Fathers on leave and mothers at work
31 recent papers study maternal employment and parental leave, twice as many as the year before, nearly all in economics journals. Several countries now reserve long leave for fathers. Does it shrink the earnings penalty mothers pay after a birth, or do fathers take the leave while mothers keep the care?
What prompted this#
Since October 2025, 31 papers carry a maternal-employment, parental-leave or paternity-leave keyword, up from 15 in the year before: "maternal employment" on 19, "parental leave" on 9, "paternity leave" on 5. Thirty appeared in economics journals; none carries an AI keyword. Over three years they sit next to work-family balance (10), child care (7), maternity leave (7), gender pay gap (7) and child penalty (7). Spain raised fathers' paid, non-transferable leave in steps from 2019 until it matched mothers' 16 weeks in 2021, and one recent paper in the archive studies it. Related notes look at housing costs and fertility and pay transparency and the gender pay gap.
Questions#
- Does leave reserved for fathers reduce the drop in mothers' earnings after a birth?
- Do fathers on leave share the care, or does the leave become time off while mothers still do most of it?
- Does equal leave change how employers hire young men and women, now that both are likely to take it?
- Does it change whether couples have a second child?
Data that could help#
Spanish social security records (the Continuous Sample of Working Lives), EU-SILC, time-use surveys and the OECD Family Database.
Next step#
Estimate the child penalty for couples with births just before and after each step of Spain's 2019–2021 reform, using social security records.