Motherhood is a joyful journey, but it also brings with it plenty of demands — from serious physical and emotional trauma to hormonal shifts to learning how to care for a new baby. Moms deal with those demands immediately after giving birth, which is why they need to go on maternity leave so that they can take some time to recover.
Unfortunately, it seems as if some companies still don’t take maternity leaves seriously. Some might even think of these as vacations where women do nothing but rest all day.
In a viral LinkedIn post, Anna Whitehouse, a journalist and founder of the parenting website Mother Pukka, addresses businesses that seem to dismiss the importance of maternity (or paternity) leave. Whitehouse blasts the notion that mothers take maternity leaves to rest — rather, it is when they take on their toughest and most important job.
“A reminder to businesses: Maternity/paternity leave is not ‘a holiday,’” Whitehouse begins. “It’s not ‘a nice break’ and it is not time off. It’s a heady cocktail of anticipation, expectation, arrival and survival.”
Whitehouse also talks about how being a mom is a 24/7 job. “Every second you are needed — if not in person, in mind. It is a job. Without sick days. Without fair remuneration. It is the most privileged position in the world but it takes balls, guts (often with no glory), boobs and any other extremity you can put to work.”
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She then describes the emotional highs and lows of being a parent. “It’s the starkest of contrasts. It’s hobbling to the park post-birth, riding an oxytocin high; returning home, crumpling into fetal position, succumbing to a postnatal low.”
Despite all that, motherhood is also a rewarding job. “It’s life in its purest, ugliest, most startlingly beautiful form and it is raising others higher, above your hunger, above your exhaustion, above your needs,” Whitehouse says. “It is raising the next generation.”
We’re sure that moms everywhere can relate to Whitehouse’s sentiments. Being a mom is a difficult responsibility, and without the right support from family, friends, and the workplace, it can be overwhelming and isolating. Striving to understand the ordeal that mothers undergo when they’re on maternity leave — instead of assuming that they are taking a break from work to go on a vacation — can be a simple way to show our support to them.
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