Employment after Childbearing: A Survival Analysis

Longitudinal data from two cohorts of women born in 1946 and 1958 are used to describe the break in employment experienced by women after childbearing. This is reducing in length. The decline in the employment gap, observed for women born in 1958 has largely been confined to those women who delayed their childbearing until their late twenties and early thirties and women who were more highly educated. What seems to be occurring is a polarisation between mothers in the more and the less privileged social groups, in terms of their ability to enter and stay in paid employment once they have responsibility for children. Although mothers at both ends of the social scale have to balance the dual demands of paid and domestic work, older and better educated mothers are more likely to be in higher status occupations, to earn adequate income to pay for childcare and to be better placed to take advantage of any changes in employer provisions for working mothers.