ABSTRACT
There are a number of competing narratives that accompany maternity in the workplace. Most stories are gendered contrasts to an entrepreneurial master narrative that assumes wellness and paid-work prioritization. We situate discourses and practices of workers, paid work, and wellness within contemporary organizational imperatives, and then argue that maternity in the workplace will continue to be associated with deviance, sexuality, the feminine, unreliability, illness, and disability unless organizational and health communication researchers construct multiple creative narratives about workplace pregnancy and maternity leave that decenter the master narrative.
