Why Women Are Scared To Tell Their Bosses They're Pregnant

Moms.com

New Report Finds Why Women Are Scared To Tell Their Bosses They're Pregnant

By Leah Groth

Published Feb 5, 2019

While it seems that society has made great strides in recent years to accommodate pregnant people, they're more stressed about it than ever.

Credit: iStock / vadimguzhva

Finding out you are pregnant can be an emotional roller coaster, whether or not the pregnancy was planned. Most women experience excitement as well as fear, and will also spend endless hours worrying about...everything imaginable... before their baby arrives. As if it isn’t enough to have to stress about the finances surrounding a child or whether she is going to be a good mother, there’s also the issue of how she is going to juggle motherhood with her career. While it seems that society has made great strides in recent years to accommodate new parents in the work force, apparently more women then ever are stressed out about it, and this certainly isn't a good thing.

Bright Horizons recently released their fifth annual report called Modern Family Index, and what they discovered is pretty startling. In the past five years the number of women scared to inform their bosses that they are expecting has nearly doubled — jumping from 12 percent to 21 percent.

What is behind this fear? Apparently most women are worried about the stigma attached to women in the workplace. According to the report more than 40 percent of men and women employed in America believe working moms are less devoted to their work and 38 percent even judge them for needing more flexible schedules. Ouch! Of course fatherhood doesn’t penalize men in terms of their careers, according to 72 percent of those surveyed.

The survey also suggests that in actuality, motherhood has a positive impact on the workplace as a whole. 84 percent of employed Americans believe that having working moms in leadership roles can make a business more successful, 65 percent claim they are better listeners, 51 percent say they are calmer in crisis, 47 percent that they are more diplomatic and 44 percent, better team players.

However, women still believe that having kids will have a negative impact on their career, with 19 percent of working moms worrying that they won’t be viewed as leaders. Nearly 70 percent of all working people believe that mothers in the workplace will be passed over for a new job than others.

While these findings are truly disturbing we should use them as motivation to prove to the world how kick-ass working moms can really be!