When I was in my 20s, I was confident I\u2019d be a stay-at-home parent if I had children\u2014I simply didn\u2019t give the alternatives much thought. But sometimes life goes in different ways than you expect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I got married in November 2019 at age 33. Three months later, in February 2020, we had a surprise positive pregnancy test. It was quicker than we had expected, and, of course, the world shut down just a few weeks later. In addition to all the usual concerns of first-time parents, we had the added stress of a pandemic whose effects were largely unknown at that time. Spring 2020 was a roller coaster of stress, dreams, doctor visits, and crushing isolation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While all of that was going on, and the due date drew closer, I was the primary breadwinner in our family. I felt that I\u2019d worked very hard to get to where I was, and that quitting my job outright in seven months would leave our family in a financially unstable position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although I still struggled with the notion of leaving my infant with a near-stranger 40\u201350 hours per week, my manager asked for a definitive answer to the question of if I was \u201ccoming back\u201d after childbirth. I felt compelled to say yes. I felt that my only option was giving the working-mom routine a try, at least for a few months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I worked in a male-dominated industry, in a company with around 150 employees across three states. It had been 30<\/em> years<\/em> since a current full-time employee had had a child, which meant there simply wasn\u2019t much of a company precedent when it came to maternity leave. The best my company\u2019s HR staff could offer was a combination of FMLA leave<\/a> (up to 12 weeks) and short-term disability pay. I immediately knew I\u2019d max out the FMLA time\u2014even 12 weeks seemed too short a time to bond with my newborn daughter. Short-term disability would cover only 60% of my base pay, and there was other, dismaying fine print that I didn\u2019t discover until later\u2014it did not pay out anything the entire first week of leave, for instance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Edgerton Essays<\/strong><\/a> are a project of American Compass and the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and feature the perspectives of working-class Americans on the challenges facing their communities and families and the debates central to the nation\u2019s politics. If you or someone you know might be interested in contributing to the series, click here<\/a> for more information.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"