Maternity leave: how many mothers will cut it short due to job fears?

"Half of all mothers will not take full maternity leave - because they are scared of losing their jobs" - so said a headline in the Independent today. 

The headline was based on a poll for the National Childbirth Trust which found 43% of the women it spoke to said that if they had a child this year, they would be likely to return to work from maternity leave earlier than they would ideally like to.

Of these women, 47% said the main reason for this was concern about their job security.

So in total, just over 20% of the women surveyed said they were unlikely to take their full maternity leave because of job security concerns.