Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/273147 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 2022:18
Publisher: 
Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU), Uppsala
Abstract: 
Mothers' longer time on parental leave after having children has been proposed as one reason for remaining gender inequalities in the labor market. This paper investigates the determinants of the unequal division of parental leave, specifically the argument that mothers take more parental leave as a consequence of pregnancy and breastfeeding. We compare the division of parental leave of biological parents (where the mother gave birth) to adoptive parents (where she did not), to assess to what extend the unequal division of childcare responsibilities can be explained by the physiological aspects of biological motherhood. We analyze Swedish register data on couples who had their first biological or adopted child in 1994 - 2009, and families that had both adopted and biological children. We find that the mother's share of parental leave is lower if the child is adopted. The difference is small, 80% versus 82%, although statistically significant. We thus conclude that going through a pregnancy increases the mothers initial parental leave, but the impact is minor. Instead, our results indicate that gender norms of mothers as caregivers and fathers as breadwinners is more likely to explain (at least part of) couples' division of parental leave.
Subjects: 
parental leave
gender norms
motherhood
division of labor
JEL: 
D13
J13
J16
J22
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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