How Relevant Is Marissa Mayer's Maternity Leave? Not Very

New Yahoo! Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer gave birth to a boy on Sept. 30. When Yahoo hired her in July, she was already in her third trimester. “My maternity leave will be a few weeks long, and I’ll work throughout it,” Mayer said at the time. Now that the kid is here, she’s sticking with that plan, which Time referred to as “blink-and-it’s-over” maternity leave.

The Wall Street Journal’s Allison Lichter wondered if Mayer’s decision will inspire “HR departments and heads of businesses to begin to expect other mothers” to eschew maternity leave, while Stew Friedman at the Huffington Post declared Mayer a “harbinger of social change.” But the idea that Mayer’s actions will have any social effect beyond dinner party discussion is somewhat absurd. There’s simply no comparing the picture for most American women pre- and postpartum with the rarefied situation in Mayer’s C-suite.