Effects of Public and Private Policies on Working after Childbirth

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.