Return to Work of Women after Childbirth and the Reasons of Resumption of Labor

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Return to Work of Women after Childbirth and the Reasons of Resumption of Labor

Alisa Berezina, 4^th year student

ICEF, Higher School of Economics

under the guidance of Anna Yurko, PhD, Associate Professor

ICEF, Higher School of Economics

Moscow 2018

Many recent papers abroad write about rising participation of women in the labor force, with an emphasis on the rising participation of mothers of very young children. Although, there is little information available from our country about the timing and the reasons of resuming labor by women after childbirth.

The aim of my survey is to find out and evaluate the main factors, which influence the decision of the resumption of labor after childbirth by Russian mothers. The general hypotheses are that among the reasons of returning to work are preferences of women and their families, and the balance between financial and time benefits and costs of the return to work. In order to test my hypotheses, I have conducted my own retrospective survey among mothers of one, two and three children and used different approaches in the statistical analysis. The first post-natal leave has been analyzed and compared to the previous research. In addition, one of my contributions was the analysis of the second and the last post-natal leaves. Also, at the end of the study I supposed some methods, which may help women to resume work sooner after childbirth. Among them are: saving and developing the social policy and norms concerning motherhood and work, creating alternative public and private forms of child daycare facilities, paying out subsidies for using private forms of childcare and the provision of facilities allowing for combining work and family responsibilities of new mothers.

Introduction

Many scholars note in their studies that the participation of women in the labor force has dramatically increased around the world since the middle of the last century. Special attention is paid to examining of the participation of mothers of young children, as the birth of a child is said to be `a moment of maximum conflict between work and motherhood' `Women's Employment during Pregnancy and after the First Birth: occupational characteristics and work commitment', S. Desai and L. Waite..

There are several influential papers on this topic by such researchers as Shapiro and Mott, Klerman and Leibowitz, Eva Bernhardt, Saurel-Cubizolles at. all., which I discuss later. However, very little relevant information is available from our country about the timing and the reasons of resuming labor by women after childbirth. There are several reasons why the participation of new mothers in the labor force is important and interesting to examine from the economic point of view.

To begin with, this is favorably for the government and the economy as a whole as the sooner women return to work, the more labor force participants in the market, the sooner women begin to pay income taxes.

Secondly, employers are also interested in sooner resumption of labor by new mothers. An employer can benefit when a woman returns to her last job, as in this case the employer has no time and financial costs from training a new employee. A woman is already familiar with her responsibilities, she has a job-specific training. This is of great importance especially for employers in private sector, as according to logistics of personnel, a new employee begins to make profit at least after several months or even a year. The reason of it is that job-specific training takes time. And, of course, it is costly for employers.

As well as for government and employers, resumption of work after the childbirth may be profitable for women. Childcare allowance is paid for 1.5 years since the birth of a child and it constitutes 40% from woman's former wage Labor Code of Russian Federation. http://www.trudkod.ru.. However, when a woman returns to her former job, she is guaranteed to be paid 100% of her former wage. This means that family income is increased sharply since the time of the resumption of work by women after the childbirth.

However, not only economic reasons may influence a decision of returning to work by new mothers. As a mother of a young daughter, a partner in socially-oriented start-up for mothers on maternity leave, and a leader of a society of mothers in my region, I suggest that there may also be more social, personal and psychological factors which influence such a decision. Among them are work commitment of women, a desire of financial independence, and of forming and ensuring women's own economic well-being, a desire to realize their potential as much as possible, to realize themselves as professionals, to be useful and respected both in their families and in the society. This is consistent with the data from the survey of `VCIOM' conducted in year 1994 The table showing the mains aims of women concerning work. http://sophist.hse.ru/facts/zhenrab.shtml., which tells that 22.5% of the respondents think that the main reason stimulating a woman that have children to work is a desire to have their own money and financial independence, while 5.8% think that the main reason stimulating a woman with children to work is an interest to her job.

Taking all of the above into account, it's getting clear that new mothers are becoming more and more involved in the market and their labor supply is increasing over time, and this trend, I suppose, will go on further. Thus, it is essentially to discover the main factors, which influence the return-to-work decision, and this is the purpose of my work. I strongly believe that this will help to understand the constraints, which new mothers face today when they decide to resume work, and also to understand what can be done in order to help these women to fulfill their plans and needs.

Though there are a lot of studies of this topic in Europe, in the USA and around the world, there is very little relevant information from our country. Thus, I proceed with the observing of the current situation in the labor market in Russia, and consistently go through the chapters dedicated to the observation of the previous research, the hypotheses of my survey and the description of its process. Then goes the description of the methods used in my study, the process and the results of the statistical analysis and its discussion. Then the conclusion and the references follow. At the end of the paper the curious readers may find the Appendix with the example of the questionnaire and the abstracts from the statistical program Stata.

1. Situation in Russian Labor Market

To begin with, let me go deeper in the situation in our labor market, social norms concerning pregnancy, motherhood and work such as maternity leaves and allowances, and to outlay some statistics concerning public childcare system in our country.

First, I will briefly describe existing social policy and norms about motherhood and work, which are laid out in the Labor Code of Russian Federation. Women are granted maternity leave with duration of 70 days before the possible date of delivery and 70 days after the delivery, with the allowance for pregnancy and the childbirth. Women have right not to fully use maternity leave before and after the delivery date Labor Code of Russian Federation. http://www.trudkod.ru..

Women can be on maternity leave for 3 years after the birth of a child, however, the childcare allowance is paid only for 1.5 years after the childbirth. Before this date, a woman is paid 40% of her average former wage for the first child with the minimum of 3,142 rubles and the maximum of 24,536 rubles. The minimum for the second and further children is 6,284 rubles. After 1,5 years, a woman is paid 50 rubles monthly as a compensation Labor Code of Russian Federation. http://www.trudkod.ru.. As statistics The table showing the mains aims of women concerning work. http://sophist.hse.ru/facts/zhenrab.shtml. assert, when deciding whether to resume work after the childbirth, many women are guided not by their ambitions and strong work commitment, but by strong financial need (though it may be less relevant now, there are very little information and surveys on this topic from our country, as I said above, and the `Omnibus VCIOM' survey is a reliable and official one):

Table 1. Factors for resuming labor by women from 1989 to 1996, in %.

This is consistent with the data from the survey of `VCIOM' conducted in year 1994, which tells that 66.4% of the sample think that the main reason stimulating a woman who has children to work is impossibility to live on partner's wage alone The table showing the mains aims of women concerning work. http://sophist.hse.ru/facts/zhenrab.shtml.. However, let me return to the social policy concerning motherhood and work.

According to existing social norms, after resuming work after the childbirth, women have right to work part-time or at home while being paid childcare allowance Labor Code of Russian Federation. http://www.trudkod.ru. A former workplace is guaranteed by law for 3 years of maternity leave. Post-natal leave is included in the total and continuous work experience, as well as in work experience in the specialty.

Women who breastfeed while resuming work after the birth of a child and till 1,5 years after the childbirth, are given additional breaks for feeding a child every 3 hours for at least 30 minutes. These breaks may be added to a lunch break or may be shifted to a beginning or to an ending of a working day with its reduction. Breaks for feeding a child are included in working hours and are paid with the amount of average earnings. So, possibilities for saving breastfeeding after the returning to work after the childbirth are envisaged and provided by law.

Now let me discuss the today's situation in our labor market and the issues concerning the child daycare system. Please, note that I discuss only the statistics (years, percentages and trends), which I found, because I am sure in it, this information was available to me, it is official, reliable and free. I do not discuss the trends before or after the years, which you may find in the tables, as either the information was unavailable to me, or I counted it as unreliable (because of non-official sites).

It can be seen that the level of economic activity of women in our country has increased in the first decade of the 21^st century Russian Statistics Committee (ROSSTAT). http://www.gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat_main/rosstat/ru/statistics/population/motherhood. from 59.5% in year 2000 to 62.6% in year 2009:

Table 2. The level of economic activity of women in Russian Federation (measured in November) as a percentage of a population.

The level of economic activity of women of working age has not decreased for the period from 2009 to 2013 year:

Table 3. The level of economic activity of women of working age (16-54 years old), in%.

The employment of women of childbearing age, from 20 to 49 years, which are mothers of preschoolers, from 0 to 6 years, has increased on average from 62.8% to 64.9% for the period from 2009 to 2016 year, according to Russian Statistics Committee (ROSSTAT) Russian Statistics Committee (ROSSTAT). http://www.gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat_main/rosstat/ru/statistics/population/motherhood.:

Table 4. The employment rate of women (20-49 years old) having children under 18 years old, in %.

The other relevant and interesting information for my study is presented in the table below Russian Statistics Committee (ROSSTAT). http://www.gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat_main/rosstat/ru/statistics/population/motherhood. - this information consists of the employment rates of women divided on groups by the presence of children under 18 years old. It can be seen from the table that the employment rates of women with one and three children under 18 years old and of women having children under 6 years old have risen from 2011 to 2013 year:

Table 5. The employment rate of women (20-49 years old) by the presence of children under 18 years old, in %.

The information from our country is consistent with a worldwide trend of rising participation and employment rates of women and for new mothers of young children. There are two graphs below which present information from England Data from England. Office for National Statistics. https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/moremotherswithyoungchildrenworkingfulltime/2017-09-26.. The first graph shows an upward trend in female employment rates in England from 1971 to 2018 year for women 16-64 years old:

Graph 1. Female employment rate (aged 16 to 64, seasonally adjusted).

The second graph shown rising employment rates of mothers which youngest child is 3-4 years old for the period from 1997 to 2017 years.

Graph 2. Percentage of mothers with a youngest child aged three or four years old who are in employment, England, 1997 to 2017 Data from England. Office for National Statistics. https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/moremotherswithyoungchildrenworkingfulltime/2017-09-26..

From the information above it can be seen that more and more mothers of young children in the world and in our country find it necessary to return to work some time after the birth of a child for a number of reasons.

This is consistent with data of Russian Statistics Committee (ROSSTAT) about the number of children that have been put on the queue for kindergartens since 2011 year Russian Statistics Committee (ROSSTAT). http://www.gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat_main/rosstat/ru/statistics/population/motherhood.. Their number has increased from 28.8% in 2011 to 43.2% in 2016 year (perhaps, partly because of increased birth rate). The coverage of children from 1 to 6 years old has also increased on average from 2008 to 2016 year in Russian Federation as a whole and in particular in Belgorod and region. It may be explained by increased demand for places in child daycare system from new mothers, which are planning to return to work after the childbirth.

To go further, the birth rate has increased since 2012, and according to birth rate forecast of Russian Statistics Committee (ROSSTAT) Russian Statistics Committee (ROSSTAT). http://www.gks.ru., the rate will eighter drop slightly (in the worst scenario), or will rise till 2035 year (in the best scenario). At the same time, consumer spending of households with children has increased since 2012 to 2016 year. Both of this, increasing of average number of children in household and rising consumer spending, give reason to suggest that more women will decide to return to work after the childbirth in order to meet increasing financial needs of their families.

From 2011 to 2016 years, there was a dramatic decrease in non-attendance of kindergartens by children of 3-6 years old as a percentage of the total number of children of 3-6 years old that do not attend kindergartens for the following reasons - `no place in a kindergarten', `high cost', `no kindergartens next to my home'. Rising number of kindergartens and lower childcare costs of them may explain these statistics. However, at the same time, there was a great increase in non-attendance because of the following reasons - `poor health', `it is better for a child to be at home' and `other reasons' Russian Statistics Committee (ROSSTAT). http://www.gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat_main/rosstat/ru/statistics/population/motherhood., which suggest that as more material and financial problems diminish in their importance, the other, more individual and subjective factors like health, inner comfort of a child and others (not pronounced) arise and are not solved yet.

There are also interesting statistics concerning work after childbirth - only 3.7% of respondents answered that women with preschoolers (children less than 7 years old) must work full-time, at the same time, 63.7% women worked full-time before their children went to school. As for part-time job, 37.3% of respondents told that women with preschoolers should better work part-time, while only 6.6% of such women really worked part-time. Lastly, 55.1% of respondents answered that women with preschoolers must not work, but only 9.1% of mothers of preschoolers did not work before their children went to school. This data is from the `Omnibus VCIOM' survey named `Problems of women in a family and in society' conducted in 1994 `Omnibus VCIOM', 1994.

http://sophist.hse.ru/db/oprview.shtml?ID_S=2273&T=m..

The above statistics seemed shocking to me. So many women faced with problems attempting to fulfill their plans, no matter whether they planned to work full-time, part-time or not to work at all before their children went to school. That is why, I strongly believe, a survey is needed in order to understand clearly the main factors, which contribute to the resumption of labor by women after childbirth, as long as constraints that they face with. Then, it will be possible to draw conclusions and suggest some solutions based on statistical analyses. Finally, if more women will be able to fulfill their plans related to work, then all will be more content - women, their families, employers, the government, and the society as a whole.

2. Recent studies

labor economic female

As I outlined earlier, many authors examined the topic of resumption of labor by women after the childbirth. My study began from the book of `Family Economics' by Browning, Chiappori and Weiss, 2011. They noted that participation of women in the labor market increases over time and suggested the reasons of rising participation of married women, among which were higher earnings and increasing length of education. Also, the authors of this book mentioned a very interesting `Rotten Kid Theorem', the core of which is that one of the family may behave as a dictator as long as he or she controls a great part of family resources. This theorem seemed interesting for the survey, as it suggested one more reason for resumption of labor by women after the birth of a child - a desire of being respected by their families or the desire of some kind of financial and inner, personal independency.

The next important study, which I have grasped, was a paper named `Long-term Employment and Earnings of Women in Relation to Employment Behavior Surrounding the First Birth' written by D. Shapiro and F. Mott and published in 1994 in `The Journal of Human Resources'. D. Shapiro and F. Mott used the data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women and then conducted an analysis. The scientists hypothesized in their study that a strong labor force attachment of new mothers must have any real long run implications. The aim of their work was to understand to what extent strong labor force attachment immediately before and after a birth translates into higher wages and better employment perspectives over time. What was new in their study, is that they showed that employment behavior just before and after the first birth was an important predictor of future employment, particularly 5 to 10 years after the first birth. Also, based on data and study, D. Shapiro and F. Mott suggested that it is essential for the government and employers to pay attention to the protection and guarantees of a workplace and wages of women before and after the birth, because this increases labor supply of new mothers and helps women to behave more attached to work, which consequently results in higher wages and better perspectives in the labor market through longer work experience.

The paper, discussed above, is important and useful in the following senses - it shows that social norms that guarantee workplace and earnings of women before and after a birth are of great importance for tying women to the labor market `at the time of maximum conflict between work and the motherhood' (citation from a paper of S. Desai and L. Waite, which I will describe later).

One more influential survey on this topic, is the paper written by Saurel-Cubizolles, Romito, Escriba-Aguir, Lelong, Pons and Ancel `Returning to Work after Childbirth in France, Italy, and Spain'. The authors conducted longitudinal surveys with similar design in three counties, which was valuable as it allowed making comparisons between these countries. There was no such surveys on this theme from the south of Europe, so the study of Saurel-Cubizolles at. all. appeared to be a new word in this field. The authors aimed to find out the percentage of women resuming to work during the first year after the birth of a child and the duration of maternal leave in three countries among those who worked while pregnant. In addition, the aim was to examine the clue factors that contributed to returning to work by women in Spain, France, and Italy. One more value of this study was that the scientists took into account not only the issues related to the labor market, but also to more personal and subjective moments. Today it is obvious that `women have to cope with constraints from their families and do not only consider the logic of their own occupational career', however, at the time of the study, I think, this insight was a kind of new and influential.

In addition, it may be interesting to know about the results of the survey in Italy, Spain, and France. Saurel-Cubizolles at. all. discovered that the percentage of women that resumed work before their child first birthday, was 80% in France and Italy, and about 53% in Spain, and that many new mothers were back to work till the end of the first trimester. As a result of the analyses, the authors asserted that a long leave after childbirth was associated with lower social position and less secure workplace. Thus, as D. Shapiro and F. Mott with their work on long-term women's employment, Saurel-Cubizolles at. all also paid attention of a society to the importance of a social policy aiming at increasing job security. However, Saurel-Cubizolles at. all. extended the assertion that such a social policy may enhance long-run economic well-being to the idea that such a policy may also diminish social inequalities between women and their families.

This paper helped me to formulate the main idea of my study - examining the duration of post-natal leave in Russia on the case of women from Stary Oskol and the main factors contributing to returning to work of women after the childbirth. Also, the study of Saurel-Cubizolles at. all. helped me to consider not only objective factors, related to job, but, in addition, more subjective factors, related to work commitment, family situation, health of a baby.

As the paper of Saurel-Cubizolles at. all., Susan McRae in her `Returning to Work after Childbirth: opportunities and inequalities' also paid attention to the possibility of rising social inequality between women and their families as a result of resuming labor by women after childbirth. Susan McRae hypothesizes that social inequalities may rise as a result of class divisions and labor market differences among women, as main constraints on labor market opportunities after the birth of a child follow from differences in a class position and a position in the labor market, no matter if a woman wanted to stay home with her child or to return to work after childbirth. The study was published in 1993 in `European Sociological Review'. The data was from a national survey of new mothers in Britain.

One of the aims of the study was to pay attention of a society in Britain to the importance of the creation of new forms of childcare provided by a government and employers in order to give possibilities for working mothers, as Britain showed the worst statistics across Europe for public kindergartens and other facilities for working mothers. One of the aims of the study was to show that employers can do much to help women to return to work sooner after childbirth. The results showed that qualifications (education), number of children, women's wage, other income while on maternity leave (childcare allowance or partner's income) or financial need are significant indicators of resumption of labor by women after childbirth. Also, `inadequate public childcare' and `inability to find a job' with `convenient hours or location' were important factors. This study gave me clear understanding that adequate public childcare facilities are very important for women in deciding whether to be at home with a child, or to return to work soon, because adequate public childcare really gives woman possibility to work productively because of understanding that her child is in comfort and safe atmosphere. In addition, time and transport costs are important in deciding whether to resume work after childbirth.

The other study named `Child Care and Women's Return to Work after Childbirth' was written by Klerman and Leibowitz. The authors used data from a national panel survey of young women. Klerman and Leibowitz hypothesized that the presence and help of relatives and lower-cost child care - particularly because of child care subsidies - must be associated with earlier resumption of labor by women after childbirth. The results of the study showed that such factors as help of relatives, length of education, earnings of women and their partners, and the degree of tax treatment were significant and contributed to earlier returning to work. However, Leibowitz in 1974 asserted that females with more schooling showed more labor force commitment than those with less schooling before the birth of their first child, and the reverse was observed after the childbirth. This work gave me an idea to examine the roles of relatives and a level of education in my survey.

Eva Bernhardt from University of Stockholm wrote `Women's Home Attachment at First Birth: the Case of Sweden', which was published in 1986 in `European Journal of Population'. In this paper Eva Bernhardt first gave a definition of `home attachment', which referred to `women who stayed at home after first birth for a period definitely longer than that for which they received economic compensation at roughly the level of their previous wage'. As several other authors, Eva Bernhardt tested the hypothesis that a level of schooling is significant for earlier resumption of labor. Also, she hypothesized that age at first birth and work experience must influence returning to work soon after birth of a child, which I put in my mind while constructing my questionnaire.

At last, I find an interesting and useful a paper named `Women's Employment during Pregnancy and after the First Birth: occupational characteristics and work commitment' written by S. Desai and L. Waite. The authors used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth for the analysis of 3 years in women lives - a year before childbirth of a 1 child and 2 years after. S. Desai and L. Waite in their work paid attention to the phenomenon of work commitment, noting that labor force attachment and employment `do not mean high level of work commitment'. In addition, the authors suggested that women's preference of being employed over being at home is important factor for resuming labor after childbirth. Like Susan McRae, S. Desai and L. Waite also suggested that adequate public childcare, i. e. care about `health, education, and social and emotional development become increasingly important' when new mothers resume their work.

3. Main Body

Aims and hypotheses

After the observing of the influential previous work and studies, I felt like being able to formulate main aims and hypotheses of my study.

The aim of my work includes discovering the main factors of resuming work by women after childbirth in Russian Federation on the example of Stary Oskol city.

Any decision from an economic point of view is a result of comparing of existing and potential benefits and costs. The return-to-work decision of women is not an exception in the sense that women weigh the pros and cons of resuming labor when think about it. My purpose here is to evaluate the main factors that influence a decision of returning to work by women after a birth of a child, i. e. to find out what is important to women after childbirth, what is significant.

In more general sense, the aim of my study is to conduct a survey to be able to get new and relevant information about the topic of returning to work by women after childbirth, and to find and evaluate existing patterns of it.

My hypotheses are that -

o a woman's preferences of employment over homemaking (work vs. home attachment)

o preferences of her family, especially her partner;

o health of a child;

o transport costs

o costs associated with time to work and back home;

o importance of a woman's wage in a family income after a birth of a child (`today's importance')

o and `future importance', i. e. a threat of a loss of a workplace in case of not returning to work in the due time (3 years in our country);

o a presence of relatives able and willing to help with a child while a woman is at work, or an availability of other child daycare (a nanny, public or private kindergarten), and costs associated with child daycare;

o availability of combination of work and breastfeeding

- the above factors influence the decision of women whether to return to work after childbirth, and if yes, then when to return. In the following section I will describe how I compiled a questionnaire in order to address this issues.

Now let me briefly describe the following work. Below, I will describe the survey design, details of the survey and sample characteristics. Then, I will describe dependent and independent variables and statistical methods and tools used in the analysis. After that, description of results, as long as their discussion and conclusions follow. The example of the questionnaire for mothers of two children is presented in Appendix.

4. Survey

For the reason of collecting data for the analysis, I have conducted my own survey. The survey is retrospective, which means that I formed a questionnaire An example of a questionnaire for a mother of two children is translated from Russian to English and presented in the Appendix. so as to ask as more women as I could, whenever they have young children right now, or their children have grown up already, i. e. I used formulations like `Please, describe/evaluate … immediately after the childbirth'.

It took about two months to form a proper questionnaire, and after numerous modifications, the questionnaire was ready. There are three questionnaires for women with one, two, and three children. I have decided to focus on mothers of one, two and three children, because I supposed that generally mothers with more than three children are more home attached, i. e., that by the number of children more than three they present the preference of homemaking over working in the market. At the same time, I know mothers of three, which have been working being in the maternity unit just before the birth of their third child, and have resumed work several months after the childbirth, so they clearly present strong work commitment.

The survey itself took about a month. The time of the survey is April-May of year 2018, that is why the data collected is relevant and new. The sample size has reached 129 observations. The size of the sample was limited by its budget. The survey was based on two private organizations, which kindly provided me with administrative resource. This is the main reason for the choice of the base and the territory of the survey - the possibility to conduct a survey, the possibility to do it in a short period of time, to have a very high response rate, and to cover the respondents with very different characteristics (described below). About 15-20% of the respondents are employees of these two private organizations, which specialize in trade, and the other respondents are women that are customers of these organizations. Among the respondents are women of different age, with different levels of education, of different professions - entrepreneurs, students, employees in other private and public organizations, working women and women that are currently on a post-natal leave. So, different groups of women according to employment and occupation and other characteristics are presented in the sample. What unites the respondents - also, the characteristics of the sample - is that the respondents are women, which currently live in Stary Oskol city, and which gave birth to one, two, or three children. What differs is that the respondents present different social position, they are of different age, differ in the time of first birth, family situation and history, work experience, financial situation, and employment as long as financial and family opportunities and constraints. Thus, it can be said that the sample attemted to be representative at the level of the Stary Oskol region.

Interviews were conducted through filling the questionnaires by respondents. The questionnaires were distributed by me. The respondents filled the questionnaires by hand and gave it back to me. Some questionnaires were sent via email and social networks, filled with a computer or with a mobile phone and then were sent back to me. The response rate was very high, almost 100% because I used a little reward when asking to fill the questionnaire.

Let me now describe the details of the questionnaire.

The questionnaires for mothers of one, two, and three children consisted of 21, 41, and 61 questions respectively. In the questionnaire for mothers of one child, I ask about one and only child, while in the questionnaires for mothers of two and three children, the questionnaires consist of two and three parts respectively - each part for each child. The questionnaire was planned to be anonymous, because I supposed that if it would not be so, then a proportion of questionnaires might be incomplete or even false, as employees of two private organizations might think that employers could read their questionnaires and this might somehow influence their career.

At the start, I supposed to ask only women that were employed at a moment of childbirth. However, after a while, I have changed my plans and modified the questionnaire so as to include those who were not employed at the moment of childbirth too, as I supposed that there might be a great proportion of such women in the sample - especially for a reason of having a baby while studying at a college or a university, and finding a job after a post-natal leave for a number of reasons.

The dependent variable is the dummy variable with three possible outcomes for three groups of women - women who returned to work before the 3^rd birthday of their baby (an `early' return), women who return after that moment and women who were on a post-natal leave at the moment of the survey. I call returning to work before the 3<sup>rd</sup> child's birthday an `early' because generally it is rather hard to get access to a public kindergarten before that date. Perhaps, this is one of the reasons of the fact that returning to work several months after childbirth is generally rare nowadays in our country - in contrast to western countries, where a great proportion of women returned to work within several months even in 80s, according to the previous research. Also, I decided not to divide women more precisely for being on a post-natal leave and to put them in this group even if their post-natal leave is very long at the moment of the survey, because, I think, it is very subjective - what to call a `long post-natal leave', - as we cannot know our future clearly. Perhaps, tomorrow such women will decide to return to work for some reasons even if they are on a post-natal leave for a decade at the time of the survey.

The independent variables are several continuous and discrete dummy variables.

5. Methodology

I use two programs in my study: Excel and Stata.

Before the beginning, I have to state clearly what the expression `return to work' means in my work. As I tried my best to make the sample as representative as I can, there, of course, were women of different professions, with different values and preferences, different financial and family situations. Thus, there are women in my sample who either work for themselves or for an employer, full-time or part-time, at home or at a workplace. So, the return to work in my study means not only returning at a workplace or resuming full-time work, but the resuming of labor after childbirth either full- or part-time, at home of somewhere else, as employees or as entrepreneurs.

Now let me proceed to the description of the methodology.

First, when I gathered all the questionnaires, I formed a table in Excel. After that, I translated all the information from questionnaires into the table, created several dummy variables, and imported the table into the statistical program Stata, which I used as a tool for conducting my statistical analysis.

At the beginning, my decision was to study the last The last post-natal leave in my work means the only post-natal leave of mothers on one child, the second post-natal leave for mothers of two children and the third post-natal leave for mothers of three children. This is the post-natal leave for the last child of a woman at the moment of my survey. post-natal leave of each woman from the sample, because I believed that the first post-natal leave may not be representative in our reality where many woman have an idea first to build a family and to give birth to children and then to build their careers. The first quick analysis of the sample showed that this could be a reasonable assumption, as more women in the sample returned to work earlier after their last post-natal leave, rather than after the first one.

Then I decided to study the first post-natal leave of all women in order to compare the results of the analysis with the results for the last post-natal leave and with the results of the previous studies on the topic.

My hypotheses, as I noted above, were that the return-to-work decision, i. e. the decision concerning the length of a post-natal leave of a woman after childbirth and the main reasons of the returning are influenced not only by work and financial characteristics, but also by other, personal and subjective factors, as long as by an availability of public and private childcare services and by availability of combining of family and work responsibilities. Also, there might be a difference between women who return to work early and women who return to work after a child's 3^rd birthday. In addition, I hypothesized that some factors contributing to the return-to-work decision differ for the first and for the last post-natal leaves.

In order to study not only women who returned to work at the time of the survey, but also women who were on a post-natal leave at the moment of the survey, as this is valuable information too, I decided to run multinomial logistic regressions for the first and the last post-natal leaves. The reason for the use of a multinomial logistic model is the possibility of studying three different groups of women via the discrete dependent variable with three possible outcomes (I used a multinomial probit model too for a comparison, the results are laid out in the chapter titled `Statistical analysis and Results'). At the beginning of my work I tried to run the multiple regression, excluding women on post-natal leave, in order to find out the average length of post-natal leave for women with different characteristics and to examine which factors influence on the length of post-natal leave. However, I understood that, if I exclude women on a post-natal leave (because the type of a dependent variable in this model does not allow studying them), the results of such analysis cannot be spread on these women (this would be censored data).

Summary statistics, the statistical analysis and the results follow.

6. Summary statistics

The last post-natal leave

The table below presents the results of the simple initial analysis from Stata, showing the number of observations of different subgroups of women, including the total number for each subgroup and the numbers of women for the concrete subgroup, who returned early, who returned after 3 years on a post-natal leave and those on a post-natal leave at the time of the survey:

Table 6. Summary statistics for women who returned to work (further RTW) early, those who returned to work after the 3^rd child's birthday and those who did not return to work at the time of the survey. The last post-natal leave (further PNL) of mothers of one, two and three children.

There are 129 observations in the sample. Among them are 61 women who returned to work early (47%), 48 women who resumed labor after 3 years on the last-post-natal leave (37%) and 20 women who were on the post-natal leave at the moment of the survey (16%).

There are 61% of mothers of one child and 39% of mothers of two or three children in the sample. Among mothers of one child, 49% returned early, 30% resumed labor after 3 years on a post-natal leave and 21% were on a post-natal leave at the time of the study. For mother of two or three children the corresponding proportions are - 44% of early returns, 48% returned after 3 years and 8% of such mothers were on a post-natal leave. Thus, it seems that the number of children in a family matters at first glance.

64% of women in the sample were employed at childbirth, while 36% of women were not employed at that moment. 57% of employed versus 30% of not employed women returned to work early, indicating that the fact of employment at childbirth may be rather important for an early return to work.

24% of women in the sample have studied at the moment of childbirth. Almost equal proportins of women who studied at childbirth and those who did not study resumed labor before the 3^rd birthday of their child - 45% versus 48%.

91% of women had work experience at childbirth. A great difference appeared to be between the groups of women who returned early: 50% of women with some work experience resumed labor early versus 18% of women who had no work experience at childbirth. I suppose, that work experience is among the important factors, which may influence a decision to return to work early.

Only 34% of women in the sample declared that their return-to-work decision was influenced by social norms about the length of a post-natal leave. 70% of such women returned early, in contrast to 35% of early returns by women who declared no influence of social norms on their decision. Thus, social norms may be among the clue factors too, just as work experience and employment at the moment of childbirth.

52% of women declared more work commitment. 52% of more work committed respondents returned early versus 42% of women who declared less work commitment. A difference between these groups is not great for those who returned after 3 years on a post-natal leave.

73% of the respondents answered that their partner has a positive attitude to the possibility of a long post-natal leave, while 27% answered that their partner is not excited by this possibility. 57% of women whose partner has relatively negative attitude to a long post-natal leave returned early, in contrast to 44% of women with a more `positive' partner. As long as the difference is noticeable, an attitude of a partner might be an important factor.

51% of women, who declared a good state of their child's health on average before their resumption of labor, returned early in contrast to 41% of women, whose child was ill relatively more often (or who thought in such a manner).

88% of the respondents answered that there was a financial need (either real or they wanted for a family to afford more) when they thought about returning to work. 53% of such women returned early and 33% resumed labor after 3 years on a post-natal leave, in contrast to 6% and 69% of women who declared no need in their salary for a family, respectively. Thus, the factor of need in woman's wage for a family might one of the most important and influential (which I will test further in the chapter dedicated to the statistical analysis via the multinomial logit model).

As Stary Oskol is not a big city, it is not surprisingly that 78% of the respondents answered that their work was next to their home (or they worked at home). A difference between those who worked far and those who worked near after childbirth was approximately similar for women who resumed labor before a child's 3^rd birthday. The same is true for the factors indicating financial costs on way to work and back home, in contrast to a woman's wage.

86% of women declared that their family had access to a public kindergarten. At the same time there were only 33% of the women who declared an availability of a private kindergarten and 28% of those who had a possibility to hire a nanny for a child, which is logical considering the percentage of women who declared a need of their salary in a family income. 52% of the respondents who had no possibility to use private childcare (a private kindergarten) resumed labor early, in contrast to 38% of women who had such a possibility, which is surprisingly, as I hypothesized that an availability of private childcare as an alternative childcare system may help women to resume labor earlier.

66% of women stated that they had a possibility of a childcare by relatives. 53% of women who had such a possibility returned to work early versus 38% of women who resumed work early but had no available relatives' childcare.

There is 6% of women who finished school, 42% of college entrants, 13% of women who did not finished university and 39% of women with finished university level of education. There is a difference between the various educational groups, however, there is little difference between the proportions of women with different educational status who returned early.