“You get really overwhelmed by all the issues about returning to work,” said Ms. Cohen, who left her job in finance to focus on raising four children during her 11 years out of the work force. “It is hard to separate the real ones that are emotional versus the actual conversations that you might have.”

Of course, not all new parents or people in need of a leave to care for children or aging parents can afford a timeout. Most women in the workplace see little or no choice about returning to full-time work after their maternity leave ends, with so many families today relying on two incomes to get by. In 40 percent of households with children under the age of 18, married and single mothers are either the sole or primary source of income for the family, according to a 2013 Pew Research Center analysis.

Betsy Myers, the founding director of the Center for Women and Business at Bentley University, said women filled about half of the middle-management ranks in many companies today. “Then there is a drop-off,” she said. “They go from 50 percent to 10 percent to 15 percent of women in their C-suite jobs.”

She said companies were recognizing they had to do more to retain women managers to get balanced leadership at the top. One of the most important ways, she said, is to show how much company leaders value employees considering a hiatus.

Ms. Myers, author of the book “Take The Lead,” also said that both men and women needed to be involved in figuring how to create a work force with gender balance. So do different generations, she said, given the rise of millennials in the workplace and their expectations of living a more balanced life.

In a reflection of this, the women’s employee affinity network at the bank HSBC changed its name, she said. “They call it the Balance Affinity Network,” she said. “They want to invite men to the table and the different generations. They want to create a culture where it is not just, ‘How do we keep women?’ but ‘How do we harness the best talent in our company where people will want to stay?’ ”