The critical juncture of childbirth: turbulence in the employment trajectories of Mothers in Europe

The employment trajectories of mothers around childbirth differ within andbetween European countries, with implications for long-term attachment to thelabor market. Existing research has focused mainly on comparing employmentstatus before and after birth, without too much attention to the process between.This paper describes how this critical juncture in employment trajectories playsout in the first 24 months after a child is born in 20 European countries. Us-ing micro-level data from the EU-SILC, we identify nine typical patterns aroundchildbirth, covering a period of 10 months prior to birth until 24 months after.Although five of these patterns are stable, the remaining four reveal substantialand sustained turbulence. This affects about 33% of all mothers within our sam-ple. We further find a considerable educational gradient for membership in eachpattern. Highly educated mothers are twice as likely as low educated mothers toexperience a turbulent post-birth period of employment that results in part-timeemployment. By contrast and additional to significantly lower baseline levels ofemployment, lower educated mothers are more likely to exhibit turbulence re-flecting intermittent employment. On the country level, we find large differencesin the within-country heterogeneity of likely employment patterns, and levels ofpost birth turbulence. Additionally, we find a distinct set of clusters representinglong and stable leave usage in some specific Eastern European countries.