Does Paid Maternity Leave Affect Infant Development and Second‐Birth Intentions?

• Author: Eunjoo Jung,Woosang Hwang
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12214
• Published date: 01 October 2016
• Date: 01 October 2016

W H  E J Syracuse University

Does Paid Maternity Leave Affect Infant

Development and Second-Birth Intentions?

Given the economic implications of a low-

fertility rate, many countries have imple-

mented paid maternity leave to promote births.

However, the efcacy of this policy is mostly

unknown. We examined whether paid maternity

leave in South Korea, which has a fertility

rate among the lowest in the world, is directly

related to infant development and employed

mothers’ second-birth intentions, and indirectly

associated with these outcomes via parent-

ing stress. Participants included 315 married

and employed Korean mothers in the months

after giving birth to their rst child. Paid

maternity leave was benecial for infant devel-

opment but was not a solution for promoting

second-birth intentions among employed moth-

ers in Korea. Parenting stress adversely affected

both infant development and employed mothers’

second-birth intentions, and it may therefore

need to be considered as work–family policies,

fertility issues, and infant development in fam-

ilies are addressed. Implications considering

cultural and familial contexts are discussed.

Low fertility rates and population decline are

demographic phenomena experienced by most

industrialized countries. In 2011, the mean total

fertility rate—dened as “the total number of

children that would be born to each woman if

Department of Human Development and Family Science,

144 White Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244 (hwoosang@syr.edu).

Key Words: Infant development, paid maternity leave,

parenting stress, second-birth intentions, South Korea,

work–family policy.

she were to live to the end of her child-bearing

years and give birth to children in agreement

with the prevailing age-specic fertility rates”

(Organisation for Economic Cooperation and

Development [OECD], 2014, p. 16)—in OECD

countries was 1.7, which is below the replace-

ment level of 2.1 children per couple (OECD,

2014). Population decline leads to a drop in the

working population as well as an aging of the

population, both of which threaten sustainable

economic development (d’Addio & d’Ercole,

2005). Given the importance of this issue,

governments of many industrialized countries

have implemented work–family policies, such

as leave entitlements, child-care provisions,

nancial transfer, and paid maternity leave, to

promote fertility among employed women and

children’s well-being (Gauthier, 2007).

Researchers in the West have shown that

paid maternity leave, among other work–family

policies, is effective both for increasing the

fertility rate among working women and for

improving children’s well-being (Bianchi &

Milkie, 2010; Feldman, Sussman, & Zigler,

2004). However, these issues have received less

attention in Asian countries such as Hong Kong,

Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, which have

some of the world’s lowest fertility rates. The

fertility rate in South Korea (Korea hereafter)

was among the lowest in the world in the early

2000s, with a rate as low as 1.1 (OECD, 2014).

Work–family policies in Korea had been over-

shadowed by a strong drive for economic growth

and received little attention from the govern-

ment until the early 2000s. Since then, however,

the paradigm of work–family policies in Korea

562 Family Relations 65 (October 2016): 562–575

DOI:10.1111/fare.12214