Employment, family and parental leave in Spain: A longitudinal and intersectional analysis
Abstract
How mothers reconcile work and family life varies significantly between individuals, as does their access to policies on maternity leave. This article takes a longitudinal and intersectional approach to analyse for the first-time the reconciliation of careers and family life in Spain. It uses retrospective data from the 2018 Fertility Survey to undertake a multichannel sequence analysis for mothers aged 18-55, according to level of education and country of birth. The results show that inequalities in the “motherhood penalty” are striking across different intersectional groups and are perpetuated to a lesser extent among younger cohorts. While pre-maternity career trajectory is key to maintaining a continuous pattern of work-life balance, there is a large group of mothers who enter employment after long breaks, when their children are older. Access to maternity leave is widespread, but access to reduced working hours is not.
Keywords
motherhood, work-life-balance, multichannel sequence analysis, parental leave, immigrant mothersReferences
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Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación
Grant numbers PID2020-119339GB-C21
Copyright (c) 2025 Victoria Bogino Larrambebere, Teresa Jurado-Guerrero
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