End guilt trip for mothers in workplace

Ground Floor: Unsurprisingly, the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation (Ibec) is not rushing to support the Government's proposals to increase paid maternity leave to six months for new mothers, as well as possibly allowing a year's unpaid parental leave that could be split between parents, writes Sheila O'Flanagan

The rather predictable complaint from the employers' body is that this will affect competitiveness and cause disruption to businesses.

Of course, Ibec has a point. For small companies in particular, the obligation to pay for maternity leave can be difficult since in most cases they have to hire in someone to cover for the absent employee, thus increasing their costs while having to train up the replacement worker. Most will shudder at the possibility that employees could disappear for up to a year, even if they don't have to pay them. It's a logistical difficulty, of course. But is it such a competitive difficulty? And is it really insurmountable?

Last week I mentioned that Ireland was now 26th in the index of competitive nations. New mothers here get the EU minimum paid maternity leave which is 18 weeks. Finland, which is at the top of the competitive index, gives new mothers three months' leave plus an additional eight months' parental leave. The UK, also ahead of us in the competitive index, allows mothers 26 weeks maternity leave. If the UK and Finland can provide this leave and still remain competitive, why on earth can't we?

The truth, of course, is that most working parents are grateful for any time off that their employer allows. Women, in particular, are more than conscious of the affect on their careers and their position in the workplace that pregnancy brings. The majority of working mothers try hard not to allow their domestic lives to influence their working day.

I'm not a working mother and so I can't illustrate from personal experience the conflicting demands placed on women at work who have children. But you will notice that, once again, the strain is being placed on working women. There is a certain irritation from the point of view of a woman in hearing from the male head of Ibec that employers can't support efforts to make their lives a bit easier. I do know that lots of pregnant women worry about the affect that their pregnancy will have on their jobs. Ibec's stance will make them feel even more anxious. And guilty.

Guilt, of course, is the ever-present companion of the working mother. Guilt that she isn't at home baking scones and being a shining beacon of all that's good for her children, and guilt that she's going to have to whizz out of the office directly at five o'clock because it's going to take at least an hour to get home and she absolutely has to pick up her child before six o'clock otherwise she'll face another lecture from the crèche owner.

As if that isn't enough, she may well have read the latest study on UK childcare, co-authored by Penelope Leach, an adviser and author on childcare issues. Like most studies of its genre, it concludes that children who are cared for by their mothers up to the age of three do better in development tests than those who were looked after by someone else, thus releasing another working-mother guilt avalanche. I can't tell you the number of discussion programmes I heard following this report that led with the notion that, once again, women who care about the well-being of their children should stay at home and look after them. It's as though choosing to have a child means that you must forget about having any other kind of life.

Yet the study actually indicated that not all babies and toddlers did well at home and that all children are different. The study noted that children whose mothers suffered depression or who had other priorities actually fared better with childminders. But that's scant consolation to guilt-ridden working mothers who read these surveys .

We're not just talking about Career Woman here. We're talking about the woman who goes to work every day because she has to. But, even if we don't have to, I firmly believe a lot of women want to. Many of my friends who gave up work when they had their children have since re-entered the workforce, now working for employers who allow flexible working conditions. And guess what - they all work incredibly hard because they are extremely grateful to have an employer who realises that nobody goes to their deathbed wishing they'd spent more time in the office and that, at least occasionally, it's more important to be at home.

The Government is right to be looking at parental leave and childcare, but it must also bear some responsbility for assisting companies to implement family-friendly policies. From the perspective of an employers' group, the idea of a year's unpaid parental leave and six months' paid leave seems untenable. I visualise the honchos in Ibec sitting around the mahogany table shaking their heads and discussing the fact that a whole heap of feckless women are going to get pregnant so they can take a year off at the company's expense. But you know what, guys, that's not why women get pregnant! And I really don't think that any woman considers the first year of her child's life as "time off" either.

Give working mothers a break. Increase parental leave. Stop making them feel guilty. And start treating them like the responsible adults they are.