Marissa Mayer can work if she wants

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:35:00 +0000

The concern trolling about Marissa Mayer started long before her son was born earlier this week. It began last summer, at precisely the moment the world learned she'd been named Yahoo's new CEO — and that she was pregnant. Her announcement then that "My maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I’ll work throughout it" made for all kinds of morning news show banter and tsk-tsk opinion pieces about how this accomplished, educated woman was clearly in waaaay over her knocked-up head. And now that she has brought forth her issue, and Yahoo has stated, "She will be working remotely and is planning to return to the office as soon as possible (likely in one to two weeks)," it's time for the pundits to stick their noses in her placenta yet again.

This week at New York, Ann Friedman takes Mayer's story — and the very real issues of insufficient paid maternity leave and the "professional repercussions" for those who do take time off — to leap off the rails with the radical case for "mandatory" parental leave to "normalize" family time for new parents. Making people stay home with babies — that's way more progressive than making them go to work, right?

Salon.com > Maternity leave

Marissa Mayer can work if she wants