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When companies rolled out return-to-office mandates starting in late 2024 and early 2025, labor force participation among mothers of young children fell from roughly 80% in 2023 to 77% by August 2025, reversing years of hard-won gains. Yet if you’re pregnant or postpartum, you have more rights than you may realize, including some that can help you keep your job while growing your family in a way that works for you.
For all things working and mom-ing, we always turn to Daphne Delvaux, an employment attorney who represents working mothers, founder of the Mamattorney, and author of the new book Moms in Labor: An Employment Lawyer’s Secrets to Protect Your Baby and Your Career (That HR Won’t Tell You).
In this multipart series for Two Truths, Delvaux will help you better understand your rights at work across various stages of motherhood. Part one: how to navigate return-to-work mandates, what to know about accommodations throughout the reproductive years, including the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, and how to ask for what you are entitled to.
We know that too many mothers leave the workforce due to the dual demands of paid work and caregiving. Tell us about what moms need to know about the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act—and how it can help them build some flexibility into their work life.
In June 2023, Congress passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA). It applies to any employer with 15 or more employees. It covers pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions and requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations unless doing so would create an undue hardship, which is a very high bar. In short, that means that pregnant and postpartum workers may be able to opt out of return-to-office mandates entirely.
Remote work is a reasonable accommodation. Your company already knows it works because they just spent years building the infrastructure to prove it.
Help us understand the PWFA a little bit more. How exactly can you qualify for accommodations under it?
The PWFA is modeled after the Americans With Disabilities Act but designed specifically for pregnancy and postpartum. It requires that the mother has a pregnancy-related condition that is limiting one or more activities, and that a modification would allow her to keep doing her job. She does not have to have an official disability, just a pregnancy- or postpartum-related limitation.
Conditions that qualify include morning sickness, pelvic pain, preterm labor risk, postpartum physical recovery, and prenatal or postpartum mental health conditions like anxiety or depression. Breastfeeding is explicitly covered, and so is the need to pump.
So how do you suggest people make this request?
The most effective thing a pregnant or postpartum worker can do is put the request in writing before the situation becomes adversarial.
Start by emailing HR and your direct manager and stating that you are requesting a reasonable accommodation under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Describe the limitation (not the diagnosis) and the accommodation you’re requesting. Attach supporting medical documentation.
Keep the language functional: “I am requesting the ability to work remotely during [duration] due to a pregnancy-related limitation.”
Then what do you do?
Essentially, you wait for the interactive process to begin. Your employer is required to engage. If they deny the request, ask for the denial in writing and the specific basis for the undue hardship determination. If they ignore the request entirely, document it and save the evidence. Both scenarios are actionable.
The employer is not required to give you exactly what you asked for, but they are required to make a good-faith effort to find something that works. What they cannot do is nothing.
What should people do if this process isn’t working—either their work isn’t being responsive or is being dismissive?
Remind your employer that by law they have to engage in the interactive process to try to accommodate you. Mothers are also protected from retaliation, whether or not the accommodation is granted.
As this is a newer law, it is possible that your employer is still wrapping their head around it. In your communications, make sure you are informing instead of asking, and do not assume they know about this. It’s possible that you are actually more of a subject matter expert than the person you are emailing. These rights are more acute to us moms, and it may just not be on their radar. However, if their behavior seems malicious or punitive in nature, make sure to consult with an attorney.
We talk a lot about visionary leadership. You know, the ability to see around corners, spot emerging patterns, and imagine futures that don’t yet exist. These are all very important activities for strategic work. But something we rarely consider is what happens when the physical instrument of vision itself is under siege. Said more bluntly, what happens when our eyes succumb to the daily assault of screen time?
I recently spoke with Dr. Valerie Sheety-Pilon, SVP of clinical and medical affairs at VSP Vision Care, whose organization has spent three years tracking the state of vision health in the American workforce. The data she shared stopped me cold—and it reframed how I think about the infrastructure of creative, imaginative work. Here are three of my takeaways.
Insight #1: The Visual Crisis Is Accelerating Faster Than We Think
Three years ago, VSP’s Workplace Vision Health Report found that 50% of workers were experiencing at least one eye issue. I would definitely fall into that category—I have spare pairs of plus-one readers in every room in our house. But by last year, that number had climbed to 63%. Today it’s 66% and rising. That’s a 16-percentage-point jump in just three years, and it spans both desk workers and non-desk workers alike.
The culprit isn’t mysterious. We are now spending upward of 100 hours a week in front of screens: phones, tablets, monitors, and televisions. That sustained “visual load,” as Sheety-Pilon calls it, is generating screen-related visual discomfort at a rate our workplaces haven’t been designed to absorb. The downstream effects, according to VSP’s research, are reduced productivity, diminished ability to focus, and a declining quality of work output.
When I asked Sheety-Pilon whether visual fatigue might also affect higher-order thinking—the kind of imagination, problem-solving, and creative association that I call wonder —she didn’t hesitate. “There are studies that connect visual fatigue as a component of that imaginative deliverable of creativity,” she told me. “High visual load is impacting cognitive health as part of that.”
Insight #2: The Body Is a System, Not a Collection of Silos
This is the point where Sheety-Pilon’s perspective aligned deeply with my own perspective about what we need in our current Imagination Era. In my book Move. Think. Rest., I point out that our sentient intelligence constantly picks up cues and data through our bodies that inform and enrich our cognitive, rational decision-making. We are hardwired to use our whole selves, not just our prefrontal cortex.
Sheety-Pilon frames it as the “visual sensory capacity,” one critical component within a dynamic, interconnected sensory system. “If we improve our vision, and then our hearing, and then the other senses that all come together,” she explained, “we can get that perfect package where we can be the best we can be every day.”
In other words: The eye is not an isolated organ. It is a gateway to neural tissue, to sensory processing, and to the imagination itself. When we treat vision health as a stand-alone wellness checkbox rather than organizational infrastructure, we are, as she put it, failing to understand “the connection between ocular health, systemic conditions, and overall well-being.”
This resonates with what neuroscientist John Medina writes about in Brain Rules for Work, which argues that ideally we should be stepping away from the desk every 35 to 40 minutes, not as a perk, but as a neurological necessity for sustained high performance.
Insight #3: Vision-Forward Culture Is a Leadership Responsibility, Not an HR Benefit
When I pushed Sheety-Pilon beyond ergonomic tactics—beyond the blue-light glasses and screen-distance reminders—and asked what a genuinely vision-forward organizational culture might look like, her answer was pointed: “Allowing the time and space, encouraging the moments of breaks.” Organizations that prioritize health literacy within the employee network can significantly shape work culture.
She also introduced me to the 20-20-20 rule: For every 20 minutes of near-work screen time, take a 20-second break and look at something at least 20 feet away. It’s the ocular equivalent of what I call movement hygiene in the MTR framework: deliberately alternating between modes of engagement to preserve the capacity for both rigor and wonder. I’ve been giving this one a try and feel my eyes relax immediately!
The leaders and organizations that will thrive in the Imagination Era won’t just invest in cognitive tools or AI capabilities. They’ll protect and cultivate the full sensory capacity of their people. Because you cannot lead with vision (metaphorical or otherwise) if you’ve systematically depleted the organ that makes vision possible.
As Sheety-Pilon summarized near the end of our conversation, “You have better quality of work. You have the focus and the ability to deliver better work when you have a supportive employer that understands the importance of overall mental health and visual and physical well-being.”
The hidden cost of screen-era work isn’t burnout or disengagement, it’s the slow erosion of the very sensory capacity leaders need most. Visionary leadership starts with healthy vision. It’s time to build the organizational infrastructure to protect it.
I started working as a remote employee back in 2006, long before it was common. I talked to my colleagues during the day, sure, but they were all in an office with cubicles. I worked alone.
Later in my career, I was part of an executive team at a software company, making decisions about budget and strategy.
So when I started my own business in 2022, many aspects felt like a natural extension of the way I’d always worked.
Most advice about leaving corporate life focuses on the financial safety net: savings, pricing your services, and side hustles. But money isn’t the only reason people leave solopreneur life and go back to a nine-to-five. Some people are genuinely not wired for the day-to-day reality of working alone.
Before you make the leap, it’s worth being honest about whether the nonfinancial parts of solopreneurship are a fit for you.
You’ll be making every decision
In corporate jobs, decisions get distributed across teams, managers, and leadership. As a solopreneur, every call is yours.
You’ll face decisions daily, without the option for a second opinion. You don’t have a colleague to gut-check an idea or a manager to absorb some of the risk. It’s just you.
Some people thrive on this autonomy. Others find it paralyzing. Procrastination and indecisiveness become real problems when there’s no structure forcing you to make a call. In a corporate job, deadlines and approval chains keep things moving, whether you feel ready or not. When you’re solo, nothing moves unless you do.
What to ask yourself: Will I feel confident making decisions without a team to weigh in, and will I be able to move forward even when I’m unsure?
Loneliness is a real consideration
Solopreneurship can be isolating in a way that catches people off guard. I’ll have entire days go by without a single meeting. A survey from Founder Reports found 26% of solopreneurs feel lonely or isolated.
Some people manage this through communities, like Slack groups, virtual coworking, or networks. I’ll have an occasional “coffee chat” via Google Meet with solopreneurs I meet online, just to connect with others. But these require effort to maintain, and they’re not the same as having colleagues who share your day-to-day context.
What to ask yourself: Do I feel energized when working with other people, or do I do my best work alone?
You have to sit with uncertainty
Even experienced solopreneurs deal with income volatility, slow seasons, and the ongoing question of whether a particular business strategy will pay off. The difference between “keep going” and “go back to corporate” is tolerance.
In a corporate job, uncertainty is usually someone else’s problem. Your paycheck still clears. In solo work, you absorb the uncertainty directly. It’s hard to think clearly when you’re worried about your business.
Everyone’s tolerance for risk is different. Even with the most conservative decision-making, you won’t always get it right. And a lot of things are outside your control.
What to ask yourself: How would I feel if I didn’t have enough clients for a month . . . or two?
The financial question isn’t the only question
Solopreneurship is often framed as something anyone can do if they just plan well enough. While it’s true that planning can make a solo business more stable, planning can’t change your wiring.
Being honest about what solo work actually demands—emotionally and psychologically—is one of the most practical things you can do if you’re thinking about going solo.
The financial aspects matter, of course. But so do the questions of whether you’ll be okay on the days when the work is quiet, the decisions are yours alone, and the path forward isn’t obvious.
