Trabalho e maternidade na Europa, condições de trabalho e políticas públicas

Our aim is to investigate what women's attitude toward motherhood and employment will be as they become aware of how a child will affect their working conditions and job perspectives;and to measure the positive or negative effects that public policies will have over their decisions. We will present some results related to the cost of children in terms of jobs and the effectiveness of public policies. The first part is dedicated to the estimates of specific effects of motherhood over the participation in the labor market and how long they last. The second Part refers to public policies implemented in 15 European countries to support the family model in which both spouses work. Such comparison is based on the construction of compatible indicators that summarize the information from an exhaustive set of quantitative and qualitative data on three types of public intervention: educational and child care services, maternity leaves and direct aid provided to families.