Maternity Leave

In France, women are required to take two weeks of leave in advance of their due date, and can take as many as six weeks.  In Finland, the seventeen and a half weeks of maternity leave each woman receives can begin as early as eight weeks before her baby is expected to arrive.

When women in this country are offered antenatal leave, a recent study shows, birth outcomes improve on at least one important measure.  Sylvia Guendelman, a professor of public health at the University of California, Berkeley, compared a group of sixty-two women who took antenatal leave to 385 women who worked up until their babies’ births.  (California is one of only five states in the nation to offer paid pregnancy leave to its residents, through an insurance program similar to ones that provide unemployment benefits.)  Those who took the time off, Guendelman found, were four times less likely to require a caesarean delivery…  C-sections cost more and require more recovery time for the mother.

– How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives (2010) by Annie Murphy Paul,

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