Resumption of Labor After the Birth of a Child

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.