Published August 12, 2010

Mom and Magic Beans co-owner Sheri Gurock says she was misquoted in today’s Globe article about maternity leave — and mortified mommies have the wrong impression in comment threads and on Facebook.

Gurock says her company — which sells baby clothes and toys at stores around Boston — is portrayed as tough on moms. From her blog post:

Here’s the quote:

“It’s my dream that someday Magic Beans is big enough and secure enough that anyone who works for us would get three months maternity leave, but that’s just not an economic reality right now,”

Here’s what I actually said:

“It’s my dream that someday Magic Beans is big enough and secure enough that anyone who works for us would get three months fully paid maternity leave, but that’s just not an economic reality right now,’

That’s a big difference.

In fact, as I told her in the beginning of our conversation, Magic Beans has enough employees that we are subject to the FMLA, not the Massachusetts state law. We would never consider anything less than 12 weeks time off for our employees. I told her that from the perspective of most working mothers, 8 weeks is nowhere near enough time.

A mother of three herself, Gurock has suffered from too little maternity time.

This week the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that employers are not required to guarantee a woman’s job beyond eight weeks. We discussed “the motherhood penalty” Monday on Radio Boston.