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Abstract

This study examined K–12 teachers’ perceptions of their decisions surrounding taking leave following a miscarriage. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 27 teachers, thematic coding showed that teachers considered a variety of complex, interconnected factors, including both the availability of time off via policy and the impact of taking leave on administrators, colleagues, students, and themselves. Results suggest that formal leave policies were not well-suited to support teachers experiencing the ongoing medical, physical, and bereavement needs associated with miscarriage. Furthermore, administrator response and professional expectations to prioritize students’ needs influenced teachers’ decisions, highlighting the need for support. To intervene, we suggest changing the structure of leave policies, educating administrators and others in the workplace about miscarriage, and addressing the professional expectations associated with the teaching profession that encourage teachers to hide their needs.

Keywords

teacher context policy retention teacher characteristics qualitative research emotional labor disenfranchised grief miscarriage leave policies

Introduction

Teachers bring a range of skills and expertise into the workplace, as well as personal experiences that may influence their teaching. Adverse personal experiences may present teachers with unique challenges at work, including how they approach their instruction or their efforts to build positive relationships with students and administrators. When adverse personal experiences occur, the extent to which they have a negative impact on teachers’ professional work and well-being is dependent on teachers’ working conditions, including formal policies such as leave-taking and professional workplace expectations.

In this study, we focus specifically on teachers’ experiences with pregnancy miscarriage and the challenges and decisions teachers faced navigating this personal experience at work. Knowing how teachers experience pregnancy loss remains important because how well teachers are supported may influence their overall well-being (e.g. Pinkham-Brown, 2024), which in turn may influence the quality of their instruction (Arens & Morin, 2016), the quality of their relationships with colleagues and students (Dunn, 2023), and their retention in the profession (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2011). Considering how teachers experience miscarriage at work will provide insight into what supports may be required.

One critical but under-researched aspect of working conditions is the presence or absence of leave policies that support miscarriage as both a medical and a bereavement experience. Leave policies are a structural support that allows teachers to take the necessary time away to care for themselves and loved ones. Leave is also a way to support teachers’ humanity by respecting their needs and acknowledging their losses, a key aspect in creating sustainable workplace conditions for teachers (Hsieh, 2024). Yet, teachers who have had one or multiple miscarriages may not have access to adequate leave or may not take leave following a miscarriage (e.g. Covert, 2022; Will, 2022).

Understanding teachers’ decision-making processes surrounding leave provides a nuanced understanding of how systemic policies and professional expectations influenced teachers’ access to support via formal leave following a miscarriage. To identify factors teachers considered when taking leave, this study draws on data from an interview study with K–12 teachers in the United States who were teaching following a miscarriage or multiple miscarriages and asks:

How do teachers explain their reasons for taking leave following a miscarriage and what professional expectations factor into their reasoning?

Identifying the factors teachers considered in deciding whether and when to take leave following a miscarriage offers key insight into the support teachers receive during grief, with general implications for how these policies influence teacher well-being.

Miscarriage and the Workplace

The Mayo Clinic (2021) reports that 10–20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology estimates that the percentage could be as high as 26% (Dugas & Slane, 2022). Women are the largest group affected by miscarriage, though any person who carries a pregnancy may experience miscarriage (Côté-Arsenault et al., 2001), and nongestating partners also grieve following this loss (Bohn, 2023).

Scholars in obstetrics and workplace organization have identified challenges workers face in navigating their jobs following miscarriage(s) (e.g., Bohn, 2023; Kelly-Harrington et al., 2025). In a scoping literature review, Kelly-Harrington et al. (2025) found that, across studies, participants lacked workplace supports and instead relied on responses from individual supervisors or colleagues (p. 15). Specifically, Kelly-Harrington et al. (2025) found that workers across professions reported not having enough flexible time or space to attend to bleeding, pain, and other physical symptoms and wanted paid leave to manage these symptoms (p. 15). Finally, Kelly-Harrington et al. (2025) argued that more research is needed to support workers following miscarriage because people who miscarry must manage the ongoing physical and “emotional, psychological and social impacts” of miscarriage such as “intense sadness” and “grief” (p. 17). Miscarriage is therefore not a singular event spanning a short time; instead, workers can face both physical and emotional challenges for an extended period.

Teachers are one part of the workforce where miscarriage experiences may be particularly prevalent given that women comprise approximately 76% of teachers in the United States (National Center for Education Statistics, 2023). Miscarriage among teachers has not been widely studied in the United States, though legislators, teachers’ unions, and teachers themselves have advocated for teachers who miscarry, including advocating for increasing available leave (Pressley & Duckworth, 2021; Ursillo, 2023; Will, 2022). One notable study on miscarriage and teaching in the United States is Pinkham-Brown’s (2024) arts-based narrative study with 43 K–12 teachers. Pinkham-Brown (2024) asserted that the pregnant body and the grieving body were both incompatible with workplace expectations for teachers, and that consequently, teachers lacked both physical and emotional space at work to process and heal. In detailing specific challenges teachers faced, Pinkham-Brown (2024) described how teachers “stifled” their grief in response to silence from administrators or other educators (p. 201), relied on individual kindness and support from colleagues in the absence of systemic support (e.g. bereavement leave) (p. 205), and navigated a lack of space for their bodily needs, such as managing bleeding and pain while engaged in the physical demands of caring for young children (p. 208). Pinkham-Brown (2024) connected the argument that “grief is taboo in workplaces” with the assertion that “all female bodies could be argued to misfit in workplace and schools” (p. 210). Echoing Kelly-Harrington et al.’s (2025) findings about the general population of workers, Pinkham-Brown (2024) established that teachers navigate physical needs alongside grief and the stigma attached to a specific grief experience that is associated with the female body.

In Mandie’s (the first author’s) prior work studying English language arts teachers who were teaching following a miscarriage, she found that teachers engaged in significant emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983) at work, or the suppression or shaping of emotions, to meet professional expectations for teachers (Dunn, 2023). Teachers described how some of the emotions they felt after miscarriage, such as sadness or anger, were not beneficial to students and their learning (Dunn, 2023). However, chronic emotion suppression had negative consequences for teachers, including physical ailments and increased emotional distress (Dunn, 2023). These findings are in line with Pinkham-Brown’s (2024) findings that teachers often hid grief-related emotions at work, in part because of societal stigmas surrounding miscarriage and in part because of perceived expectations for their professional roles.

Miscarriage and Leave in the Workplace

Leave for miscarriage is not common in the United States in any industry (Covert, 2022). To address the lack of leave policies for miscarriage, in 2021, representatives Ayanna Pressley and Tammy Duckworth introduced a bill suggesting employers grant at least 3 days of paid leave for workers who had a miscarriage (Pressley & Duckworth, 2021), but this bill has not yet become a law. Given the lack of paid leave for miscarriage, teachers face navigating grief related to miscarriage with limited structural support, often relying on sick leave.

For example, Will (2022) found that in many local U.S. teaching contexts, miscarriage does not qualify for bereavement leave. Consequently, teachers who have experienced miscarriage often need to use their sick time, which is paid time off that workers may be saving for a myriad of reasons, including being sick and caring for sick family members. Sick leave is also the same pool of leave time that teachers may need to use for maternity leave. In describing the effect of the lack of bereavement leave policies for teachers who experience a miscarriage, Will (2022) explained that “while most school employees can instead use their paid sick days or unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act, people who are trying to get pregnant often try to save that time for parental leave when they eventually have a baby. It also feels invalidating to have to fight for your loss to be recognized as worthy of bereavement” (para. 6). Not only is the leave time inadequate, but classifying it as sick time contributes to it not being seen as a bereavement experience.

In general studies of teachers and their use of sick leave, Wang (2023) found that teachers are more likely to work while sick than workers in other professions, perhaps due to the intrinsic motivation to teach and to “prevent students from being negatively affected by absences” (p. 6). These findings suggest that teachers may feel pressured to be present to fulfill professional expectations associated with teaching, such as caring for students. Policy structure affects teachers’ access to leave following a miscarriage, but professional expectations also play a role.

Teacher Well-Being

The support K–12 teachers receive following a miscarriage—including their access to leave and ability to take leave without feelings of guilt—matters because teachers’ working conditions influence student outcomes (McLean & Sandilos, 2022), teacher well-being (Hsieh, 2024; McLean, 2023), and teacher retention (Ingersoll, 2018; McLean, 2023). Studies have also documented that when teachers feel disrespected as professionals or dehumanized, they are at higher risk for chronic stress and burnout (e.g., Hsieh, 2024; McLean, 2023) and for leaving the profession (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2011). For example, Hsieh (2024) found that teachers described a lack of respect as a primary reason they experienced stress and burnout. When a teacher’s miscarriage is invalidated or minimized by either policy or by professional expectations, teachers may be at increased risk for stress and burnout. When teachers experience chronic stress, it impacts student achievement (Arens & Morin, 2016; McLean, 2023) and the class environment (Frenzel et al., 2009). Teachers who experience a miscarriage already experience guilt and shame due to stigmas surrounding the loss experience (e.g., Bohn, 2023), and inadequate support may amplify that guilt and shame (e.g., Pinkham-Brown, 2024). Supporting better working conditions for teachers by addressing leave policies is a key component of quality education for both student success and teacher well-being.

Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framings guiding this inquiry are Doka’s (1989) theory of disenfranchised grief and Hochschild’s (1983) theory of emotional labor. These frames are especially relevant to studies of teachers who are grieving following a miscarriage because they attend to the relationship between teachers’ grief and their labor.

Doka (2008) defined disenfranchised grief as “grief that results when a person experiences a significant loss and the resultant grief is not openly acknowledged, socially validated, or publicly mourned” (p. 224). Doka (2008) explained that in the case of disenfranchised grief, “There is no social recognition that the person has a right to grieve or a claim for social sympathy or support.” (p. 224). Scholars have identified miscarriage as a loss experience where people may experience disenfranchised grief (Bohn, 2023; Kelly-Harrington et al., 2025; Pinkham-Brown, 2024).

For example, Bohn (2023) argued that the term miscarriage¹ itself contributes to the disenfranchised grief associated with it because the word obfuscates that there are two major events: “the death of a baby and his extremely pre-term delivery” (p. 266). Because miscarriage is often thought of as the time when the person is experiencing preterm delivery, sometimes the death of the baby is not even acknowledged, further silencing or invalidating a person’s grief and resulting in the person experiencing more disenfranchised grief (Bohn, 2023, p. 268). Bohn (2023) asserted that not attending to the distinct events of preterm delivery and the death of the baby also inhibits a person from experiencing “emotional granularity,” or the process of differentiating emotional responses across aspects of the experience; being able to recognize and process different emotions is a key aspect of psychological well-being (p. 267).

In a study of teachers who taught following a miscarriage, Pinkham-Brown (2024) used a lens of disenfranchised grief to show how administrators’ lack of knowledge and understanding of miscarriage as a loss experience contributed to their inadequate responses to teachers’ needs. Similarly, Kelly-Harrington et al. (2025) highlighted the need for more education in the workplace about miscarriage to assist in creating environments that are responsive to the range of people’s physical and emotional needs (p. 22). The lack of education and understanding about miscarriage in the workplace could discourage teachers from seeking support or result in them internalizing the feeling that the loss is not as valid as other deaths. Disenfranchised grief may therefore influence whether teachers feel they have a right to sympathy or support, including whether they think leave is warranted. Doka (1989) described how people who experience disenfranchised grief are at increased risk for “intensif[ied] feelings of anger, guilt, and powerlessness” (p. 234). The disenfranchisement of grief related to miscarriage may result in teachers hiding their grief and still feeling guilty about feeling grief in the first place.

Teachers may also internalize professional expectations that further encourage them to suppress emotions related to their grief. For example, the job of a teacher is to prioritize students and their learning, often over their own personal needs (e.g. Dunn, 2022; Stark & Bettini, 2021). Rowling (1995) connected this professional expectation for teachers to disenfranchised grief, arguing that teachers may see grief as a failure of “duty of care” for students or as a disruption to students’ positive emotional state (p. 322). When a worker suppresses or shapes the emotions they experience to preserve an ideal emotional state for clients, they engage in emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983). Building on Hochschild’s sociological concept of emotional labor, Zembylas (2002) established that teachers engage in emotional labor to align their emotions with expected emotions for teachers, such as excitement about learning or care for students.

Given that teachers might work to align their emotions with professional expectations, teachers might feel pressure to hide emotions at work, especially emotions that might disrupt others’ environment. For example, a bereaved teacher may suppress their sadness to preserve an optimistic outlook for the students in their class or display enthusiasm for an academic topic that they do not really feel during grief. A teacher may also suppress sadness because they believe they should not feel sadness related to their miscarriage. The stigmas associated with miscarriage—that it is already not weighed the same as other deaths or adverse personal experiences—may result in amplified pressure on teachers to push down or hide emotions related to grief at work (e.g., sadness, anger, and envy). Finally, Hochschild (1983) documented that workers who engage in chronic emotion suppression as part of emotional labor are at risk for increased emotional dissonance, stress, and feelings of disconnection.

Miscarriage experiences already constitute a potential case of disenfranchised grief, and for teachers who experience them, this disenfranchisement may be heightened by the pressures teachers feel to prioritize positive or productive emotional states for others, especially students. Teachers may engage in significant emotional labor to hide potentially “disruptive” or “negative” emotions at work. When teachers make decisions about taking leave following a miscarriage, they may suppress or downplay grief-related emotions and subsequently downplay their need for support and leave. This framework opens the possibility of understanding teachers’ decisions about taking leave as more than a mathematical equation of how many days they have available; instead, teachers consider their professional roles and the social dynamics at play.

Author Positionality

We bring with us to this study our interest in the complexity of teaching and being a teacher, especially given our collective experience as educators who have experienced loss and know that teaching during personal strain can bring up new challenges. Mandie, a white cisgender woman, developed scholarly interests in teaching while grieving following her spouse suffering life-threatening injuries in a car accident, resulting in her trying to teach while managing caretaking responsibilities during his lengthy rehabilitation. Dulcey, a white cisgender woman, is a former teacher who spent over 20 years in the classroom and has worked with Mandie in studying teachers’ miscarriage experiences. During her teaching career, Dulcey encountered life challenges that included divorce and multiple life-threatening hospitalizations of her daughter, which broadened her understanding of the complexities of teaching through trauma. Daria, a white cisgender woman, became drawn to this topic through her civic and research passion for citizenship education, women’s rights, and teacher agency. During her time as an educator, she witnessed her colleagues navigate grief and its challenges, including miscarriages. Alongside our experiences, the specific focus on miscarriage in this study developed because in Mandie’s previous work on teaching while grieving, miscarriage emerged as a distinct loss experience requiring specific attention.

Materials and Methods

This study draws on interview data and qualitative interpretive methodologies to answer the research question: How do teachers explain their reasons for taking leave following a miscarriage, and what professional expectations factor into their reasoning?

Data Generation

The primary data used in this study were 27 in-depth interviews with K–12 teachers who had taught following miscarriage(s).² The interview participants were recruited first through an anonymous questionnaire. A preliminary analysis of the questionnaire responses also suggested that teachers were thinking about taking leave in nuanced ways, resulting in a specific focus in the interview portion on teachers’ decisions to take leave (or not). The questionnaire distribution and design are therefore relevant to understanding how the interview data were generated and how the focus on teachers’ leave decisions was developed.

Questionnaire Distribution and Design

Mandie used a questionnaire to find participants for the study using a volunteer sampling method (Hewson, 2017, p. 66). She distributed a flier to advertise that she was interested in knowing about the experiences of K–12 teachers who had taught following a miscarriage. The flier included a link to an anonymous questionnaire and was shared via the social media platforms LinkedIn, Twitter, and BlueSky. Mandie also emailed the flier and questionnaire link to teachers in her network. People shared the social media posts or email with their networks, and some asked if they could share the flier and survey on their social media, including Facebook and Instagram.

The questionnaire had two major sections. The first section asked about context, such as how many years a respondent had been teaching, what grade level they taught, and the type of school (rural, urban, suburban, or other). This section also included the question What kind of leave did you take following your miscarriage? Respondents could select sick leave, bereavement leave, paid time off, or other.³

The second section included the following open-ended questions, where teachers had space to respond at length:

Tell me a little bit about your miscarriage experience(s).

Tell me about a change you made (if you made any) in your curriculum following your miscarriage.

Do you remember a day or moment at work that was particularly difficult following your miscarriage? What happened?

Do you remember a day or moment when you felt supported at work following your miscarriage? What happened?

Is there anything else you would like to share? (optional)

See supplemental files for the full questionnaire.

Interview Process

At the end of the questionnaire, respondents could volunteer to be interviewed and provide contact information. Of 45 total respondents, 31 volunteered to be interviewed, and 27 responded to Mandie’s invitation to schedule and attend an interview.

Mandie interviewed all 27 of these teachers via Zoom, with interviews ranging in length from 29 minutes to 1 hour 14 minutes. The interview protocol was developed using phenomenological interviewing methods (e.g., van Manen, 1997) focused on understanding the experience of the teacher who taught following a miscarriage. Interviews were recorded and transcribed first using the transcription feature in Zoom, and then transcripts were cleaned by relistening to each interview and correcting transcripts. For the interview protocol, see supplemental files.

Participants

Of the 27 teachers who were interviewed, one teacher identified as nonbinary and one identified as a man, with the other 25 teachers identifying as women. Four of those women identified as women of color, with one teacher identifying as Chinese American, one as Black American, one as Nigerian and African American, and one as mixed-race. The recency of participants’ miscarriage experiences spanned a significant range, occurring as recently as 1 month prior to the interview to 32 years prior, with the highest percentage occurring in the last 5 years. For a summary of other demographic information about the grade level, subject area, region, and years of experience teaching, see Table 1.

Table 1

Demographic Characteristics of Participants

Grade Level	Elementary (K–5)				Middle (6–8)						High (9–12)
Grade Level	n		%		n			%			n		%
	6		22		5			19			16		59
Subject Area	ELA		Math		Social Studies		Science		Elective		Elementary		ESE
Subject Area	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%
	11	41	3	11	3	11	1	3	3	11	4	15	2	7
Region	Northeast				Southeast		South		Midwest				West
Region	n		%		n	%	n	%	n		%		n	%
	8		30		3	11	6	22	6		22		4	15
Years Teaching	<5				5–10		11–20		21–30				>30
Years Teaching	n		%		n	%	n	%	n		%		n	%
	2		7		6	22	12	44	6		22		1	3

Analysis

In an initial round of interpretation, Mandie read all interview transcripts and then, on a second reading, annotated the responses, which included defining key words, identifying challenges and support teachers named, and noting questions about teachers’ experiences. Annotation requires a researcher to be “reciprocal and participatory” in marking texts, and “supports reflexive, responsible, self- and other(s)-aware thematic analysis” (Shelton & Coogler, 2025, p. 40). Some example annotations included: thinking about future pregnancy effects leave; administrator was new, making communication hard; and overwhelming sadness was hard to overcome at school. After annotating, Mandie wrote an analytic memo identifying some common themes across responses.

One topic that continued to be especially salient in interviews was whether teachers took leave, when, and how. In an analytic memo, Mandie wrote that teachers who felt supported in taking leave seemed to feel more positive overall about their experience and teachers who felt hurt and depressed often described having to work while managing pain and grief, or even explicitly described how disrespected they felt to not be able to leave or to have their decision to take leave questioned by school leaders. This led to the research question framing this study:

How do teachers explain their reasons for taking leave following a miscarriage and what professional expectations factor into their reasoning?

Following the identification of this research question, Mandie then reread each interview transcript to develop an analytic process for thematic analysis (Wolgemuth et al., 2025). In a first cycle (Saldaña, 2016), interviews were coded line by line for insights related to teachers’ decisions surrounding leave, including the type of leave, whose perspective they considered when deciding to take leave, the timing of their leave, challenges they faced, and so on. First-cycle coding of four interviews yielded 127 individual codes.

After developing this list of initial cycle one codes, Mandie noticed that few new codes were being developed and proceeded to a second cycle of coding, combining codes from cycle one that were similar under new parent codes. The second cycle codes were used to label the remaining interviews according to the cycle two codes. Based on second-cycle coding, Mandie then developed four themes by grouping second-cycle codes under parent themes. For an example of how codes were grouped to develop thematic statements, see Table 2. For a full rendering of how each of the four themes was developed, see supplemental files.

Table 2

Example Coding Process

Example Third Cycle Thematic Statement	Second Cycle Theme	Example of Second Cycle Theme
Teachers navigated insufficient leave policies for ongoing needs related to health, fertility, or grief.	Miscarriage is an ongoing physical medical emergency, including miscarriages that have not yet passed, future scheduled D & C, and ongoing pain or bleeding.	“[It was] 2 weeks of school before I could have that D&C so at that point, I had already missed those 2 days of school . . . at the same time I could have started bleeding at any moment and passed the rest of it. So, we went to the store. We bought the thickest pads we could find. We bought adult diapers, and I literally lined the adult diaper with 2 of the biggest pads I could find and went to school.”
	Grief related to miscarriage is not addressed because leave time is limited.	“It’s not something you grieve one day, and then you move on, you know, like that’s not how grief works.”
	Teachers don’t take leave to save it for a future pregnancy or maternity leave.	“Not only did I lose the babies, but I lost time with the future baby.”
	Teachers had adequate leave, but only through multiple types of leave, such as bereavement, sick leave, and sick bank leave.	“I was super supported as far as leave. But in my school district, that also means burning up your sick days, because that’s how you get your leave. Which I had saved, thinking I was gonna be home caring for a newborn.”

Findings

Across teachers’ interviews, teachers described decisions to take or not take leave according to the following four themes:

Teachers navigated insufficient leave policies for ongoing needs related to health, fertility, and grief.

Administrators influenced whether teachers felt comfortable or allowed to take leave.

Teachers considered students’ needs.

Teachers considered their own needs.

Teachers Navigated Insufficient Leave Policies for Ongoing Needs

Many teachers described that a major challenge following a miscarriage was that leave is designed for short-term relief from work duties when a teacher is sick or needs to attend a funeral or is having surgery, and so on. Miscarriage, however, sometimes happens over a period of several weeks, and teachers cannot plan for when they will happen. Many teachers described that when making decisions about leave, they were navigating both an immediate need, often a medical procedure, with future needs, such as waiting for the miscarriage to complete on its own. For example, a high school math teacher described her experience this way:

[My appointment] was either a Monday or a Tuesday. He said, “The first thing we can do is we’ll just give you pills, and the pills should soften the cervix, and everything should be able to come out.” So, I took the next day off from school so that I could get these pills and try to have this work. So, I took the pills. Nothing happened. So then, he said, “call again if the first round of pills doesn’t work”. So, I called again the next day, got another round. I took the next day off of school as well. Nothing happened again. So, at that point I call back. He’s like: “We can wait. It might take up to a month for everything to come out. Or we can schedule a D&C.” So, I chose option two. But I had to wait a week. It was the next Thursday, so I had to wait almost 2 full weeks of school before I could have that D&C, so at that point I had already missed those 2 days of school. And in my mind, I’m like, I cannot sit at home. That would have been 9 days of school. I cannot just sit home. At the same time, I could have started bleeding at any moment, and passed the rest of it. So, we went to the store. We bought the thickest pads we could find. We bought adult diapers, and I literally lined the adult diaper with 2 of the biggest pads I could find and went to school.

In this teacher’s account, she described that her medical care was ongoing, which influenced her decision to go back to school. She had tried one suggested approach to medical care, but it didn’t work in her case. This experience highlights that care following a miscarriage may not be immediate or completed quickly. The teacher also could not miss 9 days of school while waiting for the D & C⁴ procedure. Still, going to work created additional challenges as the teacher managed the ongoing miscarriage.

Beyond medical considerations, teachers also considered the future need for maternity leave, which also relies on accrued sick leave, or future need for medical appointments related to miscarriage, or even just sick leave related to other needs. A middle school chorus teacher explained the conundrum this way:

You have to fill out a form for medical leave, and you have to use your sick days, which you get so few of to begin with, and if you have other kids at home, you really can’t use those up. And then, you know, with the sub shortage . . . there’s horror stories of teachers miscarrying and not being able to get a sub, and you know, just having to teach.

This teacher described multiple policy limitations, including that leave needs to be saved for future needs and that taking leave requires a substitute, which may not be available, with the implication as well that when you have an unplanned need for a substitute, it can be more challenging to fill that need. On top of the ongoing needs of people who miscarry, teachers considered whether to take leave by weighing taking leave immediately against their potential need to take leave later, sometimes for additional miscarriage complications or for maternity leave.

Additional constraints surrounding leave allowance were not conducive to the needs of teachers who experienced miscarriage. For example, one high school English language arts teacher described the challenges in her district related to “black out days” where teachers are not allowed to take personal time off unless it is a medical emergency with a doctor’s note. She described leave policies as having “rigidity in structure,” and that while individual colleagues were supportive, the structures and systems were not. She shared that on a day when she was experiencing intense pain while miscarrying, she was not allowed to leave even 1 hour early, even after the end of the school day and all students were gone, because it was a blackout day.

So I was in this meeting, and it was like I couldn’t sit down. My cramps are so bad that I’d stand up and kind of hunch over. I was like, “Hey, like I am struggling. My grades are done. Can I go? Like there were no kids in the building?” And it was like 3, maybe, and she said, “Can you give us till 4?”

For this teacher, the inflexibility around policies, in this case the blackout days, meant that the support for leave wasn’t even adequate for the immediate need to go home that day. In her account, she pointed to an aspect of teaching that often affects leave: the supervision of minors, the students. Yet, in this case, even though she was not actively in a supervision role at the time she needed leave, her administrator did not allow her to leave, even when she expressed her need. When asked later in the same interview what supports would need to be in place for teachers following a miscarriage, this teacher answered that it would have been helpful to have the encouragement to stay home following her MVA⁵ procedure. Someone saying, “Don’t even think about coming in the day after your MVA. . . . Take the day off and the day after off. That is an outpatient medical procedure. You have to stay home.” The rigidity in policy precluded the teacher from having access to leave when she needed it. An added component to this problem was that teachers also work during specific months with preplanned holiday breaks. Teachers described scheduling D and C procedures on school breaks or deciding whether to take medication based on where they were in the school year and what breaks were upcoming. Teachers used this strategy of scheduling the care they needed during breaks to avoid taking sick leave. However, this decision seemed to be based on navigating the policy and workplace demands, rather than on what would be best for the teacher.

Finally, leave policies were insufficient for teachers who were grieving following the miscarriage, in part because teachers were already making use of limited sick time for medical care of the physical healing, leaving no time off for emotional needs, which were ongoing. In this way, the structure of leave as all being “sick” leave invalidates miscarriage as a grief experience. Furthermore, it suggests that aspects of the experience—from taking care of immediate physical needs to scheduling medical care to attending to future fertility needs to grief itself—are challenges for the individual teacher to manage and work out on their own.

Administrators Influenced Whether Teachers Took Leave

Teachers’ relationships with administration, as well as how administration responded to the request for leave, also influenced teachers’ decisions. For many teachers, knowing their administrator would be supportive was a factor in how and when they disclosed what was happening to them, as well as their decision to request leave. Here’s how a second-grade teacher who experienced three miscarriages described her administrator’s supportive response:

The hardest was Friday. I got a call from my doctor’s office during school. I was in the middle of giving a spelling test or something. And they called, and I was like, “Okay, I need to answer this.” And my husband had left town or was on his way out of town that day. And they wanted me to come in and do an ultrasound to confirm that everything passed, and that was really hard. But my principal was great. So, I go down to the office, and as soon as she heard what it was, she’s like, “Go, don’t worry about it. Like get stuff out, you know, but don’t even write sub plans, just get stuff out, go. We’ll take care of everything.” So, I was really thankful for that and just being able to have that time off and not having to worry about my kids or anything.

For this teacher, feeling supported by administration meant that in her moment of need, when she was managing difficult and upsetting news, her principal supported her need to leave and attend to her physical and emotional health. The directive “don’t even write sub plans” communicated to this teacher that taking care of her own needs took precedence. In this way, the principal removed the burden on the teacher to create plans but also allowed her to feel upset, decreasing emotional labor demands to seem okay or even happy in front of students. The principal did ask her to “get stuff out,” which she explained meant pulling out materials that would be helpful for someone covering her class. She described being “thankful,” and much of that gratitude was the release from having to “worry about my kids or anything.”

This explicit support from administration contrasted with many teachers who described having to write sub plans from home or from a hospital, as well as teachers whose administrators focused first on covering classes and second on the teacher’s needs. For example, teachers who perceived that their administrator might judge them for needing to take leave generally felt more ambivalent about when and how to request leave to meet their needs. An 11th-grade social studies teacher with over 23 years of experience described her experience with administration this way:

So, I need a D and C. And you know the whole process took a few days. Once we found out about the loss, I actually had to come to school still like “pregnant” but “not pregnant” for a day. It was very difficult . . . Meanwhile, once I was at home, I had an email from my vice principal that she needed to see me, and I was just a little stressed about that. And I sent my supervisor a message like, “Is everything okay?” She’s like “don’t worry about it.” But of course, I’m worrying about it. It was my bad to even check my email during that time, and the day I came back I had a meeting with her, and the meeting was concerning my lates, what to do about me being late in the morning. And I reminded her, like, “you do know why I was late and what just happened.” And that was sort of it. Like, “okay, I’m sorry if you’re unhappy.” But there was no, I don’t know, no real . . . nothing happened from it. And then time went by. I was pregnant again. I was pregnant even further along in the second semester and had another loss at the end of May, and once again I told my supervisor what happened. So once again, all the admin knew what was going on . . . the day I came back I got an email for the year and my evaluation for the lowest it has ever been.

For this teacher, the cumulative effect of having been out for various medical appointments, as well as a D and C, was reaching a challenging point where administrators were no longer supportive of the teacher’s needs. Instead, she was out recovering from a D and C and already managing emotions, including worry, about how her administration was perceiving her and her ability to do her job. Immediately upon her return, and with no reprieve from additional duties or facilitation of easing back into school, she spent additional time meeting about her “lates.” The teacher then switched to describing how “Nothing happened from it. And then time went by.” Completely absent from this account was any description of administrators acknowledging her loss or the challenges she was managing. Instead, the administrator apologized that she was “unhappy,” thus making the teacher concerned about the emotions she was displaying at work on top of everything else. Then, following another loss, she received a teaching evaluation with low scores upon her return. This teacher went on to describe how she had to get additional documentation from her doctor to have the low score removed. Over the summer, she became pregnant again and asked for a meeting with administrators to request accommodations for being late following doctor’s appointments, as well as to request that her classes be scheduled on one floor of the school due to the high-risk nature of her pregnancy. She explained, “Then I was told, well, to do this, I would need to get more paperwork that shows I’m high risk. So, a whole round of more paperwork and more paperwork, and you know a few things that made the process sort of even more stressful.” The burden for receiving support was placed entirely on the teacher making an already distressing situation more upsetting for her, and she had to manage her emotions with an administrator who was commenting on her emotional state.

This social studies teacher was not the only teacher who described administrators who were overly focused on class coverage, attendance, and procedure. A high school English language arts teacher had to write a letter to her superintendent to ask that she be allowed to use sick bank leave that her colleagues donated following her medically complex miscarriage. An elementary special education teacher described requesting accommodations related to transferring students in self-contained classes who engaged in violent behaviors. She was concerned that being punched or kicked while pregnant could potentially be dangerous for her pregnancy after she had already experienced a miscarriage. Her request was met with criticism from administrators because she was one of the only special education teachers certified to perform those transfers. Still other teachers described not disclosing their miscarriage at all to an administrator for fear of being seen as not caring enough about the school or students, or for fear of a lack of understanding.

In contrast, teachers who had co-teachers or student teachers seemed to have an easier time taking leave because the question of class coverage was less of an obstacle. For example, a fourth-grade teacher explained that it was her co-teacher who told her to “Go, just go” when she received a call from her doctor confirming her miscarriage. In this case, neither the teacher nor the administrator needed to worry about finding someone to supervise the classroom. Overall, an administrator’s response to a teacher’s need, including their understanding of why it might be needed, influenced teachers’ decisions regarding leave and how supported they felt at work following their loss.

Teachers Considered Students’ Needs

Teachers also considered how taking leave would affect students, including what time of year it was for students, what students needed in terms of content, and how having substitute teachers and/or other colleagues teaching them would influence their experience at school. For example, one high school math teacher described how, despite her generally optimistic persona, following her miscarriage, she “just was in bed staring at the closet door.” But as is typical of so many teachers, she decided to go back into the classroom after 3 days, feeling that her AP calculus class could not make it without her. Even though the doctor’s office explicitly wrote a note recommending a week off, she did not take the full week.

Another teacher, who taught IB environmental science, described her decision to go back to school without taking leave this way:

When you’re a teacher who cares, you care about what’s going on in your classroom. And so, you’ve minimized the days that you’re off because that impacts your students and impacts the relationships that you’ve already built and impacts the classroom management. You know, there are all these things that happen when you leave the classroom and to mitigate that you try not to take too many days off.

In this description, notions of caring for students and building strong relationships with them were tied to presence: that the teacher being present for students communicates care for them and helps to maintain relationships, and that “there are all these things that happen when you leave the classroom.” The demands of the workplace contributed to teachers feeling as though they could not take leave for their emergency because of what students would be missing out on in their absence. This pressure that teachers felt also highlighted that their jobs require much more than instructional delivery: They are responsible for the positive learning environment of students.

A high school English language arts teacher described the pressure and judgment she felt for being out when students were expecting her to be present for school events. She described a “car graduation” that the school was hosting during the Covid-19 pandemic, an event that happened in the months following one of her miscarriages:

And I, again, being very active in my school community, all of the senior shirts were delivered to my house, like we had to divert them, and I had to sort them, and we were graduating at a racetrack, and everybody would get to decorate their car. You get your diploma through the window. And we were making videos for kids to see on the Jumbotrons, and all of that. And it was really hard for me because I didn’t want to go. I could not force myself out of bed, but I had to get these shirts to these seniors. I had to do that, and it was kind of hard on some of those committee meetings. Because who I am, I’m a very involved person. And [colleagues were asking] “Why aren’t you going in? Do you not care?”

In this teacher’s description, not being present gets equated with not caring, a characterization that didn’t match this teacher’s persona. She explained that she was “very active in my school community,” and so her decreased involvement with the car graduation was noticed and commented upon by other teachers. This characterization of the teacher not caring was what made this time especially difficult for this teacher, who described this period as one of the most difficult times at work following her miscarriage. A graduation ceremony, even an alternative one, also requires teachers to be enthusiastic and celebratory of students, which are expected emotions for teachers. However, this teacher was feeling “depressed,” and the distance between what she felt and what she needed to display at the graduation was a hard distance to close. The burden for emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983) to produce a desired emotional state for students was too high in this incident for this teacher.

Many other teachers described managing emotions related to their miscarriage by hiding what had happened from students. For example, one high school English language arts teacher described that there was a “double track that has to happen in your brain” when you’re teaching. She explained that even though she was grieving, the students required her immediate attention, and everything else was in the background. She named her teaching as requiring a “two-track mind” and a certain “muscle memory” that allowed her to go on teaching and escape the other emotional hardships she was facing. Many teachers described teaching following a miscarriage as like “watching themselves” or as a “performance,” but for some, it wasn’t so much an escape as it was something to push through. For example, a high school English language arts teacher described how he was just “going through the motions,” but that it was like “there’s an explosion that goes off and you can’t really hear anything.” A high school French teacher described how they “didn’t even have space to think about what it meant” and how they wished someone had asked if they needed “someone to talk to.” Teachers engaged in the work to hide or suppress their own emotions (Hochschild, 1983) to fulfill professional expectations for teaching, such as prioritizing students’ needs and academic achievement and maintaining positive relationships with students.

Teachers Considered Their Own Needs

Though most teachers discussed their leave decisions in terms of how it would influence their overall leave time and burden on others, teachers sometimes described caring for their own needs, including their emotional needs. A second-grade teacher described staying home while she was experiencing sadness following her third miscarriage:

And the next day I was supposed to have a full day of professional development, and I went to half of it. And then at lunch I had planned on going back, but I just was home and fell apart, and was just so sad, like not even angry about this one, but just so sad about this third one.

Though this description highlighted the teacher’s plan to be at work, she changed her mind in response to her emotional needs. Notably, this teacher also described administration as “so supportive,” and she seemingly did not experience pressure from administration to be present. In her account, she also described staying home from a professional development day, so that she was not absent from a day in front of students.

A high school English language arts teacher described how her first miscarriage changed her thinking around leave as she realized that it was important to be mentally prepared in front of students:

I think I’ve been more mindful of not putting myself in front of students on a day when I might be dealing with something challenging, and that came up again, of course, with the second sort of scare that we had when I chose to stay home that day . . . I may have just been more mindful of my mental health as a reason to not put myself in front of kids because I did feel like I did have a moment that day when I went back into the classroom. I was like, “I shouldn’t be here right now. I am not in a space to be thinking about whatever you know, our objective for the day is like, that’s not where my headspace is. I’m not serving students right now.”

For this teacher, staying home was about acknowledging her state of being and prioritizing her mental health. After not taking time off for her first miscarriage, she explained that she stayed home during a “scare” with her next pregnancy. Her account suggested that staying home was a way to care for herself but she also acknowledged that she could not be the teacher she wanted to be unless she took the time to care for herself first.

While some teachers described staying home to process emotions, a few teachers described needing to be at work to avoid sitting at home depressed or to have a distraction. For example, a high school social studies teacher described going “back to school on Monday” to keep busy:

I had had an experience the fall before that one where I had a house fire happen, and I went. Similarly, I was like I need to teach the next day, because being busy is going to be helpful and having normalcy and a schedule is going to be helpful. So, I know it’s a pattern that I have and it’s interesting because I thought I had broken the pattern a little bit with Covid by actually taking sick time and days when I needed it, but when it comes to like supporting my own well-being, I know I’m still a ways off from stepping back and taking time.

She also spoke of the “fight, freeze, fawn” response and observed that many educators go into “fawn,” where they “bury” themselves in work, suggesting teachers may become overly agreeable to work demands as a coping response. Other teachers also described needing to stay busy. Similarly, a high school English language arts teacher explained that she “had plenty of time” and could have taken leave, “but as a teacher, you know it’s not easy to be gone and I think my coping strategy then was to just try to continue regular life.” Though this teacher described wanting the routine as a “coping strategy,” the teacher also mentioned that “it’s not easy to be gone,” implying that there would be different burdens to being out of the classroom

Across teachers’ accounts, explanations of their own needs, especially emotional needs, were less common than explanations of how leave would affect others in their workplace. Still, some teachers described needing time off to recover physically or emotionally, while others preferred being at school to distract from the miscarriage. Importantly, even in teachers’ accounts of their own needs, they described the need to be well to be their best teaching selves, showing consideration for professional expectations, especially for teachers’ influence on students. Teachers’ explanations of caring for their own needs also highlighted that the response to miscarriage was not monolithic, with some teachers wanting to take time off work and others preferring to return.

Implications and Conclusion

Teachers’ accounts confirm previous research on miscarriage and leave but also provide new insight into how various factors intersect to create complex, nuanced decisions for teachers following a miscarriage. Teachers’ descriptions of how they decided whether, when, and how much leave to take involved navigating layered pressures, including the formal leave policies, how administrators responded to teachers’ needs, and teachers’ own desires to prioritize what was best for students. To intervene, we suggest changing the structure of leave policies, educating administrators and others in the workplace about miscarriage, and addressing the professional expectations associated with the teaching profession that encourage teachers to hide their needs.

Changing the Structure of Leave Policies

First, leave policies were insufficient for teachers following a miscarriage, but not just in terms of the number of days teachers could take. Having only sick leave available erased the death of the baby, disenfranchising teachers’ grief from the onset. Structurally, having access to one source of sick leave discouraged teachers who were trying to manage ongoing needs related to miscarriage, including medical appointments, pain management, physical recovery, and emotional distress. Relying on a broad category of sick leave as the same source of leave to be used for maternity meant teachers also weighed their current medical and emotional needs against future maternity needs and planning. Such structural inadequacy in leave policy is particularly inequitable and detrimental for someone who wants to have a baby but has had a miscarriage(s) and may further affect teachers’ experiences of disenfranchised grief. Because teachers were left managing needs that were incompatible with the typical process of taking 2 or 3 days off to be sick, they felt overburdened with the mental load of trying to make the best possible decision for their needs with their workplace demands in mind. Given that miscarriage often results in ongoing physical needs, emotional needs related to grief seemed to be an afterthought. These findings confirm what Bohn (2023) explained as the lack of understanding of distinct elements of a miscarriage—“the baby’s death and his (extremely) pre-term delivery” (p. 266).

Teachers simply needed more leave to address both the emergency of miscarriage as well as the grief that comes with the loss of a baby. Teachers’ accounts confirmed that grief following a miscarriage is disenfranchised by policies that invalidate it as grief and instead classify it as solely a medical issue (Bohn, 2023), and a medical issue that teachers did not even have enough sick leave to address at times. Legislation mandating leave for miscarriage would be helpful (Pressley & Duckworth, 2021; Will, 2022), and both sick leave and bereavement leave would be most appropriate in supporting teachers through both aspects of the experience. Intervention will require, as Pinkham-Brown (2024) aptly argued, “implementing numerous supportive actions and policies at multiple levels” (p. 227).

Educating Administrators

Administrators and other educators in the teachers’ orbit did not always know or understand the distinct aspects of miscarriage or how long a miscarriage might last, leaving teachers further under-supported and often hiding their experience, including their emotional responses. To receive better support, some teachers would have had to educate their own administrators about their experience, making them vulnerable and requiring them to offer knowledge and emotional labor at a time when they were already stretched thin. Therefore, we echo Kelly-Harrington et al. (2025) and Pinkham-Brown’s (2024) calls for more education in the workplace so that teachers affected by the experience are not also responsible for explaining and advocating for their needs. Supportive actions will need to go beyond modifying leave policies and extend to providing professional development about sensitive ways to respond and support those in our workplace communities going through this loss. Indeed, many teachers who felt unsupported noted a lack of empathy from administrators for their loss. Teachers felt dehumanized when administrators jumped straight to focusing on class coverage and the negative consequences of a teacher being out. Instead, administrators should acknowledge a teacher’s loss first and respond with empathy (Dunn et al., 2025). Responding first to the actual loss, not the ramifications of that loss at work, can go a long way in validating miscarriage as an experience that carries as much grief and pain as other deaths (e.g., Bohn, 2023), and workplace training on the appropriate approach might be beneficial for administrators and other members of a school. When other people at work do not seem to understand miscarriage, teachers feel their loss does not count as much as others and may hide emotions they are feeling, which could lead to increased risk for stress and burnout (Hochschild, 1983; Hsieh, 2024).

Addressing Professional Expectations

In addition to navigating leave policies and conversations with administrators, teachers faced additional decisions as they considered how their leave would influence colleagues and students. Teachers described not wanting to let students down by being out, whether it was because they worried students would miss important content or feel unsupported at extracurricular events. Teachers also described a lack of reliable coverage by high-quality substitutes, which increased the potential for negative influence on students and discouraged them from taking leave. Teachers wanted to be good teachers, so they felt guilty or added stress when needing to be out. Having structural policies that are adequate for the leave needed following a miscarriage might mitigate some of the hesitancy teachers feel, but administrators also need to emphasize that teachers need to take care of themselves before they can be their best teaching selves. At the same time, we do not wish to suggest that care be the sole responsibility of the teacher—instead, as Hsieh (2024) argued, “We must advocate for a recognition of the root causes of crisis in systemic unsustainability, de-professionalization, and dehumanization” (p. 20). Supporting teachers and their well-being following miscarriage—or any loss—requires more than just implementing policies and educating those who work in schools: it means acknowledging teachers as human beings, and that means acknowledging the full range of life experiences they bring with them into the classroom.

One helpful support would be a network of qualified substitutes or a plan for class coverage that assures students are still receiving high-quality education. Teachers might also benefit from training on how professional expectations for teachers might undercut their need to care for themselves and assurance that teachers that taking leave is a healthy choice for students in the long run. Another possibility would be training that highlights how times of high emotional labor demand, such as grief, create added challenges for teachers. Then, targeted supports for mitigating emotional labor demand could be implemented.

Future Directions

Finally, further research on adequate support for teachers following a miscarriage remains exigent for sustaining their well-being. Research on the predicted impact of changes in policy, including classifying miscarriage as bereavement leave, may propel needed changes at the systemic level that administrators can then implement and follow. In that same vein, research on different administrator responses and their effects on teachers may be particularly helpful in determining which kinds of professional training would be most needed for administrators.

This study also raised new questions about how personal characteristics played into teachers’ decisions. For example, some of the personal characteristics mentioned by teachers in the study included: having been previously pregnant; having had previous miscarriages; having a new administrator or being new to a school; and being a reserved person or an outwardly expressive person. These characteristics all point to some kind of emotional labor: If someone was previously pregnant, they may have additional anxiety to manage; or, when an administrator is new, a teacher may work harder to display positive emotions in that administrator’s presence. Future research should consider the intersecting influence of personal characteristics with other systematic or organizational factors. Furthermore, emotional labor demands may differ according to racial background or identity. Research on teachers of color who experience miscarriage may provide key insight into how the emotional labor demands differ and provide more specific ideas for support, as would studies on teachers of different gender identities and teachers who are partners of a person who miscarries.

Consequences for Teacher Well-Being

When teachers go through a disenfranchised grief experience, such as a miscarriage, they are already at risk for higher rates of depression and stress. When workplace support is inadequate, the quality of teaching may decline, and teachers’ well-being may be further affected. A critical way to support high-quality education, then, is to take care of these teachers by providing adequate workplace supports and a working environment where they feel valued, including more expansive leave policies. These policies will only be successful when administrators and fellow educators also respond with empathy that makes teachers feel seen and acknowledged, as well as supported. Finally, professional expectations that teachers prioritize students’ needs over their own must be addressed to encourage them to take the time they need and to mitigate some of the guilt they feel when they take leave. These workplace support changes are necessary to support teachers and their well-being and to cultivate healthy school environments.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-ero-10.1177_23328584251400263 – Supplemental material for The Influence of Policies and Professional Expectations on Teachers’ Leave Decisions and Well-Being Following a Miscarriage

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-ero-10.1177_23328584251400263 for The Influence of Policies and Professional Expectations on Teachers’ Leave Decisions and Well-Being Following a Miscarriage by Mandie Bevels Dunn, Dulcey Bishop Hunter and Daria Smirnova in AERA Open

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-2-ero-10.1177_23328584251400263 – Supplemental material for The Influence of Policies and Professional Expectations on Teachers’ Leave Decisions and Well-Being Following a Miscarriage

Supplemental material, sj-docx-2-ero-10.1177_23328584251400263 for The Influence of Policies and Professional Expectations on Teachers’ Leave Decisions and Well-Being Following a Miscarriage by Mandie Bevels Dunn, Dulcey Bishop Hunter and Daria Smirnova in AERA Open

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported, in part, by the University of South Florida Research & Innovation Internal Awards Program under Grant No. 0143011.

Open Practices

The data and analysis files for this article can be found at https://deposit.icpsr.umich.edu/deposit/workspace?goToPath=/ddf/239168&goToLevel=project

ORCID iDs

Mandie Bevels Dunn

Dulcey Bishop Hunter

Daria Smirnova

Notes

Authors

Dr. MANDIE BEVELS DUNN is an associate professor of English education at the University of South Florida; mdunn8@usf.edu. Her research focuses on teacher well-being, emotions, and grief. Findings from her studies identify the challenges teachers face and the supports that sustain them following the death of a loved one.

DULCEY BISHOP HUNTER is a PhD candidate in the English education program at the University of South Florida in Tampa; dbhunter@usf.edu. Her research focuses on secondary English language arts teachers’ experiences of teaching through trauma.

DARIA SMIRNOVA is a PhD candidate in curriculum and instruction with a specialization in social science education at the University of South Florida; dsmirnova@usf.edu. Her research interests are focused on civic education, teaching controversial topics, and qualitative research methodologies.

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