She’ll be alright.

Thanks, Marcia. I agree (see my observation: “That Post piece was a strategic error. Had we seen the book as nothing more than fiction, it might be amusing. But knowing that the premise is based on her real-life beliefs introduces a whole new, “Are you kidding me?” perspective.”) and I think your analogies help explain that beautifully.

Thanks for weighing in. I always enjoy it when you share your wisdom!

Sandy

Imagine, for example, if the writer team behind the film “Trading Places,” where an upper-crust duo decide to create an experiment of putting a black street person (played by Eddie Murphy) into the position of a white corporate ladder climber – imagine the writers revealing that they actually had carried out the experiment in the movie on unsuspecting real people. Most of us would be revolted. That would take away the comedy for most of us.

Or consider Nabokov’s novel Lolita. As far as I know, it was not based on any real-life pedophilia. But if it was, or if Nabokov had written an op-ed piece defending his real-life right to have an affair with a 12-year-old girl, most of us would have a harder time accepting the premise of the novel, which is considered to be a great work of art.

The opinion piece demolished the “suspension of reality” that is involved in comedy or literature, and that is the problem here. Not the novel itself.

My goodness! Somebody who read the book! Do you usually read books in this genre? And how did you hear about it?

Sandy

That’s an excellent point, CJ — thank you. It does seem to have started a conversation about the value of a true sabbatical for everyone.

Sandy

DE, I think that part of the problem for this author is that not everyone thinks it’s a “humorous take” on pregnancy, etc. That shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Still, there is that school of thought that says that all publicity is good publicity. I’ve been watching the Amazon rank and it’s been decent, for sure. I would have hoped for the author that it was better than it has been been, though, because I think she’s paid a high price for the attention brought to her book by the Post piece. This kind of intense backlash can be very hard to deal with. It does make me wonder what kind of guidance she got from her publisher.

Sandy

If you want to take this as an affront to true and genuine motherhood, then you can take it that way and be upset and hypersensitive, which, by the way, is a major problem with modern society. We have forgotten how to take things with a grain of salt and how to put ourselves in the shoes of the other person and just see it from a different perspective and laugh about that perspective.

An alternate perspective does not have to be true. Jokes are not true. What makes jokes funny, most of the time, is their illogical perspective. In fact, scientists have proven that our laughing center is the same as our dream center in our brains, because it is the illogic of a joke that makes us laugh and most dreams also make illogical thing logical to us.

So, just for a second, let’s see this from an alternate, though illogical, perspective. You have workers in every workplace and corporate environment who have seen a pregnant mother first of all suddenly get to take many hours off during the week for classes, appointments, to rest if the Doctor feels it is needed and on and on, and yet, they are still working 8, 10 hours a day, no breaks.

Put aside the fact that the mother truly is pregnant and needs this time for the proper care of her developing child and that this time is correctly provided so she can bring forth a happy, healthy baby into the world. What the co-worker sees is time off. A lot of time off. Oh boy, what I would do with that time off.

Yes, it is illogical, because they are not thinking that the mother is actually taking the time off due to increased challenges and that she is not out there partying and having the time of her life, she is incubating a developing child in a body that has changed dramatically and she’s dealing with and enduring things many people have never had to endure.

And now extend that to the time that the pregnant woman finally gets to go on maternity leave for 2 maybe 3 months. Wow, what a vacation, 3 months off of work to rediscover yourself, to enjoy life without the 8 hour a day rigamarole, who wouldn’t want such a tremendous time off in life?

Again, it is illogical to think this, the new mother isn’t laying on a beach drinking beverages that feature toothpick umbrellas and tropical fruit, she’s figuring out life with a new child that is 100% dependent on her for its every single need and cannot even communicate in ways other than crying, laughing, cooing or smiling. Her whole world is turned upside down and she has to figure out life with a “dependent” that needs love, affection, attention and care.

But the co-worker doesn’t see all that. The co-worker sees someone who gets to take 2 or 3 months off and dreams about what they would do in those 2 or 3 months, of course from the illogical perspective of NOT having a child, but that it is time to find themselves, to re-discover life without work and who they truly are and truly want to be.

So, in light of that, I take the novel for the “joke” it is, for the lighthearted look it takes at that strange and illogical perspective of a co-worker who dreams about what they would do with 3 months off, minus the genuine and true responsibilities that being a new mother is. It is a frivolous look at that time off. It is intended to be a fun look, even if illogical, at that time.

And it raises some interesting themes, like, how many people would really rediscover themselves if their bosses said, “We’re giving you 3 months off with pay, just for you, call it me-ternity leave.”

So, get the “joke” of it. Get the lighthearted look at life that it takes. It is not intended to be a slam on true motherhood nor on the fact that maternity leave is a good and necessary thing for genuine mothers giving birth to their first or subsequent children. It plays upon that co-worker delusion that somehow this maternity leave is the “time of her life.”

It’s a humorous take on an aspect of life. Don’t be hypersensitive, take it for what it is.

The premise sounds ridiculous, right? And your points above are well thought out. Is it all a ploy? Is it a long term strategy and we will see it in the years to come? I’m unsure.

What interests me is that people are talking about the U.S. being so far behind other developed nations in family leave benefits. I’m happy people are sharing the stories of stress rather than the perfect pictures published or shared on social media.

If anything has come from this, it is the conversation started about feeling you have the right to disconnect from your job when you leave (in a perfect world) and that we have a lot of work ahead of us regarding benefits to employees.

Meghann Foye apparently took time off from her career for an extended period. The article doesn’t claim she was paid for time off. In fact, I think it implied she resigned from her job and was unemployed for awhile.

If this is the case, she could have explained that she used paid maternity leave in her story to write an entertaining novel, but in real life she did not recommend faking pregnancy to get paid leave.

However, stepping off from your career, dealing with the stress in your life, and taking unpaid time off if you can afford it can be a sound decision and put your life on a better track. It worked for Meghann Foye.

Why can’t the author simply clarify?

By the way, there is a countering article on the Post website about the difficulties of labor and caring for a baby that takes a reasonable argument and overplays it to the point of ridiculous.

-d