6 - The timing of maternity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Summary
Introduction
This chapter focuses on explaining the timing of maternity, trying to answer the question: When does a young woman decide to become a mother? What conditions have to be present? Del Boca and Locatelli in Chapter 5 of this volume focus on the interrelatedness of fertility and female labour force participation. For example, they ask: What is the relationship between participation and fertility decisions? What effects do childcare characteristics have on the number of children a woman has and on the probability of her remaining at work as a mother? The question ‘When?’ is not addressed in their work, but is instead the central question in this chapter.
Decisions about investment in human capital, how demanding a career to aspire to, how many children to have, are interdependent when considering how to spend one's time in order to achieve these various life goals. Among the pioneer models, those of the economics of fertility focused on decisions about family size. These models were static, taking the whole married life of the couple as one period (Becker 1960; Willis 1973). Later models of fertility have recognised the intrinsic dynamic character of fertility decisions. But, in spite of that, for example, the Hotz et al. (1997) review on fertility models spends only one and a half pages on the timing of maternity.
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- Social Policies, Labour Markets and MotherhoodA Comparative Analysis of European Countries, pp. 182 - 224Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
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