Maternity Leave And Women's Mental Health

Abstract

The Wisconsin Maternity Leave and Health Study addresses an important policy issue, parental leave, by investigating the work status, maternity leave, and mental health of 570 women. In the longitudinal design, the women, all of whom were living with a husband or partner, were interviewed during the fifth month of pregnancy, 1 month postpartum, and 4 months postpartum. At 4 months postpartum, full‐time workers, part‐time workers, and homemakers did not differ in depression or anger, but full‐time workers showed elevated anxiety compared with the other two groups. In multiple regression analyses, length of leave interacted significantly with marital concerns when predicting depression; women who took a short leave (6 weeks or less) and were high on marital concerns had the highest depression scores. Short maternity leave can be conceptualized as a risk factor that, when combined with other risk factors such as marital concerns, places women at greater risk for depression.

Length of maternity leave and health of mother and child – a review

“…No association was found between the length of maternity leave and the level of depressive symptoms and mental health respectively, when comparing women with maternity leaves of 6 versus 6-8 weeks (Chatterji & Markowitz 2004), and when comparing women with leaves below 9 versus 9-24 weeks (Gjerdingen & Chaloner 1994). Furthermore there was no association in women, who were clinically depressed ((CES-D >16) (Chatterji & Markowitz 2004)) and no association with anxiety (Hyde et al 1995). Associations were not observed for further health indicators, such as the number of outpatient physician or clinic visits in the fi rst six months after childbirth (Chatterji & Markowitz 2004).…”

“…1995) association seen only in women with low work rewards or with marital concerns). Among women with low work rewards, lower levels of anger were observed if maternity leave lasted 12 weeks in comparison to a length of less than 6 weeks (Hyde et al 1995). General mental health (depression, anxiety, general positive affect, life satisfaction) at 7 and 9-12 months after childbirth was improved in women with maternity leaves beyond 15 weeks and 24 weeks respectively, when compared to leaves of below 9 weeks (McGovern et al 1997;Gjerdingen & Chaloner 1994).…”

“…Table 1 compiles methods and results of 6 studies that investigated the association of maternity leave with maternal health. Several studies show a positive association between the length of maternity leave and mental health: fewer depressive symptoms were observed in mothers entitled to 8 and 12 weeks leave after childbirth, than in women entitled to less than 6 weeks ( (Chatterji & Markowitz 2004;Hyde at al. 1995) association seen only in women with low work rewards or with marital concerns).…”

“…Recruitment of women was done by newspaper advertisement (Killien et al 2001), using birth certifi cates (McGovern et al 1997), using hospital records (Hyde et al 1995;Gjerdingen & Chaloner 1994;Romito et al 1994;Clark et al 1997), or using a continental mail panel (Roe et al 1999). For some papers, study populations were recruited from ongoing studies (Chatterji & Markowitz 2004;Visness & Kennedy 1997) (Hyde et al 1995: Clark et al 1997; Infant Feeding Practices Study IFPS (Roe et al 1999); Arthur et al (2003), Killien et al (2001)). Study populations mostly were not representative of the general female population.…”

Early Risk Factors for Alcohol Use Across High School and Its Covariation With Deviant Friends

“…Expectant parents were required to be older than age 18 years, cohabiting, and-because of the original focus on pre-and postnatal work and family experiences-employed or a full-time homemaker. Ten families were subsequently excluded because of miscarriages, yielding an original sample of 560 (Hyde et al, 1995). Current analyses focused on 374 adolescents (191 girls, 183 boys) who reported on alcohol use at least twice (i.e., in Grades 9 and/or 10, and Grades 11 and/or 12).…”