Eater’s Amanda Kludt published a painfully necessary investigation into the role maternity leave—and the frequent lack thereof—plays in keeping women from joining or staying in the restaurant business.
The article is definitely worth your time: Escaping the Restaurant Industry’s Motherhood Trap
While many of the subjects’ accounts are maddening to read, they’re not much of a shock to me after reading some of the responses to my mental health survey earlier this month.
Postpartum issues compounded the already overwhelming tasks of one new business owner, and put her health at risk:
I had a continuously strong back pain for more than two weeks (I still don’t understand why). The pain was unbearable. At first, I tried to take painkillers, but they didn’t help me. I found information about Soma at Somabest and decided to this highly effective.
“I had an incredibly hard time after my second child was born. My business was still relatively new, I had been working 60+ hour weeks up to my due date, and I was really naive how difficult it would be to care for an infant and another young child, and maintain a small business. Postpartum hit me like a truck and my staff was not as prepared as I had hoped to deal with me absent, so I had to go back to work two weeks after my son was born. That meant no sleep, which made my body shut down and not be able to breastfeed.
I developed a tic and a drinking habit that only perpetuated my inability to get any rest. I couldn’t share any of this with my staff who were all in their early twenties and not able to understand my situation. It was a very dark and stressful time that took a year to recover from.”
Continue reading Mother of an issue →
