Maternity rights and mothers' employment decisions
by Ivana La Valle, Elizabeth Clery and Mari Carmen Huerta
In 2003, both the level and length of Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) and Maternity Allowance (MA) were increased. UK legislation has also considerably improved access to family-friendly arrangements, including paid paternity and adoption leave, unpaid emergency and parental leave and the right to request flexible working arrangements. The report presents take-up of these maternity entitlements and family-friendly arrangements and explores how they affect the mothers' employment trajectories after child birth. It provides the opportunity to consider how the policy changes on maternity rights and maternity benefits, introduced in April 2003, might have affected mothers' employment decisions after childbirth.
This study was carried out by the National Centre for Social Research and involved face-to-face interviews (conducted between February and May 2007) of just under 2,000 mothers whose children were aged between 12 and 18 months and who had worked at some point in the 12 months before the baby's birth. The survey achieved a 70 per cent response rate.
June 2008 230 pages 297x210mm
ISBN 978 1 84712 377 0
(2.4MB)