"Lol Women Fought for This" — Mom Missing Baby Milestones at Work

A new mother uploaded a video about missing important milestones in her child's life while at the workplace, and it ignited a discussion on maternity leave, along with debates on various feminist movements, in the comments.

TikTok user Brookie (@adayinaeats) shared a clip to the popular social media app, where it accrued over 5,600 replies as of this writing.

Brookie begins her video with a recording of herself sitting at her work desk, covering her face with her hands. She seems despondent, and a text overlay in the clip explains why this is the case.

"Me at work because I'm watching my baby sit up for the first time through the monitor," she writes.

A caption for her post further indicates her sadness in not being able to be there for her child as they are developing. "Being a working mom is so much harder than I could’ve imagined. Missing the milestones just breaks me," she penned.

Her video sparked a debate on maternity leave laws in the United States, along with other conversations on movements to mobilize America's workforce into creating households that have two breadwinners.

While women fought for more pay and autonomy, they ended up contending with impossible pressure to "do it all," with a higher cost of living. It's a phenomenon that the L.A. Times refers to as a "two-earner family myth." This argument contends that larger social conversations glorifying excellence in the workplace for women in lieu of finding value as a homemaker culminated in higher living costs for the average American.

Dual-income households meant that the costs of goods and services could increase for the average American. Some commenters who replied to Brookie's video expressed anger at this state of affairs. One person remarked, "We were NOT supposed to live like this."

While someone else quipped, "Lol women fought for this." Another replied, "lol women fought to work just 100 years ago. How silly of them."

But there were others who were quick to point out that what US citizens fought for wasn't to not see their children grow up.

Rather, they contended that women have almost always been part of America's workforce. It's just that they were toiling to ensure they received compensation equal to their male counterparts. Moreover, they also stated that they were attempting to secure reproductive rights and agency over their own bodies.

This Historian Live piece highlights a podcast that elucidates on a "forgotten fight" of second-wave feminism, which included household rights for parents. According to the site, this flies in the face of the theory that feminists destroyed the familial unit, but rather suggests fervor behind these movements was co-opted, with some of its facets, like household rights advocacy, ignored.

The Atlantic also echoed this sentiment, stating that individuals jostling for political power supplanted the voices of those who strove to make workplaces more accommodating to mothers. And not, as evinced in Brookie's video, force a new mom to go to work during the earliest developmental stages of their baby's existence.

It's this latter point that many comments who replied to the TikToker's video touch upon. One person wrote, "One year of paid federal maternity leave needs to be the standard. I’m glad women are getting louder about this, it’s a huge issue."

Payscale broke down the countries with the best maternity leave policies. According to the outlet, Sweden is the most generous, which gives mothers 56 weeks of paid maternity at 80% of their salary, with an additional 13 weeks of a negotiated rate afterward.

Croatia gives 24 weeks at 100% salary and 34 weeks of a variable rate following that. Canada gives its citizens 55 weeks of maternity leave at 55% of a mother's total salary. At the bottom of the list was the USA, with no guarantee from the Federal government of any type of compensation in regards to maternity leave for private-sector workers.

However, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management writes that this isn't the case, and that there are laws that allow for up to 12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave (PPL). Certain eligibility requirements must be met in order for citizens to qualify for PPL, which can be found here.