Fathers at home alone: Fathers’ parental leave-taking in Germany and subsequent labour market participation of mothers
Ann-Christin Bächmann, Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories
In 2007, a comprehensive parental leave reform in Germany created new incentives for fathers to participate more in childcare. However, the transition to parenthood often still leads to a (re-)traditionalization of the division of labour in partnerships, with mothers interrupting their careers while fathers continue their employment. Using a novel, long-running daily panel dataset for a large sample of employed married couples in Germany (N = 114,000), we analyse (1) which factors promote or hinder the parental leave take-up by fathers and (2) how fathers’ involvement in parental leave influences the employment participation of mothers. Our results are in line with micro-economic theoretical approaches such as new household economics and bargaining: exponential hurdle models reveal that fathers with higher education and lower income than their wives take longer employment breaks. Moreover, results of competing risk models show that a longer paternal leave take-up of fathers promotes faster returns of mothers to full-time employment–yet only if fathers take more than the two daddy quota months. In addition, we find hints towards identity theories: fathers in more gender-egalitarian contexts take longer parental leave.
Ann-Christin Bächmann studied Socioeconomics (BA) at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) from 2006 to 2009, and obtained her master’s degree in Socioeconomics (MSc) in 2012. From June 2012 to May 2015, she worked as a scientific employee in the research area “Education and Employment over the Life Course”. Between June 2015 and September 2018, she worked as a research assistant at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories in Bamberg in the department “Educational Decisions and Processes, Migration, Returns to Education”. Since June 2017, Ms Bächmann has been a researcher at the Research Data Centre (FDZ), and since July 2019, she has also been a member of the research group “Occupational Labour Markets”. Since 2020, she is a postdoc in the department “Educational Decisions and Processes, Migration, Returns to Education”.
at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg.