Read the next section after the part you quoted - since the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, those prohibitions (against pregnancy based discrimination) apply to both men and women.

One thing we have to face here is that having kids is different for men and women. Women often want to take more time off after having babies, scale back on work, etc. Men usually don't. Maybe we should treat this as something to be supported instead of a problem to be solved? Maybe women who want to do these things should be encouraged to do what they want (or not do them if they don't want).

But for many women, having kids is a much more life-changing experience than it is for most men.

Is there data or research to support this statement that women want to take more time off and (by implication) men don't want to (or want to less)?

I don't have kids, but looking among my friends, both the mothers and fathers want to spend as much time as possible with their kids. While the fathers often went back to work before the mothers, it wasn't because they wanted to, it was more about the cultural pressure for them to be the bread winners and not about them "wanting" to care for their kids less than the mothers.

Interestingly the data presented in the TC article is stuff that's been true for over ten years: unmarried women without kids earn more than similarly experienced unmarried men without kids. This then reverses particularly after a married woman has kids.

> have known more than one women who quit her job after being told she couldn't take a year off following childbirth and never known a man to do the same. I have also known far more women to take unpaid timeoff than men, and to cut back on work following having kids.

Sure, I know plenty of women who have done the same, but it's never been that they wanted to do so more than men, it's that the cultural expectations ("father has to be the breadwinner") meant that the fathers felt they had to keep working, while it's more cultural acceptable for the women to stay home. IOW, all of the young fathers I know would gladly quit their jobs and stay at home if money wasn't a problem (and in the case of one friend who's wife is a surgeon, that's exactly what he did).

I think you have a fairly complicated set of balancing acts that happen in corporate America which make this necessary. The big one is that maternity/paternity leave has to be as short as possible to reduce disruption to the business, and it has to be fair so the same policies have to apply to men as to women (otherwise you have a big discrimination mess on your hands, bigger than we have now).

So what this means in effect is that the system demands that one parent makes a sacrifice. As we all know how financially strapped middle-income families are (esp. after the rise of the two income family, see Elizabeth Warren's excellent book "The Two Income Trap"), this means one has to go back to work soon. For biological reasons,* this fundamentally favors the man (who will then be favored when it comes time to assess promotions).

* When I worked at Microsoft, you got 1 month paid leave and up to two months unpaid. One month is probably not enough to get really adjusted to life as a new parent, especially for the mother who is going through hormonal changes as well as sleep cycle changes, may be breastfeeding, etc. So after that, the dad goes back to work and the mom stays home for at least a few more weeks.

However, even this cannot explain the willingness to quit so one can take a year or two off work. That's separate.

I'm going to shoot proper discussion methods in the heart and counter your unsupported claim with an anecdote: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/europe/10iht-sweden....

And when they do, you can make objective evaluations of their performance, not pay them for days they don't work, etc.

If your employees are working reasonable hours, and you're applying leave and vacation policies uniformly, you'll get in no legal trouble. If not, your company has problems beyond sexism.

By that matter requiring that all employees (male/female) only take no more than 2 months off after having a child, and that all vacations occur in regemented times, and that if you can make it through this for say 15 years, you get added benefits is not sexist right?

At some point one thinks of the quote by Anatole France, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

BTW, from discussions I have had with young women trying to decide whether to go down the tenure track in academia in the sciences, I would say that academia has a system which is very discriminatory in its effects.

This obviously varies with position to position, but flexibility shouldn't be thrown out of a window because it might be an inconvenience. It's important to treat your employees well!

Given a situation where you were picking between two individuals for a co-founder or other critical role, equally qualified, one telling you they are free and clear, no outstanding obligations for the foreseeable future and the other saying "well, there is a good chance I'll be heavily engaged in an outside issue for a couple months next summer", which would you choose? Disregard all gender / cause for the issue.

2. The division in this discussion seems to stem around how best to manage the risk of project impact caused by losing a critical team member owing to pregnancy event.

3. Extreme positions:

a. The risk to the business is little different from any other unplanned risk that the business needs to deal with anyway, and to assume otherwise is to be sexist; i.e. there may be women out there for whom pregnancy does not impact their work any more than an illness, and assuming that all women are equally likely to fall pregnant and handle pregnancy in the same way is discriminatory.

b. An ethical/strategic position whereby the additional risk is accepted because the benefits gained in terms of equity makes the risk acceptable.

c. Pregnancy is a flat-out optional potential risk to the business and since a business owner wants to reduce risk then it's logical to avoid employing women.

4. IMO this is all a matter of opinion and has everything to do with one's appetite for risk, one's risk exposure (capital & risk management) and one's principles. The same person given two different startups could come to different conclusions depending on these variables, for instance.

Given this, I really don't see the point of this discussion as it is pretty much subjective and depends entirely on the startup in question and the owners invested therein.

No, you have to actually evaluate their performance, instead of making assumptions about it based on family status. Try evaluating things and making decisions objectively, instead of with your personal prejudices.

I think you're making unwarranted assumptions. Specifically, you haven't read the family leave statutes. Employers don't really have any obligations under them until an employee has worked for a year, and small employers are generally exempt.