This story appeared on my Facebook feed. Basically a 'valued' assistant manager at an A&W had a baby and because of the way maternity pay is structured combined with the poor wages A&W pays its staff, she could only afford to stay home two weeks after giving birth. Her teenage co-workers pitched in their own pay so she could have more time at home. Even with the extra time she is still going to be returning to work when she is still recovering and when she should be off work snuggling her baby.
For context here in Canada we do have paid maternity leave, but it is not as grand as it sounds. You need to work a certain number of hours to qualify and the pay is up to 55% of your wages with a maximum of around $600/week ($445USD), so the most you can earn before taxes (yes, they tax it), is around $2400/month ($1780USD). And yes, as mentioned, it is taxed as income. And most times people don't know that they have to call the Canada Revenue Agency and expressly tell them to take off the most taxes the can, so instead of a nice refund at tax time a lot of new parents find themselves owing taxes. It's better than the US, but it still sucks and the way it is structured prevents a lot of parents from taking the full time off.
Now, employers here have the option of including top up pay as an employment benefit where they bump up your parental or maternity pay by a certain amount provided you return to work for a certain period of time after returning from leave. Just that a lot of employers are too cheap to provide top up pay as a benefit.