Should I stay or should I go? Implications of maternity leave choice for perceptions of working mothers

- We investigate how women's decisions regarding maternity leave affects their evaluation.
- Women who choose to take maternity leave are seen as less competent at work and less worthy of organizational rewards.
- Women who choose not to take maternity leave are seen as worse parents and less desirable partners.
- Perceptions of whether women prioritize family or work play an important role in these processes.

Working mothers often find themselves in a difficult situation when trying to balance work and family responsibilities and to manage expectations about their work and parental effectiveness. Family-friendly policies such as maternity leave have been introduced to address this issue. But how are women who then make the decision to go or not go on maternity leave evaluated? We presented 296 employed participants with information about a woman who made the decision to take maternity leave or not, or about a control target for whom this decision was not relevant, and asked them to evaluate her both in the work and the family domain. We found that both decisions had negative consequences, albeit in different domains. While the woman taking maternity leave was evaluated more negatively in the work domain, the woman deciding against maternity leave was evaluated more negatively in the family domain. These evaluations were mediated by perceptions of work/family commitment priorities. We conclude that while it is important to introduce policies that enable parents to reconcile family and work demands, decisions about whether to take advantage of these policies can have unintended consequences - consequences that can complicate women's efforts to balance work and childcare responsibilities.