Maternity Leave, or lack thereof

Several people have asked if Sara will continue working after the baby is born. Our current thinking is that she will, primarily because I'm still in grad school and not earning too much money. The next question is usually about maternity leave. How much time off will she take?

While certainly a reasonable question, this tends to stir up some strong opinions so don't be surprised if you get an earful from us after asking! To understand, one first needs to consider how maternity leave works in this country. Thanks to the FMLA, Sara can take up to 12 weeks off work and not lose her job. That's it as far as maternity leave goes. She gets no pay and if she still wants to get benefits (e.g., health care insurance) during this time, she not only needs to pay her normal contribution, but also the employer's share as well. Fun stuff.

Some people might wonder why one would complain about such things. After all, why should one expect to be given paid time off. And, even more, why should one expect to be given lots of paid time off. Well, one reason why one might expect this would be because pretty much every other country does offer this kind of benefit. Consider this quote on the issue:

"To put it another way, out of 168 nations in a Harvard University study last year, 163 had some form of paid maternity leave, leaving the United States in the company of Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland."

You can find this and more information in this USA Today article. There's also a wikipedia page with statistics on this issue from around the world. If we lived in Canada Sara could take 50 weeks off work, while earning 55% of her salary. If we lived in Mexico Sara could take 12 weeks off work, while earning 100% of her salary.

Getting back to the original question, Sara does plan to take some time off work. Mostly like it will be 12 weeks or very close to it. However, we're still working out the details on all of this and on how she will ease back into a work schedule.