Why aren’t we talking about this
Sep 17, 2026 · 37 min · 9 segments
“Enjoy your break.” It’s such a normal thing to say to someone going on maternity leave, except maternity leave isn’t really a break at all. It’s a period of enormous change, and underneath all the…
Becca HamiltonGuest
Carly Osman-HolmeHostof I want to touch on something you mentioned there which is the employer and the employee experience because As part of maternity leave, there is a contractual obligation with your employer.
But still women feel incredibly anxious and feel the need to reassure themselves or themselves and their boss before they go in.
Yeah, so I feel like I'm in a very privileged position because I work at Corrie Kids and Rachel, the founder, founded the company so that basically to stop this happening to women.
Our whole reason for existence is that women can kind of go back to work and not have to make these kind of tough calls to kind of take a step back, drop their hours, that they have choices and that they can...
So I had this kind of, I suppose, this safe space, right, where I knew I was going to be kind of like, really looked after during this like period of like motherhood basically.
But I definitely, I worked before at like a consulting firm before Corey Kids.
And, you know, it was this idea that you had to, act nearly behave like you weren't pregnant you know like behave like nothing was wrong and this is before like work from home days right so you've got all these people coming in like absolutely melted at 39 weeks pregnant on into canary wharf on the jubilee line and they're just like pretending that like they're not 39 weeks pregnant because they need to you know it's nearly like there was there's some sort of power in um in it not affecting you, like it not changing you.
And it might not change your mind, but like physically, like you can't argue you're not, you can't argue that it's as easy as it was not being pregnant coming in on the Jubilee line at like 40 degrees in the summer.
That's why I left those companies because I kind of saw lots of these like behaviors going on.
And, you know, I've had friends who have been told to like keep their bump under the Zoom screen because, you know, we don't want the clients to know you're pregnant yet in case they think you're like, take your finger off the pulse.
You know, like the idea that like the bait, you know, pregnancy means that you're going to just be in some ways like not as good as you were before.
I've had a friend who got accompanied by like a junior male colleague just to make sure she could handle the board meeting, like really, really patronizing stuff.
of I want to touch on something you mentioned there which is the employer and the employee experience because As part of maternity leave, there is a contractual obligation with your employer.
But still women feel incredibly anxious and feel the need to reassure themselves or themselves and their boss before they go in.
Yeah, so I feel like I'm in a very privileged position because I work at Corrie Kids and Rachel, the founder, founded the company so that basically to stop this happening to women.
Our whole reason for existence is that women can kind of go back to work and not have to make these kind of tough calls to kind of take a step back, drop their hours, that they have choices and that they can...
So I had this kind of, I suppose, this safe space, right, where I knew I was going to be kind of like, really looked after during this like period of like motherhood basically.
But I definitely, I worked before at like a consulting firm before Corey Kids.
And, you know, it was this idea that you had to, act nearly behave like you weren't pregnant you know like behave like nothing was wrong and this is before like work from home days right so you've got all these people coming in like absolutely melted at 39 weeks pregnant on into canary wharf on the jubilee line and they're just like pretending that like they're not 39 weeks pregnant because they need to you know it's nearly like there was there's some sort of power in um in it not affecting you, like it not changing you.
And it might not change your mind, but like physically, like you can't argue you're not, you can't argue that it's as easy as it was not being pregnant coming in on the Jubilee line at like 40 degrees in the summer.
That's why I left those companies because I kind of saw lots of these like behaviors going on.
And, you know, I've had friends who have been told to like keep their bump under the Zoom screen because, you know, we don't want the clients to know you're pregnant yet in case they think you're like, take your finger off the pulse.
You know, like the idea that like the bait, you know, pregnancy means that you're going to just be in some ways like not as good as you were before.
I've had a friend who got accompanied by like a junior male colleague just to make sure she could handle the board meeting, like really, really patronizing stuff.
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