Genius 'Pregnancy Pause' Helps Moms Returning To Workforce Fill Their Resume Gaps

Add “The Pregnancy Pause” to your LinkedIn profile to get back in the game

Anyone feel like their maternity leave wasn’t long enough? Did you leave the workforce? If you answered ‘yes’ to both questions, you’re not alone. Far from it in fact, and now a creative agency wants to help you explain your child-induced hiatus to prospective employers.

It’s called “The Pregnancy Pause,”and it’s a position that you can pop right into your resume on LinkedIn. Mother New York created it to help moms who may have taken a time out from the workforce to take care of little humans (especially for moms who took more time than their maternity leaves allowed).

Here’s how the “Pregnancy Pause” works: moms will go to the “Experience” section of their LinkedIn profiles and add The Pregnancy Pause inside the “Company” field. You can make your title whatever you want. The title “Mom” works, so does “Little Human Caretaker,” or perhaps “Job Leaver Because Maternity Leave In The U.S. Sucks”, you know – whatever floats your boat. You then add your maternity leave (or extended maternity leave) dates and fill out a description. The agency suggests “anything from ‘Designer of human life’ to ‘Hands-on experience in development.’ You know best.'”

You can also upload media if you’d like; perhaps photos of you feeding a baby, playing and reading to your child, or maybe images of you multi-tasking like a total boss. You can leave this part blank too, it’s whatever you prefer.

Prospective employers who click the link to The Pregnancy Pause will be directed to a page that explains why many new moms feel forced to leave their jobs in the U.S. The reason being that federally protected maternity leave in the U.S. is only 12 weeks unpaid, which is not enough. Not by a long shot. The inadequate maternity leave policy is what forces moms to leave their jobs, which creates gaps in their resumes. It’s all explained in a simple, informative, and short YouTube video.

“New mothers in the U.S. often feel forced to quit their jobs due to a lack of adequate maternity leave policies, which leaves them penalized for the subsequent gaps in their resumes. We wanted to give working mothers in the U.S. a simple tool, and make it easier for them to own maternity leave as the full-time job it truly is,” Mother New York chief creative officer Corinna Falusi said in a statement, according to AdWeek.

Additionally, the project includes a toolkit on The Pregnancy Pause website that moms can download. It includes a sample resume and lists The Pregnancy Pause as a reference for women to include on their resumes with a number for prospective employers to call if they have any questions.

The prerecorded message says:

Hello, you’ve reached The Pregnancy Pause. You must be calling about a candidate’s resume that has mentioned her time spent here. While here, she spent innumerable hours raising a child, which has surely offered her invaluable experience as a prospective employee. Visit our website ThePregnancyPause.org to learn more, and remember, maternity leave is a full-time job.

“The only reason anybody should have a gap in their resume is if they’re quitting their job to pursue a dream like finally starting a death metal band, travel the world to pitch that new app idea of yours or [something] similar. Not for choosing to have children,” Erik Norin, creative director at Mother New York, said in a statement.

In the past, suggesting a mother put The Pregnancy Pause on her resume might’ve sounded like career suicide, but the tide is turning. The conversation about our inadequate maternity leave policies and the benefits of paid family leave have started. Surely, we have a long way to go, but if we keep accepting status quo and going along with outdated professional advice we’ll never change the corporate culture to be more sympathetic towards women, mothers, and families.

We shouldn’t even have to explain our maternity leaves to prospective employers, but The Pregnancy Pause is a start. Let’s begin the conversation and hope for the sake of our babies and their future that it empowers us, and them.