Or why maternity pay should be taken out of the hands of employers and guaranteed by the state

Only by ensuring maternity provision for all women through the state can we remove the stigma of pregnancy in the workplace. Where the onus is placed on employers, rather than the state, women will always be discriminated against. We need to accept women have babies and move on with policies designed to protect and empower women – and their children – rather than reinforcing a patriarchal system with a short term view that sees pregnancy as a nuisance, a drain on resource (it’s not – we’re creating resource, but never mind) and shores up the status quo by enabling only the rich – or those married to someone rich – to be able to afford children. Universal provision of good childcare would do much to redress the balance.

I came across and commented on a blog, “Pregnant then screwed“, this week, which gives vent to myriad stories from women who have suffered at the hands of post-partum discrimination in the workplace with little opportunity for redress. It really pissed me off that so many women are allowed to feel like this. Although I escaped the pain of post-partum discrimination – at 25, I was too junior and poorly paid to even bother returning to work for a good few years – I feel keenly that a society that doesn’t support its mothers deserves the problems it stores up for the future.

And yesterday, reading this article in the Guardian on how not to judge a pregnant colleague –  I became enraged enough on behalf of half the population to question why women having babies is viewed as an aberration to the normal business of things at all? How has being judged become a normal part of being pregnant, rather than motherhood itself being seen as a normal and necessary part of life, deserving of society’s full and unquestioning support?

Sadly, from where I’m sat, having hard fought to achieve equality – and understanding – in the workplace as a young mother, it seems part and parcel of the whole process. From when we have children, to how we do it, to who we have them with, it feels as though every bit of the process is up for scrutiny, comment, judgement and condemnation – in almost gynecological detail – with only a narrow set of criteria seemingly acceptable to the powers that be, for women bringing a baby into the world.

A big part of the problem is money, of course. Society’s distaste for mothers who fail, for whatever reasons, to make ends meet is demonstrably the cause of many of its problems. Childhood poverty is the biggest indicator for poor life outcomes that inevitably burden all of society., so it surely makes sense that supporting mothers generates long term social benefit? And yet patriarchy’s answer – that poor or, perhaps just younger women should probably think twice before breeding – is laughable. Try telling that to millions of years of evolution. Women have babies, period.

And when they do it may be less in their control than many would like to believe. The age when we have children is determined by myriad factors, not least the age our own parents had children. Biological pre-determiners notwithstanding, even whether or not our own parents got divorced can be a factor in the age we eventually procreate. Some babies are planned. Some are not. Yet all deserve our support. But once we see that having babies is not so much a choice but a more or less inevitable outcome of being human, we can see how solutions to some of society’s deepest problems emerge.

Still, the hangover from yesterday’s moral judgments casts women who reproduce without material support on the social scrapheap , with less well-off mothers with multiple children unfairly looked down upon by those who have better networks and higher income (Katie Hopkins, I’m glaring at you). And yet economic provision for mothers still favours the wealthy.

Consider the way maternity pay is organised today. Women who command bigger salaries generally command better maternity packages, with statutory pay falling well below average salaries and maternity allowance for those who do not meant the criteria falling far shorter, shoring up the status quo. For women who fall through the cracks, blamed and despised for their poor so-called life choices, the writing is practically on the womb for the future of their unborn children. And yet these are the women who, lacking other options are more likely to have greater numbers of children, which has a negative impact on society for a number of reasons – hence, perhaps the misplaced moral judgement.

However, a salient point is, the better opportunities a woman has, the fewer babies she will produce – a fact born out in almost every highly-developed nation where birthrates are slipping below replacement level: Italy, Japan, the UK. Give women better options, and many naturally stop at two, if not before.

Yet few women achieve total financial independence, particularly by the time they may wish (and are biologically programmed, lest we forget) to become mothers, and for many who rely on their partners to support them, it makes less and less financial sense to return to work at all, what with the cost of childcare and given generalised income disparities between men and women. And it’s hardly surprising employers are wary of taking on women for mid-senior roles when the assumption is that they may not last the distance and hit their bottom line..

It can cost employers a lot to have mothers on their staff,  with most companies offering a package that sits somewhere between statutory maternity leave, which offers 90% pay for six weeks and around £138 quid a week for 33 weeks, and a larger proportion of their wage for up to a year – but even so, most packages fall far short of median wages, leaving new mothers in general poorer than the rest of the population. And increasingly companies have cut back on maternity packages, meaning women are feeling less empowered in their choices about when or even how they can afford to to have a baby.

For many women, it is simply unaffordable to have children at their biological peak, which in itself has big costs attached to society. But because a lot of these costs are not passed on to businesses – like the cost, for example, of poorer health while looking after small children, or the cost of looking after elderly parents, or sacrificing the care that grandparents can provide children or simply the additional cost of a more care intensive pregnancy – they end up back on the state – such as the NHS funding fertility treatment, for example, or providing elder care for those whose own children are stuck in the toddler trenches.

Yet we have ended up in a situation where women who have children younger are  seen as a problem, for all they may actually be benefiting society with healthier pregnancies and future generation of workers (which, is, if we remember, necessary and normal for a functioning society – not a self-indulgent choice, as many would have us believe.)

It has created a situation where many women feel they must be financially successful before having children, and so society judges those that aren’t – at a time when attaining financial independence – having a good income, affording decent housing – is generally happening later in life. In order to afford to take the time to have a baby – which inevitably means a period outside of normal working capacity, during a women’s limited years of peak fertility and crucially peak working years, many are forced to make a choice between finding a partner who can support them, relying on paltry state handouts – or taking an evolutionary risk by delaying motherhood altogether.

So, while a market based economy naturally fuels patriarchy, it also encourages the trend towards older mothers – which in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, except that it is skews the market against those who, whether by accident or design, have children younger – who risk having their career and future earnings shot in the foot, struggling to raise kids on a lower income – or failing to achieve the same life goals, such as buying a house for example, of those that aren’t saddled with kids. This is how market forces shores up social inequality.

And so we end up as a society reinforcing negative attitudes towards woman who fall outside of a small, increasingly small socially-designated time frame for motherhood: that biological sliver between 33 and 37 when women are more likely to have made themselves a nest egg, but whose own eggs are, sorry to say, physically on the wane.  With two children by the age of 27, It took me five years to return to the workplace, and only by hook or by crook, clawed my way up to a salary that  justified by my qualifications – and crucially, matched my peer group. But I was lucky – with a supportive partner with a reasonable income, to be able to do this. But then, I ask you, why should I pay a social penalty because I provided the world with two healthy people (who will pay tax and contribute to society  – as long as they don’t  go on to develop problems as a result of my increased stress while they were young?) Plenty, sadly do pay that penalty and the repercussions can last generations.

But these days even women lucky enough to have jumped the necessary hurdles before they have children, can’t guarantee they won’t be cruelly dispossessed by a market-based economy that generally sees employing mothers as a poor investment.

Today’s Conservative driven laisser faire economy is inherently discriminatory towards mothers for the same reason it exploits the young and tosses aside the old. In its most basic terms, its race-to-the bottom mentality shores up discrimination against mothers because those who have children may not be able to work as hard as those who don’t. It doesn’t matter which way you spin it, or however you legislate for shared parental care – this is how employers view it because historically, there is a grain of truth in it. It’s hard to be a working mother. It is so hard that many are discouraged from even trying. But given the right support, it’s perfectly achievable. The problem is that, for small and medium sized businesses looking at short term profit margins, this support often costs too much.

Add to that the cost of maternity leave, flexi-time, hiring maternity cover, holding open a job and so on, and you can see why employers shy away from taking on women in their childbearing years, particularly for senior roles. And it is a feeling borne out by fact, with half of women being made to feel guilty about taking maternity leave and 60% of women feeling their careers were derailed when they had a baby, according to this article in the Independent.

Until we see a separation of maternity provision and the workplace, we will always see discrimination against mothers-to-be, mothers and women more generally. For this reason, I don’t think the workplace should be responsible for maternity pay of any kind.

Having a baby needs to be seen as a necessary part of life and catered for as such by a socially forward looking state. In particular, but not exclusively, with universal childcare provision from after the first year, and state funding up to the national average wage guaranteed by the state during the first year, to recognise the women’s role in bringing into the world the next generation (of taxpayers and workers, I may add).  In theory, it would pay for itself by keeping more money within companies allowing staff (read women) to be paid better, raising more revenue in tax. This would avoid anyone being judged – or losing their job because of their pregnancies, and in theory, help to iron out gender-based wage inequality. If the government want to be arseholes about it, the state could cap maternity funding after the first two children.  However, such a policy risks discriminating against larger families, which may, in themselves be better for society, by being more efficient than smaller families, creating expert mothers and economies of scale.

But by taking the onus off workplaces to fund maternity care, and enabling women to return to their jobs with little costs except time to the employer, society’s innate early years inequality which reinforces class barriers would be ironed out, by literally rewarding women for their labours, and making it cost effective to funnel them back into the workplace when their physical job of nurturing a newborn ends at around a year.

In order to change anything,  however, we have to make the fundamental paradigm shift in attitudes toward motherhood. Mothers are not a community of slackers pushing prams rather than pulling their weight, nor is having a baby some kind of doss that confers no social benefits to the wider world. It is not a selfish and self-serving pursuit that fulfills the needs of the individual alone. 

Mothers and subsequent children are only a social burden when we refuse to provide them with universally guaranteed support that recognises our vital role in society – rather than being  palmed off with a saccharine message in an overpriced card on a single day of the year, and telling us we should do it all for love.