Diverse Paths After First Birth: Maternal Employment Trajectories in Hungary, East Germany, and West Germany, 1991–2012

East Germany shares a socialist legacy of full-time maternal employment with Hungary and, since 1990, a family-policy framework with West Germany. Did these shared conditions lead to similar maternal employment pathways after first birth? Comparing these contexts requires following mothers longitudinally, capturing the diversity of their pathways, their employment intensity and stability, and separating them by subsequent childbearing, which can prolong interruptions and differs across contexts. Using panel data on first births in 1991–2012, we apply group-based multi-trajectory models and bias-adjusted regressions to six years of monthly employment, separately for mothers with one child and mothers with additional children. In both groups, Hungarian mothers were concentrated in one dominant pathway, whereas German mothers spread across several. Among one-child mothers, no or very late return became similarly uncommon across contexts by 2007–2012, but mothers returned through different pathways: late full-time in Hungary, part-time in West Germany, and mixed pathways in East Germany. Among mothers with additional children, no return within six years remained at two thirds in Hungary but fell to about one fifth in both German contexts, first in the East and then in the West. East-West differences in employment intensity persisted and were larger among mothers with additional children.