sort of income for my family. We moved to Austin recently, and I'm working at a nonprofit, sort of like MESA, and getting ready to start graduate school in August to get a master's in health education at Texas State. Arika is 2 years old. She's a little dancer, and she loves to sing.
After my mom saw me take care of my child and finish school and work at the same time, she says she looks at other girls back in my hometown that are thinking about giving up and tells them, "Yoliyy did it.
Why can't you? I started my new job at about 25 weeks pregnant. I was working at The Wall Street Journal for almost seven years, and I wasn't actively looking to leave. But when this opportunity at The Intercept , an online news publication, came around, I was intrigued. It was a role with more responsibility at a company that's doing really interesting work. When I started talking to the recruiter, I wasn't pregnant yet, and when I started interviewing, I was pregnant but didn't know it.
I didn't get the job offer until my second trimester, around the time I started telling family and friends I was pregnant. I was really, really nervous about telling The Intercept because I wasn't sure how they'd respond. But when I did tell them, after I got the offer, they were just like, "Congratulations," and didn't see any obstacle at all, which made me really respect the company. I still struggled with whether or not to take the job. I'd spent most of my 20s at the Journal.
It was a very stable and good job, and I really liked my coworkers. And of course I was pregnant and worried about making another big change. But when I talked to my mentors, they all told me, "Don't be afraid to take risks. The Family Medical Leave Act, which gives 12 weeks of unpaid leave to employees for specified family and medical reasons including birth and is, as I realized, more difficult to benefit from than one might imagine.
Though we continue to heap praise on various companies offering leave, there is little conversation about what I experienced: the realization that, if not for the generosity and understanding of my new employer, I would have been unable to leave my current job for my dream job because it would have put me below the mandated 12 months and 1, hours required to qualify for leave.
Recent polling has shown that millennials, on average, will change jobs four times in their first decade after college, compared to two times for Gen Xers. Combine this with the fact that women are waiting longer to become pregnant in , the average age for mothers at the time of their first birth rose to There may be light at the end of this tunnel.
The majority of Americans are finally in agreement about paid parental leave, and it has become a major talking point in the presidential race. In fact, New York Sen. Even so, that only brings us closer to catching up to international standards. So, as my baby careens into toddlerhood and conversations begin about the possibility of a second child, I think back to those first few weeks — not just the seemingly impossible challenge they were, but how lucky I am to be in a position that affords me the opportunity to take the time to do them all over again without worrying about finances, antiquated workplace attitudes about leave or stunting my career.
And I think about all the women trapped in positions similar to the one I was in just two years ago, paralyzed by the impossible choice of fulfilling their professional goals or starting their families.
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