Full time or part time? German parental leave policy and the return to work after childbirth in Germany

This article aims to explore the role of eligibility for parental leave as a determinant of access and as an enabler of leave take-up. To analyse the link between eligibility and take-up, we study a unique policy change in Luxembourg’s parental leave scheme. The country’s 2016 parental leave reform relaxed the eligibility criteria to enable marginal part-time working parents to access the parental leave scheme for the first time. We focus on this change and examine to what extent relaxing the eligibility criteria translated into increased take-up by the marginal part-time working parents who became eligible. To quantify this transition, we analyse trends in and patterns of eligibility for the scheme in Luxembourg between 2009 and 2018 among first-time parents working full-time, part-time, or marginal part-time hours. We use a subsample of Luxembourg-resident, cohabiting, first-time parents (N = 6,254) drawn from the social security data. Our analysis shows that as eligibility is dependent on individual factors, it has similarities among mothers and fathers, whereas take-up is notably greater for mothers. After the reform, we observe that marginal part-time working mothers started taking parental leave, but up to 2018, the reform’s outreach to marginal part-time working fathers remained limited. We also find that foreign national parents are less likely to be eligible for parental leave and have lower take-up rates. Despite the gendered parental leave take-up behaviours in parallel with international evidence, marginal part-time working mothers’ positive response to the reform indicates progress towards strengthening women’s labour market attachment in Luxembourg.

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Allied health professionals in Queensland Health returning to work after maternity leave: hours of work and duration of time on part-time hours

Australian Health Review ◽

10.1071/ah18110 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 44 (1) ◽

pp. 56

Author(s):

Julie Hulcombe ◽

Sandra Capra ◽

Gillian Whitehouse

Keyword(s):

Return To Work ◽

Health Professionals ◽

Allied Health ◽

Maternity Leave ◽

Full Time ◽

Allied Health Professionals ◽

Convenience Sample ◽

Staff Management ◽

Queensland Health ◽

Part Time

Objective The aim of this study was to provide a detailed description of the flexible working arrangements (FWA) used by allied health professionals (AHP) on return from maternity leave. This is a crucial issue for staff management practices in a changing regulatory context. Methods A retrospective convenience sample of AHP employed by Queensland Health (QH) in 2006, using deidentified payroll data, was analysed descriptively to determine employment status on return from maternity leave in 2006 to December 2014. A qualitative study that surveyed managers of AHP departments was subsequently undertaken to complement the data from the payroll study. Twelve managers, across six allied health professions in three hospitals in south-east Queensland were surveyed for this component. Results The payroll study included 169 employees (138 full-time equivalent (FTE)), 61 of whom resigned over the study period. Of those who returned to work after the 2006 maternity event (n=152), 92% (n=140) initially returned part-time. At 31 December 2014, of the 108 staff working for QH, 77% (n=83) were part-time. In total, 75.4 FTE positions were released over the 8-year period through reduced working hours and resignations. The perceptions of surveyed managers were consistent with the data from the payroll study. Conclusion The study showed that most AHPs who took maternity leave returned to work part-time and remained part-time for an extended period. The data suggest that managers could permanently backfill a proportion of hours released due to FWA after maternity leave without major budgetary risk due to the need to accommodate existing employees’ entitlements. However, this would require a significant policy change. What is known about this topic? Current research on this topic has concentrated on the benefits of paid maternity leave, timing of return to work and use of FWA by employees on return to work after maternity leave. What does this paper add? This paper presents the first comprehensive data on patterns of return to work and part-time hours following maternity leave for AHP employees. Access to a unique payroll dataset provided the opportunity to describe this for a cohort of AHP employees over a period of 8 years following a maternity event. A survey of AHP managers’ experience with maternity leave and return to work arrangements supported the findings, underlining the associated difficulties with staff management. What are the implications for practitioners? The hours released through resignations or reduced hours over this period of study suggest that management could backfill a proportion of released hours permanently, or at least offer temporary staff longer-term contracts, once an employee returns from maternity leave on reduced hours

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Maternity Leave And Women's Mental Health

Psychology of Women Quarterly ◽

10.1111/j.1471-6402.1995.tb00291.x ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 257-285 ◽

Cited By ~ 169

Author(s):

Janet Shibley Hyde ◽

Marjorie H. Klein ◽

Marilyn J. Essex ◽

Roseanne Clark

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Maternity Leave ◽

Parental Leave ◽

Longitudinal Design ◽

Policy Issue ◽

Health Study ◽

Work Status ◽

Full Time ◽

Regression Analyses ◽

Part Time

The Wisconsin Maternity Leave and Health Study addresses an important policy issue, parental leave, by investigating the work status, maternity leave, and mental health of 570 women. In the longitudinal design, the women, all of whom were living with a husband or partner, were interviewed during the fifth month of pregnancy, 1 month postpartum, and 4 months postpartum. At 4 months postpartum, full-time workers, part-time workers, and homemakers did not differ in depression or anger, but full-time workers showed elevated anxiety compared with the other two groups. In multiple regression analyses, length of leave interacted significantly with marital concerns when predicting depression; women who took a short leave (6 weeks or less) and were high on marital concerns had the highest depression scores. Short maternity leave can be conceptualized as a risk factor that, when combined with other risk factors such as marital concerns, places women at greater risk for depression.

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How can we become more equal? Public policies and parents’ work–family preferences in Germany

Journal of European Social Policy ◽

10.1177/09589287211035701 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 095892872110357

Author(s):

Mareike Bünning ◽

Lena Hipp

Keyword(s):

Parental Leave ◽

Public Policies ◽

Full Time ◽

Working Parents ◽

Part Time ◽

Time Position ◽

Work Family ◽

Employed Parents ◽

The Right ◽

Policy Setting

This study examines how public policies affect parents’ preferences for a more egalitarian division of paid and unpaid work. Based on the assumption that individuals develop their preferences within a specific policy context, we examine how changes in three policies affect mothers’ and fathers’ work–family preferences: the availability of high-quality, affordable childcare; the right to return to a full-time job after having reduced hours to part-time and an increase in the number of ‘partner months’ in parental leave schemes. Analysing a unique probability sample of parents with young children in Germany from 2015 ( N = 1756), we find that fathers would want to work slightly fewer hours if they had the right to return to a full-time position after working part-time, and mothers would want to work slightly more hours if childcare opportunities were improved. Full-time working parents, moreover, are found to prefer fewer hours independent of the policy setting, while non-employed parents would like to work at least some hours. Last but not least, our analyses show that increasing the number of partner months in the parental leave scheme considerably increases fathers’ preferences for longer and mothers’ preferences for shorter leave. Increasing the number of partner months in parental schemes hence has the greatest potential to increase gender equality.

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Do politics matter? Women in Swedish local elected assemblies 1970–2010 and gender equality in outcomes

European Political Science Review ◽

10.1017/s1755773911000087 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 97-120 ◽

Cited By ~ 25

Author(s):

Lena Wängnerud ◽

Anders Sundell

Keyword(s):

Gender Equality ◽

Driving Forces ◽

Parental Leave ◽

National Level ◽

Full Time ◽

Equal Distribution ◽

Input Side ◽

Part Time ◽

And Gender ◽

Elected Representatives

A substantial number of studies support the notion that having a high number of women in elected office helps strengthen the position of women in society. However, some of the most cited studies rely on questionnaires asking elected representatives about their attitudes and priorities, thus focusing on the input side of the political system. The closer one gets to outcomes in citizens’ everyday lives, the fewer empirical findings there are to report. In this study, we attempt to explain contemporary variations in gender equality at the sub-national level in Sweden. We use six indicators to capture a broad spectrum of everyday life situations. The overall finding is that having a high number of women elected does affect conditions for women citizens, making them more equal to men in terms of factors such as income levels, full-time vs. part-time employment, and distribution of parental leave between mothers and fathers, even when controlling for party ideology and modernization at the municipal level. No effect was found, however, on factors such as unemployment, poor health, and poverty among women. Thus, the politics of presence theory (Phillips, 1995), which emphasizes the importance of having a high number of women elected, does exert an effect, but the effect needs to be specified. For some dimensions of gender equality, the driving forces of change have more to do with general transformations of society than the equal distribution of women and men in elected assemblies. We thoroughly discuss measurement challenges since there is no accepted or straightforward way of testing the politics of presence theory. We challenge the conventional wisdom of using indexes to capture the network of circumstances that determines the relationship between women and men in society; aggregating several factors undermines the possibility of building fine-tuned understandings of the operative mechanisms.

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Female Labor Supply: Why Is the United States Falling Behind?

The American Economic Review ◽

10.1257/aer.103.3.251 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 103 (3) ◽

pp. 251-256 ◽

Cited By ~ 122

Author(s):

Francine D Blau ◽

Lawrence M Kahn

Keyword(s):

Parental Leave ◽

Participation Rate ◽

The United States ◽

Oecd Countries ◽

Full Time ◽

Female Labor ◽

Time Work ◽

Part Time ◽

Women's Labor Force Participation ◽

Part Time Work

In 1990, the US had the sixth highest female labor participation rate among 22 OECD countries. By 2010 its rank had fallen to seventeenth. We find that the expansion of “family-friendly” policies, including parental leave and part-time work entitlements in other OECD countries, explains 29 percent of the decrease in US women's labor force participation relative to these other countries. However, these policies also appear to encourage part-time work and employment in lower level positions: US women are more likely than women in other countries to have full time jobs and to work as managers or professionals.

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Return to work after first incidence of long-term sickness absence: A 10-year prospective follow-up study identifying labour-market trajectories using sequence analysis

Scandinavian Journal of Public Health ◽

10.1177/1403494818821003 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 48 (2) ◽

pp. 134-143 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Aleksander Årnes Madsen

Keyword(s):

Sequence Analysis ◽

Return To Work ◽

Labour Market ◽

Sickness Absence ◽

Multinomial Logistic Regression ◽

Full Time ◽

Occupational Class ◽

Time Work ◽

Part Time

Aims: The study aim was to identify prototypical labour-market trajectories following a first incidence of long-term sickness absence (LTSA), and to assess whether baseline socio-demographic characteristics are associated with the return-to-work (RTW) process and labour-market attachment (LMA). Methods: This prospective study used Norwegian administrative registers with quarterly information on labour-market participation to follow all individuals born 1952–1978 who underwent a first LTSA during the first quarter of 2004 ( n =9607) over a 10-year period (2004–2013). Sequence analysis was used to identify prototypical labour-market trajectories and LMA; trajectory membership was examined with multinomial logistic regression. Results: Sequence analysis identified nine labour-market trajectories illustrating the complex RTW process, with multiple states and transitions. Among this sample, 68.2% had a successful return to full-time work, while the remaining trajectories consisted of part-time work, unemployment, recurrence of LTSA, rehabilitation and disability pension (DP). A higher odds ratio (OR) for membership to trajectories of weaker LMA was found for females and older participants, while being married/cohabitating, having children, working in the public sector, and having a higher education, income and occupational class were associated with a lower OR of recurrence, unemployment, rehabilitation and DP trajectories. These results are consistent with three LMA indicators. Conclusions: Sequence analysis revealed prototypical labour-market trajectories and provided a holistic overview of the heterogeneous RTW processes. While the most frequent outcome was successful RTW, several unfavourable labour-market trajectories were identified, with trajectory membership predicted by socio-demographic measures.

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The Readiness for Return to Work Scale; Does it Help in Evaluation of Return to Work?

Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation ◽

10.1007/s10926-021-10009-4 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Lene Aasdahl ◽

Marius Steiro Fimland ◽

Cecilie Røe

Keyword(s):

Return To Work ◽

Common Mental Disorders ◽

Work Participation ◽

Measurement Properties ◽

Full Time ◽

Part Time ◽

Logistic Regressions ◽

Future Work ◽

The Rasch Model

AbstractPurpose The Readiness for Return to Work (RRTW) scale is used to evaluate workers’ readiness to resume work after sick leave. Previous research has questioned the RRTW scale’s constructs and stages. The aim of this study was to assess the unidimensionality of the RRTW scale and its six subscales by evaluating its fit to the Rasch model, and furthermore to assess if Rasch-based scaling would improve its predictive value, compared with the conventional use of the scale. Methods A prospective cohort study with 12 months of follow-up. Individuals (n = 397) sick-listed due to musculoskeletal, unspecified, or common mental health disorders undergoing rehabilitation were included: 191 were full-time sick-listed (not working), and 206 were part-time sick-listed (working). A Rasch analysis was applied to evaluate the measurement properties of the RRTW scale in the working and not working participants at baseline. Linear and logistic regressions were used to assess how well Rasch-based scaling predicted future work participation during the 12 months of follow-up. Results The RRTW subscales had too few items to represent underlying dimensions properly, and the items fitted poorly within the subscales. A constructed variable based on the items that fit together for not working individuals poorly predicted future work participation. The individuals’ scores across stages were disordered, indicating a lack of ordered stages. Conclusions This study reveals poor measurement properties of the Norwegian version of the RRTW scale in individuals with musculoskeletal and common mental disorders, with neither the subscales nor the stages closely associated with return to work.

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How can we become more equal? Public policies and parents’ work-family preferences in Germany

10.31235/osf.io/pjg2n ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Mareike Bünning ◽

Lena Hipp

Keyword(s):

Parental Leave ◽

Public Policies ◽

Full Time ◽

Working Parents ◽

Part Time ◽

Time Position ◽

Work Family ◽

Employed Parents ◽

The Right ◽

Policy Setting

This study uses Sen’s (1985) “capabilities framework” to examine how public policies affect parents’ preferences for a more egalitarian division of paid and unpaid work. Based on the assumption that individuals develop their preferences within a specific policy context, we examine how changes in three policies affect mothers’ and fathers’ work-family preferences, namely, the availability of high-quality, affordable childcare, the right to return to a full-time job after working part-time, and an extension of “partner months” in parental leave schemes. Analyzing a unique probability sample of parents with young children in Germany, we find that, on average, fathers would want to work slightly fewer hours if they had the right to return to a full-time position after working part-time, and mothers would want to work slightly more hours if childcare opportunities were improved. Our analyses, however, also show that full-time working parents have preferences for shorter hours and that non-employed parents would prefer longer hours independent of the policy setting. Last but not least, we find that increasing the number of partner months in the parental leave scheme considerably increases fathers’ preferences for longer and mothers’ preferences for shorter periods of parental leave. Our main conclusion is that extending the number of partner months in parental schemes has the greatest potential to increase gender equality.

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Parental health in fellowship trainees: Fellows’ satisfaction with current policies and interest in innovation

Women s Health ◽

10.1177/1745506520949417 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 16 ◽

pp. 174550652094941

Author(s):

Ariela L Marshall ◽

Virginia Dines ◽

Andrea Wahner Hendrickson ◽

Rahma Warsame ◽

Gita Thanarajasingam ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Medical Education ◽

Return To Work ◽

Graduate Medical Education ◽

Day Care ◽

Parental Leave ◽

Well Being ◽

Health Policies ◽

Parental Health ◽

Part Time ◽

Health And Well Being

Background: Parenthood during medical training is common and impacts trainee well-being. However, current graduate medical education parental health policies are often limited in scope. We explored current fellowship trainees’ knowledge of/satisfaction with current policies as well as interest in potential changes/additions to existing policies. Methods: Fellowship program directors/coordinators at a three-site academic institution were surveyed and information was collected from 2015 to 2019 regarding fellow demographics and parental health policies. We distributed an electronic survey to fellows containing Likert-type-scale questions rating knowledge/level of satisfaction with current parental health policies and interest in potential additions/modifications to current policies. Results: Thirty-five of 47 (74%) fellowship programs responded. An average of 11% of female fellows and 15% of male fellows took parental leave during the study period. Three (9%) of the programs had at least one additional parental health policy beyond institutional graduate medical education policies. In the fellow survey, 175 of 609 fellows responded (28.7%), of which 84 (48.6%) were female. Although 89.1% agreed/strongly agreed that parental health is an important part of health and well-being for fellows, only 32% were satisfied/very satisfied with current policies (no significant sex-related differences). Fellows reported the following potential interventions as important/very important: 79.2% increased (paid) maternity leave (72.7% male, 86.7% female, p = 0.02), 78% increased (paid) paternity leave (76.4% male, 81.9% female, p = 0.37), 72.3% part-time return to work (60.2% male, 84.3% female, p = 0.0005), 63% coverage for workup/management of infertility (52.3% male, 74.7% female, p = 0.002), and 79.9% on-site day care (70.7% male, 89.2% female, p = 0.003). Conclusions: Parental health includes multiple domains, not all of which are covered by current policies. Fellows feel that parental health is an important part of overall health and well-being, but most are not satisfied with current policies. Expanded access to parental leave and new policies (part-time return to work, infertility management, and on-site day care) are opportunities for innovation.

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