Skip to content
Menu
WorkLife
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
WorkLife

Do family-friendly policies lead to long-term wellbeing?

Posted on April 6, 2023April 13, 2023 by Chris Garrington

France has long been known as a country where working parents are supported, with good family benefits and leave entitlements. But how good is the mental health of women who had full-time careers while bringing up a family in France? In this blog, Constance Beaufils of the National Institute for Demographic Studies in Paris describes new research which looks at how French women feel later in life and which finds these policies seem to favour a sense of wellbeing.

Research in many countries has shown single mothers and those whose careers are interrupted by child-rearing can suffer from poor wellbeing later in life. So what is the situation in France, where female employment rates have long been high and where government policies have generally been thought to be generous in their support of families? Have those policies helped protect the mental health of French women in later life?

We set out to examine whether French women who worked while bringing up their children fared better than others – and we found that indeed, most groups of full-time working mothers did have a better sense of wellbeing than those whose working lives were interrupted by children. There was one exception – women who had their children around the age of 24, the average age of entry to motherhood for those generations, reported heightened anxiety and a lack of support.

Like most Western countries, France has experienced massive changes in recent decades, with divorce, separations and lone parenthood increasingly common. At the same time the labour market has favoured flexibility and therefore employment security has declined. 

Generous benefits

But France stood out throughout those decades as a country where family benefits were generous.  In 2009 the country had the highest spending in the OECD on family benefits, cash payments, and services and tax breaks for families. While the OECD average stood at 2.9 per cent, in France the level was 3.8 per cent.  In 2014 it was reported that France spent  1.1% of GDP on early education services while the OECD average stood at 0.7% of GDP. 

Key policies included the right to parental leave for employees who have been in their job at least a year, lasting until their child is three. As this is an is an individual entitlement it enables both mother and father to take leave if they wish.  A childcare allowance, Complément de libre choix d’activité (CLCA), was available to all families who met the eligibility conditions regardless of whether they took parental leave. This was a flat-rate payment of 572.81 euros per month, reduced for those who worked part time. Additionally, family allowances formed a cornerstone of family policy, with parents automatically receiving additional cash benefits from the birth of their second dependent child until that child reached the age of 20.

We used data from the Health and Occupational Trajectories (Santé  et Itinéraire Professionnel,

SIP) survey of people aged 20-74 in 2006 to look more closely at the health and wellbeing of older women. Our sample consisted of women aged between 50 and 78 in 2010 – almost 3000 in total with an average age of 62, and representative of the wider French population in that age group.

For each year of the women’s lives from 18 to 50 we placed them in one of five employment statuses: full-time employed, part-time employed, unemployed, non-employed, or still studying. We also logged whether at each stage they had no children, at least one child under three or at least one child under 16, and whether they were single or in a partnership.

We found half the women in our study mostly worked full-time without a break between the ages of 18 and 50. A quarter worked part time or had long breaks in their working lives, while one in five left work and remained largely outside the labour market throughout their adult lives. 

The average age for the birth of a first child was 24 and one in five had a first child around this age, while a further fifth had their first child later. One third had a first child before the age of 24, and most were in couples – just one in eight mothers were mostly single between the ages of 18 and 50.

We looked at three different types of wellbeing by which to judge the effects of being a working mother: physical health and disability; mental health and wellbeing; and social wellbeing including whether they felt supported at home and career satisfaction. 

We took into account past health problems and variations in age among our sample.

Working and thriving

Overall, we found women who had children later and who remained in full-time work had the highest levels of wellbeing across all three categories, along with those who remained childless. Those who left work, had long breaks or went back part time had lower wellbeing scores. 

There was one group which appeared to buck the trend: women who remained in full-time work but had a first child around the average age reported more anxiety symptoms, bad perceived health and lack of social support than the other full-time groups. Notably, these women spent more time with children who had care needs. One explanation for their lower wellbeing is that they experienced work-family tensions for longer than other employed mothers. Moreover, those tensions may have happened at a critical point in their career. 

Another interesting finding was that in this mid-range age group, those who worked part time did not report worse mental health, though they did report worse social support, lower career satisfaction and more physical disabilities. None of the women seemed to benefit particularly from working fewer hours.

Even lone mothers who were in full-time work did not have worse wellbeing than others in their age group, once their risk of having to manage on less money was accounted for.

We concluded that France’s family-friendly policies did indeed protect female workers from the strain of juggling work and child-rearing, when compared to other countries – though we were not able to show this conclusively by comparing them with women in other systems. French women seemed to embrace the opportunities this offered them to enhance their careers by working full time. 

However, those policies did not completely ease the strain for those who had long periods of childcare, and we could see that lone mothers suffered social and economic issues which led to poorer wellbeing. Some room remained for improving policy to protect mothers, particularly those who faced financial issues and other stresses.

And while both fertility and women’s employment remained high in France, tensions still existed – the careers of fathers were still much more stable than those of mothers, with women who had three or more children tending to have longer periods out of employment despite the country’s egalitarian policies. 

Women’s Employment–Family Trajectories and Well-Being in Later Life: Evidence From France, by Constance Beaufils, Anna Barbuscia and Emmanuelle Cambois, is published in the Journal of Aging and Health,

Related

Career Childcare Depression Employment Family Gender Health Mental health Mothers Stress Well-being Work
Journal article

Search

  • Do family-friendly policies lead to long-term wellbeing?
  • Pandemic parents: who was most affected?
  • Health and place: How levelling up health can keep older workers working
  • Unsocial working hours: are these compatible for parents and families?
  • Let’s be fair! The importance of a balanced approach as we extend working lives

Follow our blog

Enter email

Topics

1946 Birth Cohort 1958 Birth Cohort Ageing Alcohol BMI Body fat British Household Panel Survey Career Census Childcare Cholesterol C Reactive Protein Depression Diabetes Disability Employment English Longitudinal Study of Ageing Family Fathers Fibrinogen Flexible working Gender Health Heart Disease Inflammation Inflammatory markers Jobseekers Mental health Mothers Occupational health ONS Longitudinal Study Pension Recession Retirement Sickness Smoking State Pension Age Stress Teen Parent UKHLS Understanding Society Unemployment Well-being Whitehall Study Work

Share

Share on print
Print
Share on email
Email
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on google
Google
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on linkedin
Linkedin
Share on pinterest
Pinterest
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Do family-friendly policies lead to long-term wellbeing?
  • Pandemic parents: who was most affected?
  • Health and place: How levelling up health can keep older workers working
  • Unsocial working hours: are these compatible for parents and families?
  • Let’s be fair! The importance of a balanced approach as we extend working lives
April 2023
M T W T F S S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
« Jan    

Archives

  • April 2023
  • January 2023
  • November 2022
  • July 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • November 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • January 2021
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • April 2020
  • February 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016

Latest posts

  • Do family-friendly policies lead to long-term wellbeing?
  • Pandemic parents: who was most affected?
  • Health and place: How levelling up health can keep older workers working
  • Unsocial working hours: are these compatible for parents and families?
  • Let’s be fair! The importance of a balanced approach as we extend working lives

Tags

1946 Birth Cohort 1958 Birth Cohort Ageing Alcohol BMI Body fat British Household Panel Survey Career Census Childcare Cholesterol C Reactive Protein Depression Diabetes Disability Employment English Longitudinal Study of Ageing Family Fathers Fibrinogen Flexible working Gender Health Heart Disease Inflammation Inflammatory markers Jobseekers Mental health Mothers Occupational health ONS Longitudinal Study Pension Recession Retirement Sickness Smoking State Pension Age Stress Teen Parent UKHLS Understanding Society Unemployment Well-being Whitehall Study Work
©2023 WorkLife | Powered by WordPress & Superb Themes