Six Years Later I Don’t Regret Not Taking Maternity Leave
I've recently been re-evaluating the choices I made in early motherhood—some for worse, but in retrospect, many of them for better...
Late last week I was contacted to contribute some quotes towards a piece nosed on designer Molly Goddard showing her London Fashion Week collection while her 11-week-old baby slept on the front row. The journalist’s questions needled the fashion industry’s incompatibility with maternity leave and in the end my quotes didn’t make the piece. I’m not offended ‘tis the nature of the beast. But since, I haven’t been able to shake my thoughts about my own experience with work and early motherhood. I don’t seem to be able to pause the whatifism and it’s made me really evaluate the fallout of my own choices–some for worse, but in retrospect, many of them for better.
Before you immediately click unsubscribe, I want to be entirely clear. I hope that after everything we have shared, you would know that I support the right to recovery, to feed (whichever way works best) and to have the space to learn the ropes for every single woman who births a child. The legal protections that women enjoy in the U.K only need to be bolstered and certainly not watered down. I bear no truck with anyone who would undermine the value of mat leave, not just to mothers and their families, but also to society at large. If you want to be the primary care giver and that is what works best for your family, I would wave a banner and march my soles off for your right to that.
However, I do also want to say that women have the equal right to do none of the above. No matter what the NHS, NCT, Mumsnet or the schoolgate police might suggest, there are no laws forcing women to tick any of these boxes, all the responsibilities can be delegated, or in the case of a mother’s own recovery, totally ignored. Maternity leave isn’t mandatory, and not taking it, or only taking a short amount of time off is also a mother’s prerogative, something which we rarely mention.
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