As we inch closer to the And Just Like That season two finale, this week’s episode touched on a difficult subject lying at the intersection between motherhood and the working world: maternity leave.
We see Miranda’s boss, human rights lawyer Reina, half-joke about her colleagues’ potential ‘judgment’ about her return from maternity leave after five weeks.
She says to Miranda: ‘Five weeks is enough when the world is in crisis, right?’, before asking how long she took when she had Brady. Miranda replies: ‘Twelve weeks, felt like a hundred.’
It’s likely that what the And Just Like Thatwriters were trying to do here was open up the conversation about returning to work after having a child, and destigmatising it. Telling the audience that it’s OK to rush back to your worthy careers if that’s what you want, which is true in itself. Perhaps they were even making a comment about the poor provision of maternity leave in the US.
But unfortunately, it came across more like a weird conversation of oneupmanship between women, lionising the decision to come back to work earlier than others might expect. The subject isn’t broached again after this initial scene, making the exchange just another uncomfortable example of the pressure on women to do, and be, it all – arguably a huge aspect of the patriarchy.
Obviously AJLT isn't known for (or expected to be) super-relatable - and it can't speak all women's stories. But ultimately it felt a shame to see the one conversation in a huge platform about maternity leave be along those lines. And it will have given many mothers flashbacks to strange conversations they've had about their returns to work, where you can feel like you can't do right for doing wrong. Many of us will have been left feeling inadequate by conversations at both ends of the spectrum - whether we've felt like other mums have boasted about staying off longer or rushing back to work.
In the US, the average maternity leave in the US is 10 weeks. According to research by Maternity Action, new UK mothers take an average of 39 weeks (almost 9 months) of maternity leave. 45 per cent take longer than that, with more women than ever not returning to work. On top of that, 2022 ONS figures found that the number of women returning to work is at a 30-year-low and was down 5 per cent from 2021. This tells us that a new mother’s relationship with her work differs hugely from person to person.
So as the landscape of the modern workplace continues to shift and we continue to fight against the gender pay gap (as well as many, many other gender gaps), it’s important to validate all experiences that each new mother has, instead of trying to fit a one-size-fits-all approach to an incredibly personal experience.
If you’re championing things being 'better' one way or the other, you’re adding to the huge pressure mothers feel to be a certain kind of parent, or person. It’s disempowering and unhelpful – we should be supportive of anything a mother and her family needs to feel whole.
After all, the expectation around a new mother when it comes to ‘bouncing back’ isn’t a new one. Take the pressure to lose baby weight and return to a ‘pre-baby’ body – it encompasses how we feel about our bodies with the pressure to recapture our past slicing away at our self worth. A life-changing moment like having a child is bound to shift more than our priorities, and that’s OK.
Both our professional or personal lives are impacted by motherhood, and it’s unhelpful to pit mothers against each other or apply undue pressure in the workplace. Whether the world is in crisis or not, a new parent should feel that they can have whatever relationship with their work and their parenthood that makes them feel most empowered.