This study investigates the impact of parental leave laws, policies that help families balance work and family life, and the supply, cost, and quality of substitutes for the mother's time on how soon mothers begin working outside the home following childbirth. The data come from the National Child Care Survey 1990, a survey of 4,400 families with children under age 13, and A Profile of Child Care Settings, a study of child care centers conducted at the same time in the same communities. The sample consists of 613 mothers who had a child in the year before the survey. Proportional hazards models were used to model the effects of policies on the risk of working within the year after childbirth, controlling for characteristics of the mother and the family. The results suggest that employer policies affect how quickly mothers who had been employed prior to the birth reenter the workforce.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Adams, G.
, & Sandfort, J. (1992). State investments in child care and early childhood education. Washington, DC: The Children's Defense Fund.
2.
Allison, P. D.
(1984). Event history analysis: Regression for longitudinal event data. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
3.
Axinn, W.
, & Thornton, A. (1992). The relationship between cohabitation and divorce: Selectivity or causal influence?Demography, 29(3), 357-374.
4.
Becker, G.
(1965). A theory of the allocation of time. The Economic Journal, 75 (299), 493-517.
5.
Becker, G.
(1991). A treatise on the family (rev. ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
6.
Billy, J. O.
, & Moore, D. E. (1992). A multilevel analysis of marital and nonmarital fertility in the U.S. Social Forces, 70, 977-1011.
7.
Bond, J.
, Galinsky, E., Lord, M., Staines, G., & Brown, K. (1991). Beyond the parental leave debate. New York: Families and Work Institute.
8.
Bureau of Labor Statistics
. (1995). Marital and family characteristics of the labor force from the March 1994 Current Population Survey. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Labor.
9.
Center for Policy Alternatives
. (1992). Family leave laws in the states. Washington, DC: Author.
10.
Committee on Ways and Means
. (1992). Overview of entitlement programs, 1992 Green Book. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
11.
Conference Board
. (1988, April 1). BLS data on employer-supported child care. Memo.
12.
Cox, D. R.
(1972). Regression models and life tables. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B34, 187-220.
13.
Desai, S.
, & Waite, L. J. (1991, August). Women's employment during pregnancy and after the first birth: Occupational characteristics and work commitment. American Sociological Review, 56, 551-566.
14.
Finn-Stevenson, M.
, & Trzcinski, E. (1990). Public policy issues surrounding parental leave: A state-by-state analysis of parental leave legislation. Unpublished manuscript, Bush Center, New Haven, CT.
15.
Gormley, W. T., Jr.
(1991). State regulations and the availability of child-care services. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 10(Winter), 78-95.
16.
Hofferth, S.
(1995). Caring for children at the poverty line. Children and Youth Services Review, 17(1-2), 1-31.
17.
Hofferth, S. L.
, Brayfield, A., Deich, S., & Holcomb, P. (1991). The National Child Care Survey, 1990. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.
18.
Hofferth, S. L.
, & Chaplin, D. (1995). State regulations and child care choice. Revised version of paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, April 1994.
19.
Joesch, J. M.
(1994). Children and the timing of women's paid work after childbirth: A further specification of the relationship. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 56(May), 429-440.
20.
Kisker, E.
, Hofferth, S., Phillips, D., & Farquhar, E. (1991). A profile of child care settings: Early education and care in 1990. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
21.
Leibowitz, A.
, Klerman, J. A., & Waite, L. J. (1992). Employment of new mothers and child care choice: Differences by children's age. Journal of Human Resources, 27(1), 112-133.
22.
Mason, K.
, & Kuhlthau, K. (1989). Child care ideals among mothers of preschool children. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 51(3), 593-603.
23.
Menken, J.
, Trussell, J., Stempel, D., & Babakol, O. (1981). Proportional hazards life table models: An illustrative analysis of sociodemographic influences on marriage dissolution in the United States. Demography, 18, 181-200.
24.
Miller, B.
(1992). The distribution of family oriented benefits (Issue Brief 130). Washington, DC: Employee Benefit Research Institute.
25.
Moffitt, R.
(1992). Incentive effects of the U.S. welfare system: A review. Journal of Economic Literature, 30(March), 1-61.
26.
Mroz, T. A.
(1987). The sensitivity of an empirical model of married women's hours of work to economic and statistical assumptions. Econometrica, 55(4), 765-799.
27.
O'Connell, M.
(1990). Maternity leave arrangements: 1961-85. In Work and family patterns of American women, Current Population Reports, Special Studies Series P-23, No. 165. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
28.
Phillips, D.
, Lande, J., & Goldberg, M. (1990). The state of child care regulation: A comparative analysis. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 5(2), 151-179.
29.
SAS Institute
. (1991). SAS/STAT Software: The PHREG Procedure. Cary, NC: Author.
30.
Schwartz, F.
(1989). Management women and the new facts of life. Harvard Business Review, 67, 65-76.
31.
Teachman, J.
(1982). Methodological issues in the analysis of family formation and dissolution. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 44, 1037-1053.
32.
U.S. Bureau of the Census
. (1988). County and city data book. Washington, DC: Author.
33.
Yamaguchi, K.
(1991). Event history analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
34.
Zuckman, J.
(1993, February 6). As family leave is enacted, some see end to logjam. Congressional Quarterly, 51(6), 267-269.
