How to Manage Maternity Leave When You’re the CEO

Over the past few years, I’ve had the privilege of meeting incredible women who are leading business operations or running their own companies. Like me, many of them are hitting their stride as business leaders at the same time that other major life events, like having a baby, come into play.

For those of us in charge, stepping away (even for something as obviously important as becoming a parent) can often lead to panic or anxiety spirals. There’s an unrealistic amount of pressure (both internal and external) to “do it right” or be performative in some significant way.

The number of times I’ve heard names like Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer thrown around in conversation as the primary exemplars of how women should look at maternity leave options is frankly, annoying. (I can’t name a single male leader whose paternity leave has been dissected with the same intensity.)

Unfortunately, however, there are (still) quite a bit of mixed messages about how to approach maternity leave. Particularly for those of us who work in emerging tech industries or small startups, there often aren’t policies in place.

I’ve heard things like:

“I’m the first one to ever take parental leave at this company—everyone will be watching me.”

“My leave will overlap with our next fundraise. I can’t step away.”

“If I tell clients I’m pregnant, they’ll think less of me during negotiations.”

Recently I spoke with a woman whose male colleague panicked so much when she told him she was pregnant that he demanded a complete transition schedule by the end of the month—despite her being only in her first trimester. Her baby isn’t due until July. Her extended family doesn’t even know she’s pregnant yet.

Let's be perfectly clear about one thing: This is not leadership from a place of encouragement and empowerment; it’s leadership from a place of anxiety. And it's completely unfair and selfish to treat colleagues this way. Even if...especially if, they happen to be the ones in charge.

I’ve had two babies while working. The first time, I meticulously planned everything weeks, if not months, in advance. I color-coded spreadsheets, assigned owners, and even pre-empted large chunks of work in advance (you know, to “make it easier” for everyone else). My husband and I built a detailed parental leave plan, one that included visits to my family, to his family, and even a month in San Diego, where we were going to test out the mode where I watch a newborn while he teched a new musical at The Old Globe theatre.

Then our first baby was born in April 2020, and the entire world shut down. My husband was out of work for a year, nobody traveled anywhere, and all of the IRL events and programming I’d helped my team prepare to execute in my absence just…disappeared. Plan = foiled. 

The second time, I was working fractionally, which introduced a whole new set of challenges. Not only was my job part-time (and part-salary), but taking time off meant not getting paid. As an independent contractor, I knew that pausing work also meant pausing “sell mode”—the constant hustle to generate future income. That gap extended my time without pay even further.

We ended up traveling for my husband’s job that time and spent weeks 6-12 of our baby’s life living abroad in Germany. To set myself up for success while I knew I’d be less active online, I dropped a massive piece of research on the Internet the day before I got induced in the hospital. This move led to inbound job interest almost immediately, and I ended up taking several conversations from WeWorks in Germany, which is ultimately what led me to working with a web3 venture fund for about 10 months.

Bethany Crystal

@bethanymarz

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11:30 AM • Jul 21, 2022

Each time after I had a baby, I found myself with an itchiness and appetite to start picking up some pet projects or side quests about 8 weeks later. But that’s also the kind of thing you only learn about yourself when you go through it more than once. You can’t plan on how you’ll be when you have a baby. You just can’t.

That recent conversation reminded me just how much fear and anxiety still surrounds the idea of taking maternity leave as a female business leader or CEO. The pressure to "do it perfectly" often feels magnified when you're the one in charge, and it doesn’t help that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to getting it “right.”

That said, I’ve learned a few things through my own experiences and from conversations with other leaders. Here are some loose best practices that might help:

1. Tell people whenever you’re ready.
   I’ve done the waiting game—keeping quiet until I passed a certain milestone of certainty. And I’ve done the immediate announcement because I wanted the emotional support (and frankly, why not?). There’s no perfect timeline. Share the news when you feel ready. Don’t overthink it.

2. You don’t need a fully baked plan before sharing your news.
   Nine months is a long time. Your team has plenty of runway to adapt. Consider this: If OpenAI can release GPT-4o in May and follow it up with GPT-o1 just four months later, surely your organization can figure things out with one person gone for a couple of months. (You’re not that irreplaceable, I promise.)

3. Focus on momentum, not micromanagement.
   When planning your leave, identify the areas in your business that need sustained energy and find the right people to carry that momentum forward. Don’t try to create a step-by-step roadmap for every scenario—it’s impossible and unnecessary. On my second leave, I set myself up to keep a bit of “job-seeking energy” alive by funneling inbound opportunities without requiring much active effort on my part. Small strategic moves like that can go a long way.

1. Be nice. 

2. Be supportive.

3. Breathe. 

4. Chill the fuck out.

Remember: This isn’t about you, it’s about them.

Like a lot of things in the business world, there's no "perfect formula" for what parental leave looks like, particularly as a leader. But one thing I'd like to see normalized is giving peers and colleagues the space, trust, and respect to figure it out along the way. That's what it looks like to lead from the heart.