Since 1989, when Felice Schwartz created a furor with her “Mommy Track” piece in the pages of Harvard Business Review, two things have become abundantly clear: the growth in employment among mothers of infants and toddlers shows no sign of stopping or reversing itself, and the US is in the middle of a baby “boomlet” as the baby boomers continue to have their postponed while younger cohorts start their child bearing years earlier than the baby boomers did.

So just how far have we come in our understanding of how to manage maternity in the workplace? Fortunately, two recent studies shed light on many of the mistaken assumptions and open questions about the behavior of employed women who become pregnant.