>>510218771 (OP)16 weeks isn't enough to render a baby who can be left alone for any appreciable amount of time. Even the higher standard of a year maternal leave in some Euro countries isn't REALLY enough to get a kid to where their mother doesn't need to be punching in at least 60 hours a week with the kid, a 1 year old is still utterly dependent on constant care from a parental figure. Realistically kids don't get to where they can be left alone for most of a decade, so we know that none of the maternal leave offered anywhere on the planet is really sufficient. And think about the company's side. Consider that you have a "worker," the mother, who in order to perform her real job which only she can do (making/rearing babies), you might have to let her be gone for somewhere between a few months and a year - an entire fucking year. Can you imagine hiring someone for 2-3 years, then they get pregnant and you have to keep their spot open for a whole fucking year while they don't do their job? Now imagine she has more than one baby. So 2-3 years on before she's pregnant the first time, 9 months of pregnancy brain, 1 entire year PTO, 2 year refractory period, another 9 months of her being pregnancy brain, 1 entire year of PTO...when do you get any work out of her? Nobody would hire a man who had half as much absence, it's just not fucking worth it.
Look how hard we have to try. Wouldn't it be easier to just tell women they're not allowed to have careers because careers and babies just don't mix? How long do we have to bash our heads into this wall before we stop fighting nature and just admit that reality has limits?