One would think that maternity leave is a fairly new concept brought about by the liberated woman of the 20th century. A quick study shows that maternity leave was extremely common even in colonial America. In fact, records show that some maternity absences in the colonies and among pioneering women stretched on for close to a year.

Mother on Maternity Leave Memorial in Norfolk, VA

A surprising find is that even the fiercest Native American tribes allowed their women maternity leave and honored the leave of white women. In Western North Carolina, the Catawba Indians never attacked a settlement in which a new mother on maternity leave resided. The settlement that is now Asheville, NC was weak in terms of military might but never faced Indian attack because of their ordinance that issued out pregnancy schedules that all married women had to abide by. Pregnancies were timed to overlap each other, so maternity leaves were a part of life in the settlement and would thus fend off Indian attack. Nearby settlements attempted the same technique but few Indian tribes allowed the four-month maternity leave granted by the generous Catawba tribe. With shorter maternity leaves granted by the Indians, other settlements were much more prone to attack.

As time went on the Europeans began to push back the Indian tribes, forcing the Indians to become stricter with their maternity leave policy. In some parts of the country, Indians were only allowing white women three days to recover physiologically and psychologically before the fighting and scalping would resume. During those days of maternity leave, however, the white soldiers pressed on, completely disregarding the maternity leave that should have been granted to the Indian women. As you know, the Indians were practically defeated and their say-so on the issue of maternity leave was taken away. The average time for a pioneer woman to be on leave eventually settled on around 3 months.

Always the bridesmaid and never the bride, Sara Kinesowahski never got a maternity leave. Rather, she collected buffalo chips until the end of her days.

As we close out this short article, we’d like to leave you with a little tid-bit that you can impress your mother with. Did you know that Sacagawea opted to not take maternity leave in order to guide Lewis and Clark? Not to worry though, she was able to sell her 240 hours of maternity leave back to her employer at 75% of her pay rate.