She calls it "meternity" leave.

A 38-year-old woman is arguing that even though she does not have any kids, she is still like, totally entitled to maternity leave.

The woman, Meghann Foye, recently came out with a book titled Meternity — the fictional story of a woman who fakes a pregnancy to get maternity leave. In an interview with the New York Post, Foye explained that even though the story in her book is fictional, it is rooted in her very real belief that childless women should get maternity leave, too.


Yep. Foye told the Post that she was 31 years old and working as a magazine editor when she started feeling like it wasn’t fair that the people who had kids got to, like, leave early to pick up those kids and take off time to have them.

“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,” Foye said.

#share#Um. Hey, lady? That “part of their lives that doesn’t revolve around their jobs,” is a child. It’s not a portrait-painting aspiration, it’s another person, and there is nothing “me” about it. I may be childless, but I’ve seen enough episodes of 16 and Pregnant to know that women often have to give up many of their own interests when they have kids.



But Foye doesn’t seem to get that:

#related#“There’s something about saying ‘I need to go pick up my child’ as a reason to leave the office on time that has far more gravitas than, say, ‘My best friend just got ghosted by her OkCupid date and needs a margarita’ — but both sides are valid,” she continued.

Uh… Foye? Picking up a child so he or she will not be left stranded is more important than drinking in the middle of the day with your emotionally inept gal pal. It would be one thing if all the moms were allowed to get midday margaritas just because they were moms — but they’re not allowed to leave work for that either. You want what moms get? Then become a mom. The rules are the same for everyone! That’s not an injustice; it’s the definition of fairness.