This browser does not support the Video element.
An author’s idea that women who don’t have children should receive the same benefits as mothers has sparked backlash on social media.
Meghann Foye is the author of Meternity, a novel about an overworked editor who decides to fake her own pregnancy to get paid time off, aka “meternity” leave.
In an article in the NewYork Post, Foye explained how she worked as a magazine editor in real life and has said she felt “envious” toward parents who “left the office at 6:00 p.m. to tend to their children, while it was assumed co-workers without kids would stay behind to pick up the slack,” she said.
Foye told a pregnant friend of hers that she needed her own maternity leave.
Foye wrote in the Post:
The “meternity” leave proposal caused a backlash from moms who say maternity leave was certainly not a break, but rather a time to recover from giving birth followed by a lifetime of caring for a child.
Foye was scheduled to appear on Good Morning America, but canceled and released this statement:
Foye eventually did take “meternity” spending time grieving the loss of her father and authoring the book.