Maternity leave is not charity

Let’s for a moment consider the goals of commonly envisioned law careers: achieving a partnership, securing an executive leadership position or running an organization’s busy legal department. And yet, through these various scenarios of career development, a common story may emerge for the female lawyer.

She notices that certain opportunities aren’t offered to her because she may “be away for a while.” She seeks the role of partner and worries that having kids may affect that career path. She worked hard for a promotion, but she noticed that she fell short when she confessed that she would be leaving for 12 months — although similar opportunities were offered to those who would be around when she wouldn’t be, and there was no outlook on how she might secure those opportunities once she returned to work.

“I was a career woman, too, obviously, until I had children.” I’ve heard this comment so often from female lawyers and it has, admittedly, stopped me in my tracks as a young lawyer. So often the idea of having children is construed as putting one’s career on hold: a motionless intermission of sorts.

Why is it so difficult for us to separate these two concepts? Organizational cultures that accept this perspective (whether consciously or not) run the risk of cultivating fears among their professional staff of “missing out” and of placing their female lawyers in the position of putting off childbearing for the seemingly all-or-nothing chance to chase leadership roles at their firms or organizations.

Proactive organizational approaches are key to alleviating concerns about “missing out” while on maternity leave. As leadership teams work on retaining talent at firms and organizations, skill, top legal talent and employee retention must be considered separately from a lawyer’s decision to go on maternity leave.

A lawyer’s time away from her job should not have to mean an intermission in her career, either; in fact, how tightly these two concepts are hitched together can be mitigated by intentional organizational choices.

The retention of top legal talent. Dismissing the accommodation of employees’ maternity leaves as acts of kindness or charity does a disservice to the principles of operational planning. Indeed, a proactive approach to a lawyer’s maternity gap may support practical organizational goals of employee retention. Fostering a supportive workplace culture through collaboration, transparency regarding your lawyer’s future at your firm and goal setting before, during or following a maternity leave may be one of the best retention plans your firm or organization considers. A strategic approach to retention may demonstrate that a maternity leave does not necessarily represent a career setback; indeed, a strategic approach may discourage short-sightedness in operational planning and encourage organizational plans for leadership roles, projects and responsibilities in the long term.

The intentional act of collaboration. Collaboration and transparency when planning for maternity-leave coverage does not need to be difficult or require endless resources or time-heavy execution. The simple act of involving female lawyers in decision-making when it comes to determining options for their coverage, allowing them to assist with the interviewing process if a temporary replacement hire is needed, providing them with the opportunity to collaborate on that decision-making and to offer insight on concrete plans for coverage alleviates the feelings of being “shut out” out or, worse, “replaced” and are simple yet significant steps to collaboration and intentional support in pursuit of retention for valued employees.

Intentional forward-thinking. One of women’s greatest fears about a maternity leave is that of lost opportunity. Retaining talent may require more than just words of encouragement; instead, an intentional discussion before or even during the maternity gap about concrete steps toward securing future opportunities, goal setting and potential future projects and opportunities upon return marks a significant intentional effort of retention, sending a strong message about the employee’s value and alleviating her fears of having to regain lost ground once she returns to the office.

Perhaps one day we will be comfortable enough to say, “I’m a career woman and I have children, too.” By doing so now, we might begin to normalize a law firm culture in which anxieties about missing promotions and losing opportunities are alleviated by the channelling of a simple yet powerful message: Opportunities are still available to you whenever you are ready.