Pregnant and Parenting Journalists Are Still Fighting for Fairness, Study Finds

Journalism is one of the least family-friendly careers. That’s according to a recent report by research group OnePoll. Between the long hours, late nights, and hefty workload, it’s no surprise that the high-pressure, high-stress world of journalism doesn’t lend itself well to motherhood. Sprinkle in ingrained industry sexism, and many women are left with this choice: newborn or newsroom?

Women journalists are talking about these struggles and having candid conversations with each other about balancing pregnancy and motherhood with their careers. Some have also written great opinion pieces on the topic. In an insightful piece for The Atlantic, Julianna Goldman called being a mom in television news “almost impossible.” But there are very little, if any, research studies that tackle the topic from a scholarly approach. So we decided to take on that challenge.

We are former media professionals turned academics. One of us is a journalism historian and the other is a qualitative researcher. As such, we combined our skills to study pregnancy and motherhood in the news industry over time. We conducted oral histories with mothers who worked as journalists in the 1950s and 1960s, and interviewed mothers working in news now. We found that some of the challenges women journalists struggled with 70 years ago are the same ones facing women journalists today.

In the 1950s and 1960s, it was completely acceptable to fire a journalist for becoming pregnant. And it happened a lot. Eileen Shanahan worked for United Press International in the 1960s. She said, “In those days you didn’t work much past the point where you showed. I quit at five months. And I remember one guy at [United Press] who said to me, ‘Aren’t you ashamed, going around looking like that?’ My own father said that to me, also. Guess what? She’s had sex. Shame.”

Some women in our oral histories reported being forced to take pregnancy tests before they were offered a job. Others were asked not to come back to work once they started showing. Maternity leave in the 1950s and 1960s simply did not exist. Ruth Ashton Taylor, a television newswoman with a career spanning over 50 years, said, “You quit and had a baby and that’s the only way you could do it. They weren’t going to let you stay there while you had the baby and they weren’t going to let you go on leave. It wasn’t done. It was not even considered.”

It can be tempting to dismiss these gendered prejudices as a problem of the past, but our research shows that many of these injustices are still prevalent in the journalism industry today. Stigma against pregnancy and motherhood is engrained in modern newsroom culture, with many women in our study saying they were afraid to tell their bosses they were pregnant. Jessica*, a TV news anchor, explained a situation she faced only a few years ago. She said, “I had a real fear, the very big fear, of telling my boss I was pregnant. In fact, when I went in, I was already saying to him, ‘I’ll be right back, I’m pregnant, I’m going to have a baby, but don’t you worry.’”

Unpaid maternity leave is now federally protected, but only 11 states mandate paid maternity leave. In most states, paid leave is up to the discretion of each individual employer. Our research shows that many news outlets’ maternity leave policies leave much to be desired. Rebecca, a broadcast journalist, said, “We had a separate savings account for my maternity leave because we were anticipating having to pay out my salary for the second six weeks.”

While leave pay (or lack thereof) is a major challenge for journalists, actually getting maternity leave is another issue. Our research suggests that many news organizations’ maternity leave policies are unclear and management is not transparent about policy. When Sarah, a political reporter, approached her boss about taking leave, he refused to have a direct conversation with her. Sarah said, “He was like, ‘Look, I can’t put this in writing, so here’s my word.’ He flashed me this thumbs up. It was like … really?” Sarah also said that once she was on leave, her boss and colleagues did not respect her time off, as she would routinely get calls or be asked to deal with work issues while trying to tend to her newborn.

Women journalists face additional challenges once they return from maternity leave. Many women in our study continued breastfeeding after returning to work. Because they could not bring their babies to the newsroom, they would pump breast milk at work, store it, and bring it home. However, our research found that most newsrooms would not accommodate lactation, even when legally obligated to do so. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act requires most employers to provide breaks and a physical space for lactating mothers.

Susan, who has been a journalist for 30 years, reported having to pump in an old darkroom with a “chemical smell.” Cathy, a visual journalist, said she pumped in closets and in her car. She said she had to “fight with HR” to get a fridge to store her milk. Amanda, a digital journalist, said she pumped in a male co-worker’s private bathroom, an experience she describes as “awkward.” She said she “hated it so much” that she gave up breastfeeding, a decision she later regretted. Our findings align with previous research highlighting the lack of support for breastfeeding mothers in the workplace, including a global study conducted by medical scholar Lisa Steurer.

Women have come a long way in journalism since the 1950s, deeply in part to the hard work and determination of women journalists who pushed back against sexism in the industry. However, as our research suggests, we still have a long way to go. Women journalists are still stigmatized for becoming mothers, face unfair maternity leave policies, and must fight employers for space and time to pump breastmilk.

Newsroom policies regarding maternity leave and lactation need to be reexamined and renegotiated. Women journalists should be given an active role in shaping these policies through surveys, town hall discussions, and honest conversations with management without the potential consequence of retaliation. We must also keep the conversation going, both through anecdotal narratives and empirical research, to make sure the future for mothers in journalism is much brighter than its past.

*Names changed for privacy