Bye-bye baby

• Published in: Alberta report Vol. 26; no. 36; p. 30
• Main Author: YU, CARLA
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Edmonton United Western Communications 20.09.1999
• Subjects: Employment; Evaluation; Maternity benefits; Mothers; Statistics; Work & family; Working mothers; Canada
• ISSN: 0225-0519

The duration of maternity benefits and whether a woman is self-employed usually determine whether a new mother will return to work early after childbirth, says Katherine Marshall, an analyst with the labour and household surveys division of Statscan and author of the study "Employment After Childbirth." Ms. Marshall studied 367,000 women who were employed before they gave birth between April 1993 and December 1994. She found that 21% of women had returned to work within a month. The number of returnees dropped off to nearly zero until months four through eight-roughly the time when combined maternal and parental leave benefits expire. When they do go back to work, new mothers work as hard as they did before. Fully 89% of the women in the study took on the same work load. Only 9% dropped from full-time to part-time, and 2% even increased their commitment from part-time to full-time work. The average work week was 33 hours before the child's birth and 32 hours per week after. "This study shows that most women combine employment and parenthood within months of giving birth," writes Ms. Marshall, "confirming the strong labour force attachment of women today." "Women are pressured and harassed into returning to work by heavy taxes and low employment insurance," declares social conservative Gwen Landolt, vice-president of REAL Women. Like Ms. [Sylvia Hawkins], she believes women should receive longer maternity leaves, up to three years. "The government needs to give women more incentives," she concludes. "Other countries, France, Germany and Sweden, have better programs. They realize that even the size of the population is at stake."