You added the assumption that pregnant women couldn’t get jobs. Do you have cites for that? In my personal experience, at that of at least one other Doper who’s posted, that’s not true, and one can get plenty of jobs while being honest - temporary jobs, high-turnover jobs or permanent positions with sympathetic employers who know what they’re getting into.
You must admit, that if women of childbearing status are limited to such jobs, it severely limits their employability and makes motherhood unattractive.
Yes, I do admit that. I also admit that childbearing hips, pregnancy weight gain, acne, 3 am feedings, temper tantrums and teenagers make motherhood unattractive. 
I find it really interesting how differently the two sides see this debate.
One side sees employment as a contract with a corporation, the other, as a relationship with an individual: if it’s a contract, it’s like any other business deal, like selling a house-- as long as you disclose everything the law requires, you are ok because it’s understood and accepted that it’s an advesarial relationship where both people are trying to get the most value they can. If it’s a relationship with an individual, then openness and honesty are the foundation of any sort of relationship–professional or personal.
Furthermore, one side sees maternity leave as six weeks unpaid, the other as six months with full pay and benefits and a decent chance of not returning afterwards: the later seems much more mercenary than the former.
That’s a really good point, and you’ve uncovered MY unconscious bias. I’ve almost always worked for small mom ‘n’ pops. I’ve considered myself an employee first, but a friend and confidant pretty soon after. It’s just the kind of person I am and the kind of employment I seek out. My one exception was working for Blockbuster Video, of all corporate behemoths. While I got pretty jaded about “those idiots at corporate”, the fellow employees and managers of the individual stores that I worked at were like family to me. We laughed and cried and celebrated and bitched at each other like family. When I was a manager, I had the lowest turnover in the state, in a generally high turnover job. I think that was because, as you say, I encouraged interpersonal relationships between my staff and my staff and I.
My relationships with the Big Blue Box taught me that corporations are not evil faceless entities out to screw everyone. (Yes, even Blockbuster.) Corporations are me and Sam and Matt and Sue working a Saturday night and laughing at stories of Matt’s kids while we ring up customers we know by name who have kids and stories of their own. I’d have been really pissed off if one of my work *friends *lied to me about their availability. I always bent over backwards to accommodate people, and I did in fact hire two pregnant women (who both told me ahead of time) and lots of kids who were only home for the summer and going back to school in the fall. They’d return, every summer, and that was totally cool with me, and we had great relationships - because they were honest with me from the start so I knew when I had to put out the Hiring sign well in advance. The worst part for me about firing an employee (and I only did it twice in 7 years) was that I was losing a friendship because this person had betrayed me (theft, in both cases.)
If a corporation has policies which don’t protect and help it’s employees, it’s because specific evil people wrote those policies and other specific evil people carry them out. I won’t work for a company like that, even if that means I’m forcing myself into a lower tax bracket.
With that bias, what I hear that doesn’t make sense to me is, “I’m going to withhold information, that, when it gets out, is going to piss off people I have to work for and with. Furthermore, I’m going to try and *return *to that poisoned environment after six weeks or six months and work there again.” Do you see why, if one views employees as friends, this is a bewildering tack to take?
Employees aren’t friends; they are employees. It is an adversarial relationship. It’s very nice when people can be friendly during work, but long gone (if they ever even existed) are the days when a business is like a family. If Blockbuster had wanted to close your store, they would have, with little thought to how much you got along with everyone there. It’s business.
I don’t like to piss people off. I mean, I really don’t. I’m the nicest, easiest-going person I know. And, like you, I am bewildered by people that don’t seem to mind making people angry. But I don’t think it’s unethical to make them upset.
If I may make an analogy–I am a big game player. And when I play games, I’m a sweetheart. If someone plays the wrong card, makes a mistake because they didn’t understand the rules, whatever, I am always ok with them redoing or undoing what they did because, in the end, the think I am most concerned with is everyone having a good time. Some of the people that I play with, on the other hand, are much more competitive. You throw the two of spades instead of the ten because you picked up the wrong card? Too bad, so sad, as long as it was a legal play, a card laid is a card played. And they are much more concerned with keeping the game fair than with anyone’s feelings. People like this confuse me. They are very different than I. But what they are doing isn’t immoral. There is no moral obligation to make and strengthen interpersonal relationships.
In the same way, there is no moral obligation to conceptualize one’s employment as primarily a personal relationship. It’s as valid to see it as a business contract–many people do. And in business, you are trying to get the most for what you have to offer within the bounds of the law–when I sell my house, I have to say that the foundation was repaired X years ago and that it was treated for termites Y years ago, but I am not obligated to point out that their really isn’t enough closet space in the master bedroom and that you’d think we are zoned for the elementary school right next store but in fact it’s one three miles away and the circuit breaker is outside and is a bitch to find in the dark.
This isn’t about corporations being evil and faceless and having terrible policies. Most don’t. It’s about having a business relationship with your employers.
I imagine that when you worked for Blockbuster, you had employees who had serious emergencies. And I suspect that there wre times you gave or loaned money to people who were in serious need. But I am pretty sure neither you not they ever considerered giving a loan or a gift out of company funds–because while you may have had a close interpersonal relationship with the person, the company did not, and it wouldn’t have been appropriate.
What I see here what Carol Gilligan’s whole “ethics of care” thing–that women (for whatever reason–socialization or biological, take your pick) tend to make ethical decisions based on interpersonal relationships and men on abstract principles. While neither system is really “right”, I think this sets up women to be taken advantage of in the workplace–I’ve seen people, most often women, work in horrible pain, say, because they didn’t want to let other people down by not being there. I’ve seen people, most often women, work off the clock because corporate gives an unrealistically low number of hours a week and they know their manager needs help. And I’ve seen people, most often women, stay in dead-end jobs because they feel it would be disloyal to leave their friends behind.
You can have deep and satisfying relationships with the people you work with. But if you work for a company, you relationship with that company is contractual and adversarial. Going after the best deal you can get is no more dishonest than trying to get the best deal you can on a car.
I withheld information about my pregnancy when looking for a job. If my news was greeted with the hostility that some in this thread seem to think is appropriate, anyone acting to create the hostile environment would be acting against stated company policy and against the company’s interests. I fail to see how that is ethical. If that were to occur, I would be pursuing the issue with the internal department which deal with these sorts of complaints. I feel fairly confident that my complaints would result in action, partly because they have worked to create a culture which does not encourage that sort of thing. If they were not resolved and the poisoned atmosphere continued, I might even pursue the matter in court.
I do not expect my company to be my friend. I expect them to operate within the law and for stockholder interests in accordance with their own stated policies. Expecting a company to act as a friend in turn for your loyalty seems to me a mistake, also it can be asking the company to behave unethically. For example, absent other motivation such as unions rules, a manager who keeps on a 10 year employee who is his friend, but lacks initiative and has failed to develop new skills at the cost of laying off a relatively new employee who is highly skilled and hard working is likely not acting in the best interests of the stockholders. To me this choice is unethical, even though it may make more emotional sense to the manager. Companies who give free rein to managers to make such choices may also open themselves to other illogical choices by managers, such as managers who make hiring decisions based on sexist or racist criteria which could end up costing the company and stockholders dearly. Failure to clearly hold managers accountable for making decisions not in the company’s interests but rather in their own personal interests is unethical behavior for a company.
I am a bit bemused about those who cast not revealing information which has not been directly solicited as immoral under the Kantian system. My understanding of Kant was that his morality demanded truthful answers to questions, not revelation of information which had not been asked for. It also surprises me that anyone would appeal to Kant considering how badly Kant’s philosophy has has failed the real life test.
catsix, I don’t think Hilarity N. Suze’s point was invalid. Perhaps pregnancy care has changed significantly in recent years, but in my experience pregnant women do not typically attend so many appointments for such a long period of time.
The standard of care is (or was) a single appointment per month for the first 7 months or so. Appointments generally involve blood pressure & weight checks, possibly a pelvic, and a brief interview. Pregnant women do go more often the last month, and the non-stress test will be a longer exam (may take over an hour)…as will the ultrasound which takes place earlier (~ 20 weeks). But this is not the sort of medical burden that adds up to missing 4 hours per every two workweeks for the duration of the pregnancy. The absences of your coworker may be atypical, thus I am not sure it is accurate to assume her long commute and frequent visits to the doctor are what the average pregnant woman will subject her employer to.
I certainly understand the concern of any employer about the costs of pregnancy (from several standpoints), and I have mixed feelings about whether one should disclose pregnancy when one is a job prospect. However, the absences you’re describing seem like an extreme case, and thus I don’t think they in themselves are a strong argument for why a pregnant women should disclose her condition.
On a slightly different tangent, what is the “mommy lobby?” I understand it’s a nickname (and I assume a pejorative one) but I’m curious as to what group or groups it refers to. It’s not a political nickname I’ve seen before.