After the launch of her new book 'Meternity', author Meghann Foye has been slammed online for so-called belittling the hard work of mothers during maternity leave, calling it ‘personal’ time.
The novel is centred around a fictional burnt-out editor, who fakes a pregnancy in a desperate bid to escape from the office, and ponder over her life.
In a recent interview with the New York Post, the 38-year-old author explained that she believes everyone who ISN’T a parent – and particularly women – should be entitles to the equivalent of a maternity leave.
This, she coins, should be called ‘meternity’ leave, and should be paid in a similar way to parental leave.
In the interview, she explained the importance of the taking an extended period of time of to concentrate and invest in something other than work, which only seems to be an option in the baby bundle.
She said: “The more I thought about it, the more I came to believe in the value of a “meternity” leave — which is, to me, a sabbatical-like break that allows women and, to a lesser degree, men to shift their focus to the part of their lives that doesn’t revolve around their jobs.”
And today she appeared on This Morning, talking to presenters Holly Willoughby and Philip Schofield about her book and the response it’s had.
But appearing on video chat, the presenters did not hold back on their distaste of her meternity proposal.
Philip asked: “Can't you do that at weekends?”
He told Meghann: "This isn't how life works!" and compared her too “pandering to a bunch of tree huggers".
While Holly could get on board with single people taking a sabbatical, she was firm rhat she didn’t like the comparison to maternity leave.
She said: "It's quite dangerous.. I think it's a slightly irresponsible thing to do."
But while Meghann insisted it was simply a play on words, Phillip asserted: "Dodge away as much as you like, that's what you're saying."
Although some people felt the ITV presenter went too far in their treatment of the author:
Although Holly and Phillip haven’t been the only one to lay into the author.
After her NYP interview, the author described feeling ‘envious’ of mums who get to put work aside to let their personal lives ‘take centre stage,’ as childless woman miss out on “socially mandated time and space for self-reflection,” backlash was received on Twitter.
She summed up in article: “Bottom line: Women are bad at putting ourselves first. But when you have a child, you learn how to self-advocate to put the needs of your family first. A well-crafted “meternity” can give you the same skills – and taking one shouldn’t disqualify you from taking maternity leave later.”
And this is how people reacted on Twitter:
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