Parental Leave and Return to Work
The transition to parenthood represents an exciting time for many adults, yet can also pose challenges for working parents trying to balance this new and important role. Due to a mix of political, economic, workplace and personal factors, the majority of
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Abstract The transition to parenthood represents an exciting time for many adults, yet can also pose challenges for working parents trying to balance this new and important role. Due to a mix of political, economic, workplace and personal factors, the majority of parents return to work following the birth of a child in the Western countries. Public policy for parental leave and the timeframe for returning to work vary significantly across countries. For example, in some Scandinavian and European countries, mothers are away from work for 10 months to 3 years, whereas most mothers in the U.S. who return to work do so within 6–12 weeks. In this chapter we take a global perspective to discuss the parental leave and return to work process. Our theoretical background includes a multi-disciplinary perspective, integrating theories from the work-family and return to work literatures. Structured as a four-stage process (pre-leave, away on leave, initial transition, and posttransition back to work), we review current parental leave policies and practices, as well as individual and workplace factors that affect the return to work process. We also describe interventions that have been conducted during this process to improve parents’ transitions and adjustment. We conclude with practical implications and discuss future research directions. Keywords Parental leave work
Maternity leave Return to work Breastfeeding and
Over the past 40 years, family structure and the proportion of parents who work has shifted dramatically. For example, in 1968 only 27 % of mothers with children under the age of 18 participated in the U.S. workforce, compared to 71 % of mothers in 2014 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2014). Both parents participate in G.G. Fisher (&) M.A. Valley V.P. Mattingly Department of Psychology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, USA e-mail: [email protected] S. Toppinen-Tanner Development of Work and Organizations, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, Finland © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 C. Spitzmueller and R.A. Matthews (eds.), Research Perspectives on Work and the Transition to Motherhood, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41121-7_7
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the workforce in more than half of married-couple families (60.2 %) with children under 18 and in married-couple families with children younger than 6-years-old (55.3 %; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2014). Among unmarried mothers with children younger than 18 years of age, 69.4 % were in the labor force in 2012 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2013). In the U.S., more than half (57.1 %) of mothers with infants are in the labor force (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2014). Labor force participation among women in Europe has increased from 55 % in the 1990s to 66 % in 2008 (Cippollone et al. 2013). In Norway, 80 % of women of childbearing age are in the workforce (Statistics Norway 2010). In Australia, 66.8 % of women with school-age children are working (Chapman et al. 2001). Although the share of part-time
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