What Mothers Want: The Impact of Children on Women’s Preferred Working Hours in Western Europe

• In Event: 250 - Regular Session. Work-Family in International Context

Abstract

Despite the steep increase in women’s labor market participation during recent decades, mothers are still significantly less often gainfully employed than childless women or men. However, as cross-country comparisons revealed, the impact of motherhood on women’s labor market behavior varies greatly between countries. The national context affecting mothers’ labor supply can be conceptualized as combination of policy arrangements, cultural norms, and labor market characteristics. Social policies shape mothers’ labor supply by affecting their child care responsibilities as well as their economic resources. Cultural norms implicitly or explicitly prescribe how care work and paid work should be divided between mothers and fathers. Labor market characteristics such as work time-inflexibility and the prevalence of non-standard work schedules shape mothers’ opportunity to balance paid work and child care and affect their desired work hours.
To examine the impact of the national context on mothers’ labor supply, I use data from the European Social Survey (ESS) from 2004 and 2010. I find that family policies such as childcare provision and family allowances moderate the impact of motherhood on women’s preferred work hours, whereas parental leave arrangements do not. My analysis also indicates a substantial impact of work-time characteristics at the country level, such as the prevalence of non-standard work and work-time flexibility, on mothers’ preferred work hours. Individual characteristics such as women’s educational level, gender ideologies, and their partners’ employment behavior impact women’s preferred work hours, but they do not moderate the effect of parenthood on women’s desired work hours.

Author

• Matthias Pollmann-Schult, WZB Berlin Social Science Research Center