Work Trajectories of High-Resource Multi-Child Mothers

Abstract

The period of maternity leave for multi-child mothers is generally longer than for mothers with a smaller number of children, and securing a job after taking a break, in conjunction with an increased volume of family responsibilities, is more difficult. When high-resource multi-child mothers return to the labor market, they expect not only a “motherhood penalty”, but also with a high probability a “penalty” for being overeducated. Their solution for the conflict between “motherhood” and “work” most often involves either a complete refusal to be employed, or finding more flexible options in the field of non-typical work, which are often less demanding in terms of qualification level and consequently result in lower income. Based on a series of in-depth interviews conducted by the author in Moscow and Voronezh with high-resource multi-child parents, including a list of questions about the working trajectories of women and also a number of questions about life practices, it is shown that the reverse side of the full or partial departure from the labor market of multi-child mothers is intensive parenting and setting a high standard for children’s education, including a scrupulous selection of educational institutions and a large amount of additional classes. Thus, the complete or partial loss of high-resource women as workers for the labor market is accompanied by a forthcoming significant non-economic effect, since society receives active translators of human capital to a new generation.

Keywords

• multi-child mothers
• labor market
• work trajectories
• intensive parenting
• human capital