Background
Methods
Parent study
Eligibility criteria and recruitment procedures
Data collection
Analysis
Results
Participant Characteristics | |
---|---|
Age (mean, SD) | 29.1 (5.1) |
Self-Described Race (n,%) | Non-Hispanic Black (20, 74%) |
Non-Hispanic White (6, 22%) | |
Mixed race (1, 4%) | |
Insurance status (n,%) | Private (7, 26%) |
Public (19, 70%) | |
Uninsured (1, 4%) |
Employment | Study Population | Most Common Occupations among US Women by Rank [7] | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
All Pregnant Women | Pregnant Black Women | All Women | ||
Food Service | 8 (29%) | 7 | ||
Childcare (Daycare / Preschool) | 5 (19%) | |||
Retail | 5 (19%) | 3 | 1 | |
Healthcare/Nurse | 3 (11%) | 5 | 2 | 1 |
Customer Service | 2 (7%) | 6 | 3 | 5 |
Real estate/property management | 2 (7%) | |||
Biology Lab | 1 (4%) | |||
Hotel Housekeeping | 1 (4%) | |||
Other top ranked occupations not represented in the study cohort | 1 Elementary teacher 2 Registered nurse 4 Administrative assistant | 4 Personal care aides 5 Registered nurse | 2 Administrative assistant 3 Elementary / Middle teacher 4 Managers, all other |
Income implications
Income Implications | |
Reduced duty hours | “They understood I worked another job besides them, so they didn’t want me to overwork myself so they would like have me come like, all the way to [street name] like, two days a week, whatever, which really wasn’t worth my time you know, just to go to the bank or whatever for the what, twenty dollars, ten, twenty dollars. That’s all I really made a week you know, for those two days [food service worker, age 31].” |
“That’s why my hours are cut now because I kept having to get off early, like take off on these days just to go to get my [prenatal care]. So that’s really the conflict [retail worker, age 25].” | |
Unpaid leave | “[Taking time off is] pretty much what was interfering and like I told them, I am pregnant, I do gotta receive prenatal care, so if you don’t feel I’m reliable because of that then, go ahead, do what you gotta do…. ‘cause my child’s life is more important than this freaking job. The same way I got this job, I can always find me another one… she tells me, I’m pregnant and I’m not reliable. Okay, that ain’t a good reason to let somebody go. That’s just discrimination on your part… [food service worker, age 31].” |
“Oh, it just you know, makes the paycheck a little smaller, but other than that, that’s it [retail worker, age 37].” | |
Consequences for non-hourly employees | “I usually take off, when I have to go in the morning I’ll do like from 9:00 to 11:00, so I try to do like two, three, about two hours. …the only thing it really messed with is like my adherence at work. My adherence and my, basically my adherence and attendance. It kind of messes with those… Adherence is just your time on the phone, time away from the phone, and being on the phone when you’re actually supposed to be on the phone [customer service, age 29].” |
“I would say, just because I am being monitored more closely [by my doctor], I do have a fair number of more doctor’s appointments than I did last time. I will say it has been a little tricky with the balance of you know, work and then having my workday kind of interrupted with an appointment. I never would skip my appointment just because I feel like I have to be at work, but there are some times where I feel you know, a little guilty, oh I’m missing that meeting or something like that. But like I mentioned before, my boss has never once said like, no you really need to be here, you can’t go to your doctor’s appointment you know, kind of thing. It’s more of a, I just personally feel a little guilty, yeah [scientist, age 32].” | |
Workplace Accommodations | |
Collaborative employer/employee accommodations | “So, it’s usually, it’s a fairly loose working environment. I mean the schedules are pretty flexible and our boss is extremely understanding of just you know, family and personal needs and so we’ve kind of you know, as long as we’re there for you know, our eight hours a day and we’re actually making progress on our work, we kind of the ability to be pretty flexible with what we do [scientist, age 32].” |
Employer initiated accommodations | “… we talked about when I get further along, closer to my due date, instead of me serving, we’ll move to a different position, it’s hosting, so it would still require me to be on my feet, but I wouldn’t be walking as much and it’s not a lot of lifting like, of trays and food and drinks and things like that. I would just be picking up things and wiping off \s and that stuff [food service worker, age 29].” |
Medically recommended accommodations | “And I didn’t really work there too much longer after that ‘cause I was like you know, they don’t want to be supportive then, you know, they can just kick rocks and I can be happy with my healthy baby [food service worker, age 20].” |
Reduced duty hours: participant initiated
Reduced duty hours: supervisor initiated
There were also participants who expressed positive work experiences prior to their pregnancy, yet during their pregnancy they terminated their employment due to decreased earnings and truncated advancement. A participant working in food service commented, “[Supervisor] was really like communicative and nice, but at the same time she was cutting my hours... so she was really nice about it, but at the same time, she knew that I needed the hours and she was still cutting them. So, that’s why I had to leave because I was not making any money.” Another participant also a food service worker, who was excited for an upcoming promotion, described leaving her job due to unsupportive attitudes towards her pregnancy: “I worked so hard you know, I fought for that spot… ‘cause I love working there, eating there, but [fast food restaurant] weren’t really supportive of pregnant women working there at all you know.”“They didn’t know I was pregnant right away… they was like, ‘you know, you’re showing a little.’ So that’s when that came out. So that’s definitely, [fast food restaurant] changed my schedules, [from 7am to 4pm to] like 8 to 4, whatever you know, 10 to 4. They tried to sneak an 11 to 4.”
Unpaid leave
Some participants (n = 3) described situations in which unpaid leave was couched as a benefit to employees who were told they could return to work after delivery without having to reapply for their jobs. A food service worker explained she was told: “Just a leave, basically like you’re just quitting and then you just get rehired.” Another food service worker said she knew to expect being removed from the work schedule towards the end of her pregnancy: “…so as far as my due date, I told him that I’m due in September and he knows like, when it gets close to August, he’ll actually be preparing to take me off the schedule until I’m ready to return to work.”“I try not to use my PTO [paid time off] because you know you have to use PTO when you go on FMLA [Family and Medical Leave Act], before your short-term disability starts, so sometimes I just have to take the hit and not hit my forty hours, which means a lower check.”
Reduced income in non-hourly employees
Workplace accommodations
Collaborative employer/employee accommodations
“… if I need to be off or whatever, if I needed any accommodations to my workspace like, I had to buy, I didn’t have to buy it, they reimbursed me for it, but just different, like back supports and footstools and stuff that I started needing later ‘cause I was sitting a lot you know, they reimburse for, but anything I mean anything I needed they were onboard for.”
Employer-initiated accommodations
Medically recommended accommodations
When another participant started a new job as a nurse, she found her new employer was unwilling to accommodate job duty recommendations from her healthcare provider:“I was just laid off yesterday… due to my limits and restrictions from the doctors…. I was put on a ten-pound lifting limit, which is very, very small and unfortunately with all the job descriptions at my employer I wasn’t eligible for employment anymore. … I busted my butt at that place and gave it everything that I had, even very sick and ill and not well and they, I feel like they tossed me in the trash.”
Ultimately, the participant quit the new job because the employer would not accommodate the requests in her healthcare provider’s note.“I told her like maybe on day seven that I had a nurse’s note and when she told me that she was not going to accommodate it, I just basically let her know like, ‘well I can’t continue to work here. Like I need to,’ you know in the note it says like okay well, ‘I need to be able to take frequent breaks like to sit down, I can’t stand for longer than two hours, I should be able to take water breaks, bathroom breaks and stuff like that.’… She had a whole attitude about it and told me that she was not going to accommodate my nurse’s note so I was like ‘okay, you’re not going to accommodate my nurse’s note like so you want me to put myself and my baby in danger; no thank you, you can keep this job.’”