Maternity leave policies can have a profound impact on working mothers’ well-being and career advancement. While U.S. maternity leave practices lag behind most developed countries, no study has looked into this issue in the lodging context, leaving an important research gap that needs to be addressed. This research note takes a mixed-methods approach to study maternity leave policies and practices in the U.S. lodging industry via both desk-top research and interviews with human resource managers and working mothers in the lodging industry.
Working mothers often find themselves in a difficult situation when trying to balance work and family responsibilities and to manage expectations about their work and parental effectiveness. Family-friendly policies such as maternity leave have been introduced to address this issue. But how are women who then make the decision to go or not go on maternity leave evaluated?
