One of the aims of the Minimise Project is to help build a pro-life society, where the demand for abortion is far lower than where it is at present. As part of this, we try to highlight policies that may reduce the abortion rate. Parental leave is a great example of a policy that makes society more child- and family-friendly, and we have an Explainer post that describes the various types of leave available to parents in Ireland.

In this post, I’d like to go beyond describing the leave that is available to parents in Ireland, and examine the evidence behind parental and family leave. Is it actually a good thing? Does it make a difference for children, or for parents? Might it reduce abortion rates?

Like many socio-economic questions, it is hard to isolate the impact of something like maternity or paternity leave on outcomes for parents and children. This is because families that avail of maternity and paternity leave are often different from families that don’t, so we cannot simply compare families that availed of maternity leave to those that did not. First of all, in order to qualify for maternity, paternity or parents’ leave, you need to be in employment – a parent who does not have sufficient PRSI contributions in the year prior to the baby’s birth will not be able to avail of leave. Such a parent may be unemployed and seeking employment, or they may be temporarily or permanently out of the workforce – perhaps they have a disability, are in education or training, or are engaged in home duties. Furthermore, some parents may not take any or all of the leave they are entitled to. These parents may be self-employed, and unable to find a replacement to allow them to go on leave, they may be unable to afford to live off maternity or paternity benefit (for an extended period or at all), or they may simply prefer to stay at work rather than take time off. All of these parents, and their families, are qualitatively different from parents who are in a position to take leave, so we cannot tell whether any difference in outcomes is driven by taking maternity leave, or by some other difference between the families.

The good news is that researchers have managed to exploit natural experiments to determine the impact of parental leave (for more on sample selection bias and natural experiments, check out this previous post). The main way researchers have done this is by exploiting changes in policy, rather than changes in parental choices: researchers look at a country that introduced or extended parental leave of some type. Let’s say that a country increased maternity leave by four months for babies born on or after the 1st of January. By comparing the outcomes of babies born just before the extension with babies born just after, we can be pretty confident that we are comparing two groups of babies that are alike in every way except for the duration of maternity leave available to their mothers. In this way, we can isolate the impact of maternity leave.

In a nutshell: maternity leave is good for babies! Introducing family leave in the USA led to higher birth weights, lower rates of prematurity and lower infant mortality, perhaps because mothers took leave towards the end of their pregnancies. Leave entitlements of shorter durations also improve women’s job continuity (leave of greater than one year has a negative impact on women’s careers). Even better, some benefits of maternity leave seem to last into adulthood, with maternity leave extensions in Norway linked to lower drop-out rates from secondary school and higher earnings at age 30. While paternity leave is a much more recent development, this also has impacts – paternity leave in California led to higher leave-taking by fathers, especially first-time fathers, while paternity leave in Norway led to a large increase in the percentage of fathers taking leave, a small decrease in fathers’ long-term earnings (perhaps reflecting greater involvement with their family), and, somewhat amazingly, a more even distribution of household chores. Data from Sweden, however, suggests that paternity leave led to an increase in marital dissolution, with no impact seen on care-giving by fathers to their sick children.

From a pro-life perspective, we are particularly interested in whether parental leave leads to decreased abortions. First off, there is no study that examines this directly, but we do have some studies that exploit differences in leave policies to examine changes in birth rates. Data from Germany suggests that a substantial expansion in maternity entitlements did lead to an increase in birth rates, particularly amongst high-income women. Data from Spain, however, suggest that a mere two weeks of paternity leave actually reduced fertility rates.

The studies above suggest that at a minimum, parental leave is good for babies’ health, good for long run outcomes like education and earning potential, and has mostly positive but perhaps some negative impacts for parents. The impacts on abortion can only be inferred – if the fertility rates from Germany and Spain are anything to go by, maternity leave is probably more important than paternity leave for reducing abortion. Altogether, however, it seems there is evidence that parental leave is, as one would expect, a pro-family and pro-life policy.

Ireland is fortunate to have good maternity and parental leave policies and benefits. Pro-life advocates should encourage parents to avail of these benefits, particularly newer types of leave such as parents’ leave, and should also encourage employers to put strong maternity and family leave polices in place to complement the legal entitlements that their employees have.

Muireann