Inside Motherhood

Try talking to your boss ’bout this one.

by Jean Angus on May 29th, 2006

I don’t know what it’s like in other parts of the world, but in Singapore pregnant women still have to fight for their rights in the workplace. There are many cases of women being asked to leave their job simply because they are pregnant, with their employers making up excuses such as claiming that their “condition” affects their productivity at work. The real reason is, most employers don’t want to keep a pregnant woman on the payroll while she’s away on the mandatory three months’ maternity leave that all women are entitled to after giving birth and would rather fire her than bring someone in temporarily in her absence.

I’m fortunate because I haven’t had to work for both my pregnancies. With my daughter, I worked only in my first trimester before quitting to do freelance writing. It’s the same for Number Two. People have said that I’m so lucky to be able to do this, but now it turns out that scientists are actually recommending that pregnant women limit their working hours:

“Women with high-stress jobs would do better to work no more than 24 hours from the beginning of pregnancy.”

The study by Professor Gouke Bonsel in Amsterdam involved 7,000 mothers and found that stressed-out women were more likely to have children who cried excessively. The advice? Pregnant women should reschedule or delegate tasks to reduce the amount of work they did. Read the news article here.

I suppose it’s all well and good if you can afford not to work so much, or not work at all, but in today’s world very few women have that option, so a compromise might be to relieve stress in other ways, such as exercise or other leisure activities.

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POSTED IN: Mothering