| Back to work: How soon for new moms?
Study focuses on the time women need to physically recover from childbirth.
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), September 28, 2004. Metro Edition; Section: News, p.1A
by H.J. Cummins, Staff Writer
Sleep deprivation rolled into Carolyn Solberg's life seven weeks ago.
The cause was a healthy pair of new twins, Zachary and Anna. Solberg couldn't be happier. She couldn't be more tired.
"Part of the reason you need maternity leave is you're not getting any sleep," said Solberg, a nurse practitioner at the Partners in Pediatrics clinic in Maple Grove. That's why she's grateful she has another six weeks of maternity leave.
Fatigue is one of about two dozen ailments found in working mothers in new research by the University of Minnesota. The study is part of an emerging science that looks at what some experts see as a long-neglected consideration: How women physically recover from childbirth and the implications for workplace policies in America.
Everyone knows women are tired in the weeks after childbirth, but until recently there has been little attempt to document that and other related health problems.
The university study of 716 new mothers in the metro area is tracking common postpartum ailments such as fatigue, headaches, backaches, constipation and hemorrhoids for 18 months after childbirth. The preliminary findings at six weeks - 7 percent of the women were back to work by then - will be reported at a conference on Friday.
"Any one of those health problems doesn't sound very dramatic," said Patricia McGovern, principal researcher on the project and associate professor in the university's School of Public Health. "But the women had an average of six of these symptoms."
The issue is important, because women with infants are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. workforce, McGovern said. Their presence is particularly strong in Minnesota: The 2000 census, for example, showed that 73.8 percent of Minnesota women with children under age 6 are working. The national figure is 63.5 percent .
Some attorneys predict that by lifting these ailments from "nuisance" to "illness" status in the case of new mothers, the science could give the women new rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). The federal law requires employers of 50 or more to grant 12 weeks' unpaid leave a year for family needs, including the birth of a child.
Principally, it might give women who hurry back to work and then collapse under the load a claim on more time off under the FMLA that is not now acknowledged by U.S. employers.
McGovern says family-leave policies will work better if they take the recovering mothers' common ailments into account.
She remembered attending legislative hearings when Minnesota passed its parental-leave act in 1987. "People talked, Number 1, about the cost to the employer; Number 2, about the mother's job security, and Number, 3, a little bit about baby bonding," she said. "But no discussion that I ever heard was on the women's health."
Center of controversy
However, family leave already is controversial, as advocacy groups tug at it in opposite directions.
Employers complain the act's provisions have been stretched far beyond its original intent, which is to help workers get through serious health problems.
Women's groups, on the other hand, want to provide at least partial pay during leaves, arguing that many employees otherwise couldn't afford to take them.
Some business groups don't believe there is a problem with the status quo.
"I think generally employers are going to accommodate women coming back after pregnancy to deal with health issues," said Tom Hesse, vice president for government affairs at the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. "My sense is they are pretty flexible."
But where they aren't, the new science could force a change, said Minneapolis employment attorney David Cossi.
Cossi gave this example: A woman returns to work six weeks after her baby is born. She is exhausted and develops chronic headaches. She would like to work part-time. Her boss is under no obligation to allow that.
But if science connects her ailments to childbirth in a hospital - because the FMLA defines any hospital stay as evidence of a "serious health condition" - she might be entitled to the balance of her 12 weeks' annual FMLA leave.
Paid or unpaid?
Even if researchers document that new mothers have significant health problems at work, there remains the perennial question of who should pay for them to take more time off if they cannot afford to do so.
Lisa Irvin, a doctor at the Partners in Pediatrics clinic in Minneapolis' Uptown area, is planning her second 12-week leave starting next February, when her second baby is due. She believes that sleep lost to an infant's around-the-clock demands are a fundamental reason to stay out that long.
But as a business owner, Irvin is ambivalent about the prospect of paid leaves.
"I think it would be great," she said. "But as a partner in the clinic, I know it would be difficult to cover the entire leave for everybody. All of our profit is from the production of doctors seeing patients. If we have a lot of maternity leaves, you see the effect. The clinic loses money."
Business owners generally oppose paid family leaves because of equity concerns, said George Gmach, surveys manager at the Employers Association, a business services association in Plymouth. Giving mothers time to be home with babies, and others time to care for aged parents or a sick spouse, are all admirable, Gmach said.
"All these are worthy issues. The problem is paying for them. We know there is tragedy after tragedy, need after need, in all families. At what point does an employer say: 'You have the tragedy, you have the need. That's not covered.' "
'A terrific first step'
Business groups said the FMLA would devastate employers, but it didn't, countered Lissa Bell at the National Partnership for Women and Families in Washington, D.C. She said there are ways to finance the leaves, including an employee payroll tax such as California's.
"The FMLA is a terrific first step, but it doesn't specify a way people can afford to take a leave," she said.
At Partners in Pediatrics, administrator Mary Jenkins said she, too, is ambivalent about paid leave. "I can envision a morass of difficulty even discussing it. Where would the money come from? Would everyone be eligible? In other countries, they do this, but they turn over half their incomes to the government, too. So, we all make our choices."
At the very least, however, the Minnesota study suggests women need to be more informed about their options. When a sub-group of about 100 women were asked about their employers' family leave policies, more than one-third gave versions different than their employers'. Of those, two-thirds underestimated the paid time their employers said they had coming, McGovern said.
"That raises the question for women: 'Are you confident you know your company's benefits?' "
H.J. Cummins is at hcummins@startribune.com.
Parental-leave policy history
1987 Minnesota was the first state to pass a law requiring parental leaves. The unpaid leaves last up to six weeks.
1994 Federal Family and Medical Leave Act took effect. It provides for up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave per year.
1997 Minnesota was the first state to create an At-Home Infant Care program. It allows low-income families to receive a subsidy if one parent stays home to care for a baby.
2000 A paid leave program that would be voluntary to employers passed the Minnesota Senate, but it failed in the House.
2004 California became the first state to provide paid family leave.
Event information
After Birth: Policies for Healthy Women, Families and Workplaces
What: A look at new research on women's post-partum health and the workplace implications for maternal and other family leave. Designed for employers, policy-makers, activists, health care professionals and researchers. When: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday
Where: Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, 301 19th Av. S, Minneapolis.
Sponsors: Humphrey School and School of Public Health, University of Minnesota.
Registration: $45. Preferred registration is online at http://www.hhh.umn.edu/afterbirth. Or call 612-625-8330.
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