• Ideas
  • Parenting

Marissa Mayer’s Maternity Leave: CEO Moms, They’re Not Just Like Us

5 minute read
Ideas
Belinda Luscombe is an editor at large at TIME, where she has covered a wide swath of topics, but specializes in interviews, profiles, and essays. In 2010, she won the Council on Contemporary Families Media Award for her stories on the ways marriage is changing. She is also author of Marriageology: the Art and Science of Staying Together.

Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, is pregnant with twins. While many important and prominent male leaders have twins (President George W. Bush for one) and nobody seems to think it’s big deal, this is different, partly because Mayer is a twin-carrying CEO, which is kind of rare, and partly because, for better or worse, mom CEOs are judged differently from dad CEOs.

Last time Mayer and her husband Zachary Bogue had a kid, speculation ran riot over whether she was taking too little time off or whether she would be able to spend enough time with her kid or whether Yahoo could be well-led by a new mom. Having twins, which, as any parent of multiples can tell you, is not like looking after two babies so much as carrying two buckets of eels with no bucket, so this news is likely to kick that kind of speculation into overdrive. How can she have enough bandwidth for all she needs to get done?

Parents only have time for the good stuff. Sign up for TIME’s weekly parenting news roundup here.

But here’s the thing: Mayer is a CEO. Her essential job description is: get people to do stuff. And as CEO, she has oodles of practice at management and oodles of money and oodles of options. I recently interviewed YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, who’s a mother of five kids, aged from just months to 15 years. It’s her contention that being a CEO mom is way easier than being non-CEO mom. “The challenges for me were more when I got started,” says Wojcicki. “My nanny was my first employee; that’s a difficult person to manage. It’s more emotional than it is in the office.”

Wojcicki points out that not only do you have fewer resources and less cash when you’re starting out, you don’t have any management skills. “Now I have really good management skills partially which I have developed from being at work,” she says. “For work I have to delegate. At home I got better at finding people who could help me, so I can focus on the things that are important: the kids when they need me and the kids and their homework.”

Mayer has said she will treat this pregnancy and childbirth like the last one, meaning she won’t take much time off (last time she took two weeks). For her most recent child, Wojcicki has taken 14 of the 18 weeks of paid maternity leave that Google offers. (Yahoo offers 16 weeks.) These women don’t necessarily need to take so much time off, because they have the wherewithal to have their kids’ needs taken care of when they go back to work. But those moms who are still on the lower rungs of the ladder have fewer choices. And some have little or no paid maternity leave, so taking a lot of time off isn’t even an option.

“That’s when I think women are more likely to drop out of the workforce,” says Wojcicki, who has written publicly of the need for more paid parental leave. “When you’re earlier in your career, you have fewer resources and you’re paid less and you also don’t have any management skills. That was the time for me that was really hard.”

While companies such as Google have offered such options to their female workforce as egg freezing, or company subsidized shipping of breast milk from work trips, these are clearly amenities that enable moms to make their lives more like old-school dads’ were: unencumbered by child-rearing. They’re also much more about outsourcing the mechanics of having children and less about the soft skills, like helping kids process their day. A different approach would be to consider the skills and restrictions of parenthood as more of an asset and to encourage employees to use them for the benefit of the company.

Wojcicki, for example, says her desire to be home for dinner with her kids made it difficult for her in the beginning because she was more reluctant to go to evening events or travel as much. It’s one of the reasons, she believes why as the CEO of a site with a billion users, she has an unfamiliar name to most people. But that desire to cap her workday also helped her to prioritize and time-block ruthlessly. “I have to optimize that time I’m in the office and I have to focus on the highest priority things, the things that are really going to make a difference,” she says. “In some ways that’s helped me because it has aligned me with Google trying to do something very quickly.”

To be fair, some of the attention on CEO moms is warranted, because they’re the ones breaking new ground. Dad CEOs manage having kids the same way they’ve done it for decades: by leaving it their wives to organize it. No major upheaval going on there. But for a couple of generations there, most wealthy educated moms stayed home and raised kids. Now that they are becoming the bosses, it’s taking a while for the gears to shift. More companies are starting to offer parental leave, for either gender, rather than just maternity leave, but only a teensy tiny proportion of wealthy educated dads opt to raise kids full time. It’s natural that we are more curious about how women are managing this transition.

But let’s make sure we aren’t forgetting the vast majority of women, for whom motherhood comes before the keys to the C-suite. Perhaps by the time Mayer and Bogue’s daughters are hitting the career track they can feel free to repopulate the planet at any point they choose.

Here's What 20 Famous Women Think About Feminism

Chrissy Teigen
"People have sorely messed up the definition of feminism. It isn’t saying this is wrong and this is right," said Chrissy Teigen during a Variety event in 2014, adding that husband John Legend also identifies: "He’s a bigger feminist than I am! He actually teaches me a lot about the way women should be perceived."D Dipasupil—Getty Images for Extra
Kristen Stewart
The Twilight actress reacted to women rejecting feminism during a Daily Beast interview in October: "That’s such a strange thing to say, isn’t it? Like, what do you mean? Do you not believe in equality for men and women? I think it’s a response to overly-aggressive types."Loic Venance—AFP/Getty Images
"Noah" - UK Premiere - Red Carpet Arrivals
"I decided I was a feminist and this seemed uncomplicated to me," said Emma Watson at a UN Women speech in September. "Men-- I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender Equality is your issue, too." Anthony Harvey—Getty Images
Halle Berry Celebrity Golf Classic With Grey Goose
“I would say on some levels I am [a feminist]. Angela Davis is one of my heroes,” Halle Berry told Ebony in April. “And Gloria Steinem—these are people who, as I was growing, I was moved by and impacted by and thought very deeply about.” Joe Scarnici—Getty Images
Sinead O'Connor In Concert
"I don’t think of myself as being a feminist,” Sinead O'Connor told The Guardian in July. “I wouldn’t label myself anything, certainly not something with an ‘ism’ or an ‘ist’ at the end of it. I’m not interested in anything that is in any way excluding of men.” Jason Kempin—Getty Images
2013 CMA Music Festival - Day 3
"I wouldn’t say [I'm a] feminist, that’s too strong. I think when people hear feminist it’s just like, ‘Get out of my way I don’t need anyone,’” Kelly Clarkson told TIME last year. “I love that I’m being taken care of, and I have a man that’s an actual leader. I’m not a feminist in that sense … but I’ve worked really hard since I was 19." Christopher Polk—Getty Images
American Theatre Wing's 68th Annual Tony Awards - Arrivals
Leighton Meester told OOTD magazine in February about her biggest role model. "American writer Betty Friedan — she fought for gender equality and wrote the great book The Feminine Mystique which sparked the beginning of a second-wave feminism,” Meester said. “I believe in equal rights for men and women.” D Dipasupil—FilmMagic
2014 "TrevorLIVE NY" - Arrivals
“I don’t know why people are so reluctant to say they’re feminists," Ellen Page told The Guardian in 2013. "Maybe some women just don’t care. But how could it be any more obvious that we still live in a patriarchal world when feminism is a bad word?” Dave Kotinsky—Getty Images
Day 2 - Glastonbury Festival
"For me, the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept,” Lana Del Rey told Fader magazine in their summer 2014 issue. “I’m more interested in, you know, SpaceX and Tesla, what’s going to happen with our intergalactic possibilities." (Tabatha Fireman—Redferns/Getty Images)
NBCUniversal Press Tour, July 2014
“I would [call myself a feminist], yes.” Rashida Jones said in 2013. “I believe in the unadulterated advancement of women. And we have so far to go still.” Christopher Polk—NBC/Getty Images
Premiere Screening's For FX's "You're The Worst" And "Married" - Arrivals
“Am I a feminist? F–k yeah, I’m a feminist,” Jenny Slate told MTV News in June. “I think that unfortunately people who are maybe threatened by feminism think that it’s about setting your bra on fire and being aggressive, and I think that’s really wrong and really dangerous.” Jason Kempin—Getty Images
US-POLITICS-SPECIAL OLYMPICS-PERRY
"A feminist? Um, yeah, actually,” Katy Perry told an Australian radio host in March. “I used to not really understand what that word meant, and now that I do, it just means that I love myself as a female and I also love men.” Mandel Ngan—AFP/Getty Images
NBC's 66th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards - Red Carpet
Amy Poehler says she's confused by how many women deny that they're feminists, “but then they go on to explain what they support and live by — it’s feminism exactly,” she told Elle magazine in January. "That’s like someone being like, ‘I don’t really believe in cars, but I drive one every day and I love that it gets me places and makes life so much easier and faster and I don’t know what I would do without it.’” Jason Kempin—NBC/Getty Images
"On The Run Tour: Beyonce And Jay-Z" - Paris, France - September 12, 2014
"We need to stop buying into the myth about gender equality. It isn’t a reality yet," Beyonce wrote in an essay titled "Gender Equality is a Myth" in January. She also famously included an excerpt from Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TEDx talk in her song, "Flawless." Myrna Suarez—WireImage
MEXICO-US-MUSIC-MILEY CYRUS
“I feel like I’m one of the biggest feminists in the world because I tell women to not be scared of anything,” Miley Cyrus told the BBC last November. Julio Cesar Aguilar—AFP/Getty Images
2014 iHeartRadio Music Festival - Night 1 - Backstage
"I wish when I was 12-years-old I had been able to watch a video of my favorite actress explaining in such an intellectual, beautiful, poignant way the definition of feminism."Taylor Swift said in reaction to Emma Watson's speech at the UN in September. "Because I would have understood it. And then earlier on in my life I would have proudly claimed I was a feminist because I would have understood what the word means."Isaac Brekken—Getty Images
Lena Dunham Keynote And Greenroom Photo Op - 2014 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival
“Women saying ‘I’m not a feminist’ is my greatest pet peeve,” Lena Dunham told Metro in 2013. “Do you believe that women should be paid the same for doing the same jobs? Do you believe that women should be allowed to leave the house? Do you think that women and men both deserve equal rights? Great, then you’re a feminist.” Michael Buckner—Getty Images
"Divergent" - European Premiere - Inside Arrivals
"No, because I love men," was Shailene Woodley's response when TIME asked her whether she considered herself a feminist in May. "I think the idea of ‘raise women to power, take the men away from the power’ is never going to work out because you need balance…My biggest thing is really sisterhood more than feminism.” Dave J Hogan—Getty Images
Lady Gaga "The ARTPOP Ball" Tour Opener
“I’m getting the sense that you’re a little bit of a feminist, like I am, which is good,” Lady Gaga told the LA Times in 2009. “I find that men get away with saying a lot in this business, and that women get away with saying very little . . . In my opinion, women need and want someone to look up to that they feel have the full sense of who they are, and says, ‘I’m great.’ “Kevin Mazur—WireImage
"The Prophet" Premiere - The 67th Annual Cannes Film Festival
“[Feminism] means being proud of being a woman, and [having] love, respect and admiration and the belief in our strong capacities,” Salma Hayek told Stylist in 2012. “I don’t think we are the same, women and men. We’re different. But I don’t think we are less than men. There are more women than men in the world – ask any single woman! So it is shocking that men are in more positions of power.” Traverso—L'Oreal/Getty Images
Houston Astros v New York Mets
Children yell to players after a game between the New York Mets and Houston Astros at Citi Field on September 28, 2014 in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. Alex Goodlett—Getty Images

More Must-Reads from TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com

TIME Ideas hosts the world's leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture. We welcome outside contributions. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.