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Susan Seitel, president of Minnesota-based consulting company Work & Family Connection, remembers one client well. The woman had recently given birth to her first child and was returning to work. Her infant cried all the way to day care. The mother cried all the way to the office. Unfortunately, Seitel sees many other new mothers who can relate to the woman she described. She also is well aware of ways how some employers are helping these mothers out.
Seitel says that 47 percent of the American workforce is female, and 85 percent of those working women are or will become mothers. A study published in the February 2005 issue of the Economic Journal reveals that 63 percent of women who work pre-birth come back to work within 12 weeks of giving birth, with 37 percent of that group returning full-time.
Workplace accommodations for new mothers are particularly challenging for women who breast-feed. According to an Ohio State University study, 54 percent of women who return to full-time work within three months after giving birth had to stop breast-feeding. That compares to only 35 percent of women who did not return to work.
Why Breast-Feed at Work?
Advocates point to many reasons employers should consider allowing new moms to breast-feed at work. A 2003 Los Angeles County health survey showed that workplaces friendly to breast-feeding decrease absenteeism by up to 57 percent. But the same survey showed that 60 percent of mothers stopped breast-feeding when they reported to work within six months of giving birth.
Karen Peters, executive director of the Breastfeeding Task Force of Greater Los Angeles, says the primary explanation for why women stop breast-feeding when returning to work is simple: Most businesses do not understand the economic and social benefits of breast-feeding. Breast-fed babies tend to be healthy babies, and healthy babies mean fewer medical expenses. Encouraging women to breast-feed at work means less staff turnover, sick time and personal leave, lower healthcare costs, and higher job productivity and morale.
The US Breastfeeding Committee estimates that for every $1 invested in breast-feeding support, a company saves $3 for an average savings of $400 per breast-fed baby over the first year.
Breast-Feeding Accommodations
Companies can provide new mothers with clean, private rooms with sinks, breast pumps and refrigerators. Employers can also offer part-time work options like reduced schedules, job sharing, phased-in returns, flextime, compressed workweeks, drawing time from a paid-leave bank and telecommuting. Allowing sufficient break time to breast-feed or express milk on the job also can be helpful. Finally, employers can educate expecting and new mothers, as well as managers and colleagues.
Some employers already do these things, led by Fortune 500 companies, Peters says. Lagging behind are midsize and smaller firms. Peters terms the fast-food, retail, manufacturing and agricultural sectors particularly negligent. In fast food and retail, most workers are not unionized and are hesitant to ask for "special concessions," Peters explains. Manufacturing and agricultural workers have little privacy, and many are paid piece rates, which create a disincentive to take breast-feeding breaks.
Providing breast-feeding accommodations at work is the law in 10 states. Thirty California breast-feeding organizations use a carrot-and-stick approach to encourage local businesses to comply. The carrot includes giving companies "mother-friendly awards" and providing breast-pump rentals. The stick is fines: $100 per incident. However, as Peters notes, "it takes a brave woman to take action against her employer." She does not know if any company has been fined.
More Support of New Mothers
New mothers have other workplace concerns besides breast-feeding, including infant care. Misty Rose is CEO of KidCentric, a Livermore, California, firm that helps companies organize child-care programs. Although most of her work involves 2-to-5-year-olds, she recalls one small company where two key employees were due to deliver at the same time. KidCentric helped convert a portion of a warehouse into a care facility licensed for four infants. Both women returned to work within six weeks.
"The best companies subsidize infant care heavily, because they realize it's the best thing for them and their working mothers," Rose says. She cites large companies like Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems as being at the forefront of infant-care issues.
However, Judith Stadtman Tucker, editor of The Mothers Movement Online, says Silicon Valley and the legal, journalism and broadcast professions are notorious for being mother-unfriendly. "Part is the business itself, part is the culture," she says. "In the 'elite' professions, it's hard to stay at the top of your game and also be involved in families."
And, Tucker says, while large corporations have noble-sounding formal policies for new mothers, small businesses may be more flexible. "In a small company, people know each other," she explains. "If your sitter gets sick, it's OK to bring your kid to the office."
The best solution, Tucker says, is to keep new mothers in the work flow mainstream while recognizing that even the best employees can get temporarily sidetracked by the demands of new motherhood.
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