Abstract
It has been suggested that work-motivated women may shorten their birth intervals to allow a faster return to the workforce. This paper: (i) considers the circumstances under which such contraction would be expected; (ii) argues that British conditions in the 1940s to 1970s were favourable to the adoption of this strategy, among others; (iii) discusses some methodological issues arising in the empirical treatment of the question; and (iv) presents the results of analyses of work and maternity history information, which suggest that during the post-war period, labour-force participation was associated with both a contraction and a lengthening of birth intervals.
Résumé
On a dit que les femmes intéressées par le travail salarié pouvaient raccourcir leurs intervalles entre naissances pour reprendre plus vite leur activité. Cet article évalue les conditions d'une telle contraction, montre que le climat de la période des années 40 aux années 70 en Grande-Bretagne était favorable à cette stratégie, et étudie quelques problèmes méthodologiques soulevés par le traitement empirique de cette question. Il présente aussi les résultats de diverses analyses de données longitudinales sur l'activité économique et la maternité, qui indiquent que, pendant la période d'après-guerre, l'activité économique des femmes a été associée à des contractions aussi bien qu'à des allongements des intervalles intergénésiques.
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Acknowledgements: I thank Professor J.R.T. Colley, Director, MRC National Survey of Health and Development and the Office of Population Censues and Surveys for access to the data sets used. Heather Joshi, Colin Newell and Ian Timaeus collaborated in data preparation and Mike Wadsworth and Janet Wingfield gave much useful advice and help in this. This work has intellectual debts to W. Brass and M.J. Murphy and was supported by a grant from the ESRC to the Centre for Population Studies, which is a Designated Research Centre of the ESRC.
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Bhrolcháin, M.N. Women's paid work and the timing of births. Eur J Population 2, 43–70 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01796880
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01796880