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Converging mothers' employment trajectories between East and West Germany? A focus on the 2008‐childcare‐reform

October 2024
Journal of Marriage and Family

DOI:10.1111/jomf.13040

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Authors:

Sophia Fauser

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Emanuela Struffolino

University of Milan

Asaf Levanon

University of Haifa

Objective Aiming to generate evidence on how contextual conditions shape individuals' opportunities and constraints and, ultimately, life courses, we focus on a period of childcare expansion in reunified Germany. We investigate differences in employment trajectories around mothers' first childbirths to identify potential East–West convergence. Background During Germany's division (1949–1990), universal public childcare and female full‐time employment were the norm in East Germany, while the male breadwinner model was dominant in the West. These differences, although declining, persisted even decades after reunification. In 2008, a reform aimed at expanding childcare availability to facilitate mothers' employment throughout the country. Methods We measure East–West differences in employment trajectories around childbirth pre‐ (1990–2007) and post‐reform (2008–2021) in terms of timing, order, and duration of events over time. We use data on 359 East and 986 West German first‐time‐mothers from the German Socio‐Economic Panel and sequence analysis tools. Results Before the reform, employment trajectories between East and West German mothers differed both in timing and duration of employment states. After the reform, these differences decreased, showing a general convergence in the prevalence of post‐birth part‐time employment. Nonetheless, longer maternity leave is still more prevalent among West German mothers, while East German mothers are more likely to maintain full‐time jobs. Conclusion Our findings show how policy settings and reforms shape life courses in a context‐dependent fashion. They illustrate the importance of a methodological approach that focuses on process outcomes and supports a theoretical perspective that highlights how historical time and place shape life courses.

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ARTICLE

Converging mothers’employment trajectories between

East and West Germany? A focus on the

2008-childcare-reform

Sophia Fauser

| Emanuela Struffolino

| Asaf Levanon

Department of Social Sciences, Humboldt-

Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Department of Social and Political Sciences,

University of Milan, Milan, Italy

Department of Sociology, University of

Haifa, Haifa, Israel

Correspondence

Sophia Fauser, Department of Social Sciences,

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den

Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany.

Email: sophia.fauser@hu-berlin.de

Funding information

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Grant/

Award Number: 492434941

Edited by: Liana Sayer

Abstract

Objective: Aiming to generate evidence on how contextual

conditions shape individuals’opportunities and constraints

and, ultimately, life courses, we focus on a period of

childcare expansion in reunified Germany. We investigate

differences in employment trajectories around mothers’

first childbirths to identify potential East–West

convergence.

Background: During Germany’s division (1949–1990), uni-

versal public childcare and female full-time employment

were the norm in East Germany, while the male breadwin-

ner model was dominant in the West. These differences,

although declining, persisted even decades after

reunification. In 2008, a reform aimed at expanding

childcare availability to facilitate mothers’employment

throughout the country.

Methods: We measure East–West differences in employ-

ment trajectories around childbirth pre- (1990–2007) and

post-reform (2008–2021) in terms of timing, order, and

duration of events over time. We use data on 359 East and

986 West German first-time-mothers from the German

Socio-Economic Panel and sequence analysis tools.

Results: Before the reform, employment trajectories

between East and West German mothers differed both in

timing and duration of employment states. After the

reform, these differences decreased, showing a general con-

vergence in the prevalence of post-birth part-time employ-

ment. Nonetheless, longer maternity leave is still more

prevalent among West German mothers, while East Ger-

man mothers are more likely to maintain full-time jobs.

Received: 18 December 2023 Accepted: 6 September 2024

DOI: 10.1111/jomf.13040

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Relations.

J. Marriage Fam. 2024;1–24. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jomf 1

Conclusion: Our findings show how policy settings and

reforms shape life courses in a context-dependent fashion.

They illustrate the importance of a methodological

approach that focuses on process outcomes and supports a

theoretical perspective that highlights how historical time

and place shape life courses.

KEYWORDS

child care, employment, longitudinal research, mothers

INTRODUCTION

It is well established that family and working lives, as well as their interrelations, unfold differ-

ently across time and place, leading to variations across birth cohorts and regions (Elder, 1974,

1994). Contextual conditions shape individuals’opportunities and constraints (Leisering, 2003):

among the most consequential for family and working life-courses are the labor market struc-

ture, gender norms, and welfare state institutions such as family policies and social protection

laws (Fasang et al., 2024).

When considering the contextual conditions that facilitate or rather hinder women’s and

specifically mothers’employment, universal early childhood education and care (ECEC) is

widely debated as a family policy that eases the reconciliation of family and working life (Brady

et al., 2020; Scherer & Pavolini, 2023). In 2002, the European Council established the Barcelona

targets on childcare, calling for increases in ECEC provision. These recommendations aimed at

enhancing gender equality in employment by promoting defamilizing policies to lift some of the

care responsibilities from women’s shoulders and to free up underutilized labor market poten-

tial (European Commission, 2022). Recognizing the need to support women’s labor market par-

ticipation after childbirth, many countries have subsequently increased spending on ECEC in

recent years (OECD, 2024). Ultimately, these reforms addressed the need to increase financial

independence at the individual level, while combating the shrinking of the workforce in aging

societies at the societal level, a demographic challenge that many European countries face

(European Commission, 2020). Indeed, ECEC has been found to be consequential in decreasing

inequality at the societal level and improving children’s development and life chances

(Schmutz, 2024).

Fully understanding the implications of these childcare reforms is essential for researchers,

policymakers, and families alike. While the aim of an extension of ECEC is usually clear, stud-

ies show that effects vary in size across and within countries (Morrissey, 2017) and are moder-

ated by other macro-level characteristics, such as the level of earnings inequality (Hook &

Paek, 2020) and the cultural context (Fervers & Kurowska, 2022). Some studies also argue that

there might be unintended effects of an extension of public childcare, which are in line with a

“Matthew effect,”showing that mainly mothers from already more privileged households bene-

fit (Van Lancker, 2013).

Following the Barcelona targets, the German government implemented a widespread exten-

sion of public childcare provision for under-threes in 2008 (Kinderförderungsgesetzt

[KiFöG], 2018). The ECEC reform aimed at closing the pronounced regional gap in childcare

availability (Schober, 2020), which is unique to Germany due to its history of being divided into

two distinct national states and hence welfare regimes after the end of World War II in 1945.

The two welfare regimes, which existed until reunification in 1990, differed not only in their

availability of public childcare but also in their dominant family arrangement: the male bread-

winner/female homemaker model was the norm in the former Federal Republic of Germany

(FRG, West Germany) and the dual earner model was the norm in the former German

2JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

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Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) (Huinink & Mayer, 1995; Rosenfeld et al., 2004).

For the remainder of this paper and for simplicity’s sake, we will refer to East Germany and

West Germany as parts of reunified Germany that correspond to the former GDR and FRG.

With this childcare reform and historical regional variation in childcare availability,

Germany offers an ideal set-up to investigate how differences in policy settings shape employ-

ment decisions of mothers across place and time. Specifically, we ask if the ECEC reform

reduced differences in mothers’employment behavior across East and West Germany. With

this approach, we follow studies that investigate differences in family and employment trajecto-

ries across countries (i.e., place) (Aisenbrey & Fasang, 2017; Möhring, 2016) and birth cohorts

(i.e., time) (Cabello-Hutt, 2020; Fauser & Kim, 2023), but relate our findings to one specific

policy change.

Previous research showed that, in German regions with higher childcare provision, female

labor force participation rates were higher (Neuberger et al., 2022), that mothers were more

likely to be employed (mostly part-time) after giving birth (Müller & Wrohlich, 2020;

Zimmert, 2023), and that mothers’employment interruptions were shorter (Zoch &

Hondralis, 2017). Additionally, most studies found that the effects were more pronounced in

West Germany. These studies all adopted, however, a static approach to measuring mothers’

labor market behavior at one specific time. Instead, we build on a stream of literature that

focuses on longitudinal dynamics by adopting a life-course approach (Giele & Elder, 1998)to

show differences in employment trajectories across the life course between East and West Ger-

man women (Liao & Fasang, 2021; Nutz & Lersch, 2021; Simonson et al., 2011). These studies

adopted an analytical perspective that conceptualized outcomes not as something measured at

a specific point-in-time, for example the probability of being employed in a full-time job

10 years after exiting education, but rather as “process outcomes”(Abbott, 2005) accounting

for the longitudinal configuration of employment trajectories. Specifically, these studies identi-

fied a stronger labor market attachment of East German women over the adult life-course and

a longer-term inactivity for a substantial share of West German women. This was especially the

case for older cohorts, while there were some indications of convergence for younger cohorts in

the two areas.

However, a systematic comparison between labor market trajectories around childbirth in

East and West Germany against the scenario of family policy changes is still missing from the

literature. A dynamic and longer-term perspective on the configuration of the process of labor

market participation around childbirth is crucial, especially because mothers with young chil-

dren usually have rather volatile careers (Cabello-Hutt, 2020). This feature can be captured

only by looking at the process of labor market participation operationalized by the employment

trajectory. Further, the type of labor market attachment in terms, for example, of engagement

in part-time versus full-time work after giving birth and the length of the periods spent in each

work-arrangement is particularly important for mothers’longer-term career development and

earnings prospects (Hsu, 2021), as well as pension income (Rowold et al., 2024).

We therefore build on these streams of literature by extending the life-course approach to

the case of mothers’employment around childbirth and by leveraging the idea that welfare state

policies shape the set of opportunities and constraints within which individuals’life courses

unfold (Leisering, 2003; Mayer & Müller, 1986). Life courses are conceptualized as “sequence

[s] of socially defined events and roles that the individual enacts over time”(Giele &

Elder, 1998: 22). The timing of certain transitions (e.g., returning from maternity leave to

employment when the child is at a certain age) or the timing of certain events (e.g., inactivity or

full-time work when the child is at a certain age), the order of events (e.g., working full-time

before maternity leave and part-time following maternity leave), and their duration (i.e., long

or short maternity leave after childbirth) determines differences between individual life courses.

Against this background, we ask the following research questions: First, what is the preva-

lence of different labor force states around first childbirth before and after the reform in East

A FOCUS ON THE 2008 CHILDCARE REFORM 3

and West Germany? For this research question, we distinguish several working (i.e., full-time,

part-time, or marginal employment) and non-working (e.g., maternity leave, unemployment,

education/training) states. In the following, we will use the term “employment states”to refer to

these working/non-working states and the term “employment trajectories”to refer to the longi-

tudinal representation of employment states. The second research question asks if East–West

differences in terms of timing, order, and duration of events in mothers’longitudinal employ-

ment trajectories around first childbirth are significant pre- and post-reform, and what states

are indicative of East–West differences.

We apply sequence analyses techniques to data from the German Socio-Economic Panel

(1990–2021) to address our research questions. These approaches allow us to identify quantita-

tive and qualitative differences in the timing, order, and duration of different events along

monthly employment sequences of mothers. We focus our observation window on 1 year before

women gave birth up to their child’s third birthday to get a holistic picture of East–West differ-

ences in mothers’employment trajectories over a 4-year period.

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: in the next section, we give an overview

of the previous relevant literature, discussing studies that adopted a life-course approach to

investigate mothers’employment trajectories around childbirth, as well as research on the

effects of childcare availability on female employment. We then describe the German context in

regards to gender norms, female employment, and childcare availability, and develop our

expectations. This section is followed by a description of the data and analytical strategy and

by the presentation of the results. We conclude with a discussion of our results against the back-

ground of existing literature and outline avenues for future research in light of our findings.

BACKGROUND

Prior research has documented the structural lag that exists between the glacial pace of changes

in norms and policies regulating work and family and the more rapid change in individual pref-

erences (Moen, 2016). However, dramatic changes in family policy have recently narrowed the

gap, ushering in a policy-preference loop. In order to reveal the channels through which policy

reforms may result in individuals changing their own behavior, previous studies have investi-

gated family reforms not only in relation to mothers’labor market participation but also their

effects on mothers’gender attitudes (Ellingsæter et al., 2017; Jozwiak, 2022; Sjöberg, 2004;

Zoch & Schober, 2018). These studies investigated how policy feedback effects can result in

changes in individual attitudes through role exposure and norm setting effects (Bicchieri, 2016;

Gangl & Ziefle, 2015). In particular, policy reforms that reduce previous behavioral constraints,

such as expanding childcare availability to increase mothers’childcare options, are argued to

impact mothers’gender attitudes and, in turn, their employment behavior (Himmelweit &

Sigala, 2004).

Although it is sometimes difficult to disentangle whether individuals’preferences in the

aggregate lead to policy reforms or if policy reforms induce changes in individuals’attitudes

writ large (Kumlin & Stadelmann-Steffen, 2014), we can still argue that the ECEC reform may

have contributed to mothers’employment behavior via two (intertwined) channels: (a) by

reducing behavioral constraints and opportunity costs to allow mothers to realize their prefer-

ences for employment (Blau, 2003; Esping-Andersen, 2009) and (b) by changing societal atti-

tudes and norms regarding maternal employment. Concerning the latter channel, previous

studies for Germany have shown that, at least in West Germany, the expansion of ECEC has

indeed led to a decrease in traditional gender norms for mothers (Zoch & Schober, 2018).

Besides studies on the channels through which family policy reforms may alter mothers’

labor market participation, we also build on research regarding the effects of childcare avail-

ability on female employment and on life-course studies that adopt a dynamic, longitudinal

4JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

approach to investigate employment trajectories around childbirth. Studies focusing on

mothers’employment trajectories around childbirth distinguished between (among others) three

groups of mothers: those who remained in stable employment after giving birth, mothers mainly

focusing on caregiving, and those with unsteady post-birth employment trajectories (Cabello-

Hutt, 2020; Fauser & Kim, 2023; Lu et al., 2017). While such groups can be identified in all of

these studies, the prevalence of the different groups varied across countries. In the

United States, steady full- or part-time work trajectories after giving birth were most prevalent

(Lu et al., 2017); whereas, in Chile and South Korea, unstable work trajectories and steady

childcaring trajectories were more common (Cabello-Hutt, 2020; Fauser & Kim, 2023). Taken

together, these studies have highlighted the importance of measuring mothers’post-birth

employment behavior from a dynamic, longer-term perspective to reveal employment volatility

or the persistence of either employment or inactivity after giving birth.

Regarding East–West differences in employment trajectories, previous studies have shown a

higher prevalence of full-time care biographies for West German women, while East German

women were more likely to work continuously in full-time jobs (Liao & Fasang, 2021; Nutz &

Lersch, 2021; Simonson et al., 2011). However, these differences were decreasing among youn-

ger cohorts (i.e., those born in the mid-1950s and later), with the prevalence of full-time careers

declining in East Germany and the prevalence of housewife biographies declining in West

Germany (Liao & Fasang, 2021; Simonson et al., 2011). Still, even among younger cohorts,

prolonged labor market inactivity and part-time employment were more prevalent among West

German women, while full-time careers were more prevalent among East German women. The

studies showing this looked at women in general and based their window of observation on

women’s ages, covering substantial portions of their life course from when women were in their

late teens/early twenties up to when they reached the ages of 40, 45, or 55, respectively. In con-

trast, our study centers on the employment trajectories of mothers in the months before and

after first childbirth. Moreover, while these studies revealed important East–West differences in

women’s employment trajectories and how they change over time, they have not related them

to any specific policy changes.

Other life-course studies already highlighted how welfare regimes and policy settings related

to differences in family and employment trajectories from a country-comparative perspective

(Aisenbrey & Fasang, 2017; Möhring, 2016). For Europe, they showed that differences in the

configuration of welfare policies (e.g., the level of state regulation and to what extent the provi-

sion of social security is tied to the “standard”full-time work biography) were associated with

typologies of employment patterns that differed in their level of standardization (continuous

full-time work career), volatility (number of employment transitions), and gender specialization

(Möhring, 2016). In contrast, studies on the US showed that a lack of family supportive policies

(e.g., short and unpaid parental leave and expensive public childcare) in combination with wide

use of full-time nannies, facilitated continuous maternal employment and resulted in employ-

ment trajectories that were more stratified along class than gender lines (Aisenbrey &

Fasang, 2017). Taken together, these studies highlight that moving beyond point-in-time out-

comes, instead focusing on process outcomes is necessary to reveal how policy contexts can

result in the emergence of different life-course patterns.

However, (changes in) East–West differences in German mothers’employment trajectories

around childbirth have thus far not been explicitly investigated in relation to specific policy

reforms. Instead, there have been many studies on the effects of the ECEC extension in

Germany on mothers’labor market participation. Boll and Lagemann (2019) found no effect of

childcare availability on the employment propensity of mothers but showed that conditional on

employment, increases in childcare coverage of 1% point increased mothers’working hours by

0.5%. In contrast, Zimmert (2023) found an effect on employment of over 5% points as well as

effects on preferred working hours of over 5 h per week. Lastly, Müller and Wrohlich (2020)

found only small effects on employment, amounting to 0.2% points, which were mainly driven

A FOCUS ON THE 2008 CHILDCARE REFORM 5

by increases in part-time employment. Studies investigating East and West German mothers

separately have found stronger employment effects mostly for mothers in West Germany

(Neuberger et al., 2022; Zimmert, 2023; Zoch, 2020).

Additionally, findings have not been entirely univocal for other countries (Morrissey, 2017).

Most studies have identified positive effects on employment: for example, for the

U.S. (Herbst, 2017), for Spain (Nollenberger & Rodríguez-Planas, 2015), for Luxembourg

(Bousselin, 2022), for Italy (Brilli et al., 2016), and for a country-comparative dataset including

182 regions across 20 European countries (Scherer & Pavolini, 2023). However, other studies

have found no effects in their country-comparative dataset of 21 rich democracies (Brady

et al., 2020), as well as a study using Norwegian data (Havnes & Mogstad, 2011).

The studies listed all offer important insights into the overall effect of childcare availability

on maternal employment, but none have focused on longer-term dynamics. Our aim is to build

on this literature by applying a life-course approach to reveal how employment trajectories

around childbirth change alongside increasing childcare availability. By combining these two

strands of literature, we can introduce a dynamic perspective that helps us to understand not

just the prevalence and type of post-birth employment but also how East–West differences

develop in terms of timing, order, and duration of employment states over a period of childcare

expansion. In a broader sense, our study should add to our understanding of how life-course

trajectories respond to differences in policy settings across time and place.

GERMAN CONTEXT

Even several decades after German reunification, attitudes and behaviors concerning women’s

labor-market participation still differ on average between those socialized or living in East ver-

sus West Germany, especially regarding (full-time) employment of mothers with young children

(Barth et al., 2020; Hamjediers, 2021; Zoch, 2021). During the division of Germany (1949–

1990), universal public childcare facilitated full-time female employment in the former GDR

(East Germany), while the male breadwinner/female homemaker model entailing low levels of

female part-time employment was dominant in the former FRG (West Germany) (Huinink &

Mayer, 1995; Rosenfeld et al., 2004).

Before reunification, the availability of public childcare was low in the former FRG, while

it was common for children in the former GDR aged 1 year and older to attend public childcare

(Schober, 2014). Additionally, opening hours of childcare centers were more limited in the for-

mer FRG, while most care centers in the former GDR provided full-time care. In combination

with other family policies (e.g., joint taxation of couples, long and low-paid maternity leave)

and norms about the importance of maternal care, this institutional setting resulted in the male

breadwinner/female homemaker model dominating family arrangements in the former FRG

(Brückner, 2004; Rosenfeld et al., 2004). After giving birth, mothers usually dropped-out of the

labor market for several years, and if they returned it was mostly to part-time jobs. In contrast,

norms about the importance of full-time work, high acceptance, and provision of public

childcare for children under three, and shorter parental leave facilitated a quick labor market

return to full-time jobs for mothers and a dual-earner family model in the former GDR

(Huinink & Mayer, 1995; Rosenfeld et al., 2004).

After reunification, employment decreased in East Germany due to large-scale structural

labor market changes that increased unemployment (Schnabel, 2016). Still, in the period 1990–

1994 mothers’employment rate was 22% points higher in East compared to West Germany

(Barth et al., 2020). Ten years later, between 2000 and 2004, employment rates converged, and

the difference only amounted to 6% points. Differences have been more persistent concerning

the full-time employment of mothers with young children. Among mothers with children below

11, 41% of East German mothers were working full-time in the period 1990–1994. By contrast,

6JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

only 14% of West German mothers with children under 11 were working full-time in this

period. Pronounced differences have persisted even in more recent years, with 29% of East Ger-

man mothers with children under 11 working full-time in the period 2015–2018 but only 12%

for West German mothers.

In an effort to promote maternal employment and to ensure that by 2013, 35% of under-

threes had a place in public low-cost daycare, a widespread extension of public childcare provi-

sion for under-threes was introduced in 2007 by the German government (KiFöG). The aim of

the reform was to increase childcare availability, especially in West Germany, as East–West dif-

ferences in public provision of ECEC remained high even several years after reunification

(Schober, 2020). In 2007, that is, before the reform was implemented in 2008, 37.4% of children

under 3 years attended public childcare in East Germany, while this is true for only 8.1% of

children in West Germany (Federal Statistical Office, 2008).

When looking at the reform more closely, we see that the increase in childcare coverage

mostly occurred before 2014 (East Germany: 52.0%, West Germany: 27.4%), while further

expansion remained marginal (BMFSFJ, 2022). Although the increase was much more pro-

nounced in West Germany, differences in childcare coverage in 2021 remained sizable (East

52.3%, West 30.6%) and, on average, opening hours remain longer in the East

(BMFSFJ, 2022). Overall, the demand for childcare for children under three has continuously

exceeded its supply, with the mismatch amounting to 12.4% points in 2021. The share of chil-

dren in childcare institutions is thus understood in the literature as a measure of supply rather

than demand (Boll & Lagemann, 2019; Zoch & Hondralis, 2017).

Studies from the United States have shown that high childcare costs can be an obstacle to

maternal employment (Ruppanner et al., 2021). Compared to other advanced democracies,

childcare fees are relatively low in Germany (Schober & Spiess, 2015). Moreover, fees are

income-dependent, with low-income families being exempt. Childcare costs should, therefore,

be less relevant for parents’decisions to enroll their children in care facilities. Another aspect

that is noteworthy about the German context is the fact that a private childcare market hardly

exists (Kreyenfeld & Hank, 2000; Schober & Schmitt, 2017). The financing and implementation

of ECEC are planned by the municipalities—although the federal government has legislative

authority.

The implementation of the childcare reform coincided with another important family policy

reform to facilitate mothers’swifter labor market return (Kluve & Schmitz, 2018; Spiess &

Wrohlich, 2008): the parental leave reform of 2007 shortened paid leave and increased the

income replacement rate. The amount of paid maternity leave mothers could take at the maxi-

mum was reduced from 2 years to 12 months in both East and West Germany. In combination,

the two reforms were aimed not only at increasing maternal employment but also at reversing

trends of declining fertility and of shrinking workforce due to Germany’s aging society

(Spiess & Wrohlich, 2008).

Importantly, the parental leave reform came into effect immediately and applied equally to

both East and West Germany (i.e., reducing paid leave from 2 years to 12 months), while the

ECEC expansion reform saw a gradual increase in childcare spots. The expansion was less even,

however, as it started from a lower level and occurred to a larger extent in the West compared

to East Germany. While it is reasonable to expect that the reduction of the length of paid

maternity leave should have an impact on mothers’employment behavior in both East and

West Germany, this largely equally applied reform should play only a minor role in regard to

differences in employment trajectories between the two areas. Therefore, we argue that any con-

vergence in employment trajectories observed after the implementation of the two related fam-

ily reforms should be driven mostly by the ECEC reform rather than the maternity leave

reform. In the following, we, therefore, mainly focus on the ECEC reform.

A FOCUS ON THE 2008 CHILDCARE REFORM 7

Expectations

Our research questions and expectations are guided by the idea that policy settings define the

set of opportunities and constraints within which individuals’life courses unfold

(Leisering, 2003; Mayer & Müller, 1986)—thus leading to measurable structural differences

between life courses across time and place. By making employment trajectories around first

childbirth our object of analysis, we take a dynamic life-course approach that focuses on pro-

cess rather than static point in time outcomes (Abbott, 2005). In general, we expect that the

change in policy setting brought on by the ECEC reform in Germany, will facilitate changes in

how employment trajectories around first childbirth unfold in East and West Germany. While

static employment rates, such as the ones used in the abovementioned scholarship, provide

interesting insights into East–West differences, such snapshots do not allow us to assess the full

complexity of possible convergence patterns of employment trajectories around childbirth. By

contrast, in our systematic life-course analysis of employment trajectories around first child-

birth, we will be especially attuned to the potential for convergence in three separate dimen-

sions, namely timing, order, and duration of events over time.

In detail, we expect that the ECEC reform of 2008 contributes to a convergence of employ-

ment trajectories around first childbirth between East and West German mothers, especially

with respect to the duration of maternity leave and inactivity after giving birth, as well as the

timing and type of (full-time vs. part-time) labor market return. Specifically, after the ECEC

reform, East–West differences in duration, as well as timing and type of post-birth employment,

should have decreased, as the increase in childcare availability should have fostered quicker

labor market return, especially for West German mothers (Zoch & Hondralis, 2017). Given

persisting gender norms (Zoch & Heyne, 2023), we do not expect that the general tendency of

mothers to (temporarily) drop out of the labor market to care for young children would have

changed with the ECEC reform. We thus do not expect any East–West differences in the order

of employment states around first childbirth before or after the reform.

DATA AND METHODS

Data and sample

We used data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) (Goebel et al., 2023), a repre-

sentative yearly household panel survey starting in 1984 in West Germany. Since 1990, East

German households have also been included (Wagner et al., 2008). The sampling design of the

SOEP is based on a multistage stratified sampling procedure, and interviews are conducted in

person by trained interviewers using either paper-and-pencil interviewing (PAPI) or computer-

assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) as the survey mode (Siegers et al., 2022; Wagner

et al., 2008). The initial response rate of the SOEP reached over 60% for the first sample drawn

in 1984. The average wave-to-wave re-interview rate of households reaches over 80% (Glemser

et al., 2020; Siegers et al., 2022). Besides the high response rates, the SOEP ensures excellent

data quality and panel stability by adding refreshment samples throughout the years and by fol-

lowing up on individuals who left their original households (as long as they remain in

Germany) (Glemser et al., 2020; Siegers et al., 2022; Wagner et al., 2007). The SOEP data thus

allows families to be followed over several generations. Theoretically, our sample could have

included different mothers from two generations of the same family. The SOEP is especially

suitable for addressing our research question as it covers a wide range of topics, including fam-

ily formation and labor market behavior.

8JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

As we are interested in a comparison between mothers living in East and West Germany,

we included all waves collected after German reunification, starting from 1990 until the most

recent one available (i.e., 2021). By relying on fertility biographies, as well as (retrospective)

employment-spell data, we created monthly employment sequences of mothers through the

third birthday of their firstborn children. When respondents first enter the SOEP, they are asked

to chronicle their previous activity statuses starting from age 15 (Schmelzer &

Hamjediers, 2020). In each following yearly interview, respondents are asked to chronicle their

activity statuses since the previous interview.

We initiated the construction of our sample of analysis by drawing information from the fer-

tility biography of 29,266 mothers, of whom 14,751 gave birth after reunification. Because we

are interested in differences in labor market attachment around childbirth, the individual

sequences also included the 12 months before women gave birth. Our observation window thus

spanned 49 months in total (12 pre-birth months +month of giving birth +36 post-birth

months). Restricting the analytical sample to mothers for whom we had complete information

on fertility biographies and employment spells for the whole window of observation left us with

1612 mothers in our sample. The earliest first births we observed occurred in 1991, and the most

recent first births were in 2017.

Mothers could be observed in eight employment states: full-time employment, part-time

employment, marginal employment, maternity leave, unemployment, education or (vocational)

training, inactivity, and “other”(that combines civil service [early], retirement, or unclassified

states). Marginal employment refers to so-called “mini jobs,”which entail very short hours and

are exempt from social security contributions for earnings up to a certain threshold (400 Euros

in 2003, see Caliendo and Wrohlich (2010)). Marginal jobs are only included as a separate cate-

gory in SOEP’s employment-spell data from 2004, whereas before they were subsumed under

part-time employment. It is thus likely that the data underreport mothers in marginal jobs until

2004 for mothers in East and West Germany alike. In the rare event that spells overlapped for a

few months, we gave priority to employment spells. We coded overlapping spells according to

the state in the higher position in the following hierarchy: full-time job, part-time job, marginal

employment, maternity leave, unemployment, education/training, inactivity, other.

To investigate if East–West differences decreased with the childcare reform, we distin-

guished mothers giving birth in East (including Berlin) or West Germany, before (2007 or ear-

lier) or after (2008 or later) the ECEC reform, respectively. A robustness check, where we ran

the analysis on a sample that excluded mothers living in Berlin resulted in similar estimates

overall to the ones presented below (Table S1 and Figures S1 and S2). We excluded all mothers

who were born outside of Germany (1382 mothers remained) or who moved between East and

West Germany during our observation window (1345 mothers remained). We only considered

the current region of residence in our study. We acknowledge that considering whether mothers

were socialized in East or West Germany might be relevant, as it could result in different atti-

tudes towards (full-time) employment of mothers. In our sample, the overlap of the place of

socialization and the region of residence during our observation window was substantial: of the

mothers socialized in the East, 80% still lived in the East during our observation window; of

those socialized in the West, 97% still lived in the West.

Our final analytical sample consisted of a total of 1345 mothers belonging to four groups,

which we compare throughout this article: pre-reform East Germany mothers (n=246), post-

reform East German mothers (n=113), pre-reform West German mothers (n=715), and post-

reform West German mothers (n=271). Although, we observed fewer East than West German

mothers, these case numbers are sufficient to test our hypotheses, because (as described below)

our methods are descriptive and do not imply the use of regression-like estimation, nor breaking

the four groups down by other variables.

A FOCUS ON THE 2008 CHILDCARE REFORM 9

Analytical strategy

To address the first research question, we use state distribution plots to depict the employment

trajectories around the first childbirth of our four groups of mothers. For each of the

49 months, the plots illustrate the prevalence of the different employment states. This allows a

descriptive assessment of East–West differences in the prevalence of employment states at each

time-point of the observation window across pre- and post-reform years.

We address our second research question, regarding the significance of East–West differ-

ences, in two steps. First, we assess East–West differences in employment trajectories around

first childbirth in terms of timing, order, and duration of episodes in the different states. Second,

we investigate which states are indicative of each group at each point in time before and after

the reform. We ran the sequence analysis in R using the TraMineR, the TraMineRextras

(Gabadinho et al., 2011), and the Weightedclusters packages (Studer, 2013).

Step 1: Differences in timing, order, and duration

To understand East–West differences in mothers’employment sequences before and after the

reform, we utilize adapted versions of the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) and

the likelihood-ratio test (LRT) (Kass & Raftery, 1995; Liao & Fasang, 2021). The BIC allows

for the assessment of the magnitude of differences, and the LRT provides a test for the statisti-

cal significance of differences between groups of sequences. The advantage of the BIC and LRT

is that they assess differences between employment trajectories as a whole. In comparing East

and West German mothers across pre- and post-reform years, the BIC difference and LRT test

whether East–West differences in employment trajectories around first childbirth have indeed

been reduced after the reform (i.e., became less statistically significant and substantively

meaningful).

Specifically, the idea of the BIC is that differences between sequences are assessed by esti-

mating dissimilarities between pre-defined groups of sequences; here, our four groups of pre-

and post-reform mothers in East and West Germany. To quantify the difference between these

groups, the gravity-center approach is used (Liao & Fasang, 2021). The gravity center of a

group of sequences is the sequence that minimizes the sum of distances to all other sequences in

the group. Distances between sequences belonging to one group and the center of this group

) are computed and compared to distances between a sequence group and the overall center

of all sequences (D

). The BIC difference ultimately results from subtracting the BIC relying on

the distances to the group-specific centers from the BIC relying on the distances to the overall

center (BIC difference =BIC(D

)–BIC(D

)). The BIC difference gets higher when the dis-

tances to the overall center (D

) are larger than the distances to the group-specific center (D

BIC differences can be positive or negative. BIC differences between 0 and 2 should be consid-

ered as negligible support for the statistical meaningfulness of differences between two groups

of sequences. BIC differences between 2 and 6 hint at moderate support; BIC differences above

6 signify strong support; and lastly differences above 10 provide very strong support for statisti-

cally meaningful differences (Kass & Raftery, 1995; Liao & Fasang, 2021). In contrast, negative

values between 0 and 2 suggests negligible evidence for the null model of no difference

between two groups of sequences; values between 2 and 6 imply moderate support for the

null model, and so on in accordance with the values above 0.

There are several potential algorithms to calculate the pairwise sequence differences with

respect to the timing, the order, and the duration of states. Although most algorithms capture

the differences between sequences with respect to the three dimensions as they are (at least

partly) correlated, Studer and Ritschard (2016) identify which dimension drives the pairwise

comparison for each algorithm. In light of the guidelines they provide, we selected: first, the

10 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

Hamming Distance (HAM) algorithm measures the dissimilarity between two sequences by

using the number of positions with non-matching states and is, therefore, more sensitive to dif-

ferences in timing. Second, the Subsequence Vector Representation (SVRspell) is more sensitive

to differences in the order of states, as it computes dissimilarities based on the number of

matching states appearing in the same order in the two sequences. Third, the Optimal Matching

(OM) algorithm emphasizes differences in duration. The OM algorithm aligns two sequences

and assigns a “cost”for each of the operations (insertion/deletion or substitution) performed to

achieve alignment. Specifically, the lower the sum of costs of the operations to align two

sequences, the more similar they are. We set insertion/deletion costs at 1 and substitution costs

at 2. As a robustness check, we replicated the analyses by using alternative algorithms: CHI2

with the number of periods k set to sequence length for timing, Optimal Matching between

sequences of transitions (OMstran) with a low weight on the state of origin for order, and Opti-

mal Matching between sequences of spell (OMspell) with high spell expansion cost for duration.

The results of this sensitivity check were overall similar to the estimates presented below

(Table S2).

Further, we adopt a version of the LRT that is closely related to the above-described BIC

difference and that allows for an assessment of the statistical significance of differences between

sequence groups (Liao & Fasang, 2021). This version of the LRT compares the restricted

model—in which all defined groups of sequences are equal and have the same gravity center—

to the unrestricted model, which assumes that the pre-defined groups are distinct from one

another and have unique group-specific gravity centers.

Step 2: Testing the significance of the prevalence of states over time

This step highlights qualitative differences between sequences by focusing on what states are

indicative of each group at each point in time. To do so, we rely on the implicative statistics

approach (Struffolino et al., 2016; Studer, 2015), which adopts the framework of “sequence of

typical states.”The typical state for each of the 49 time points of the sequence is displayed in a

series of graphs that depict pairwise comparisons between our four groups (e.g., comparing East

and West German pre-reform mothers): If the number of observable counterexamples is low,

the rule is defined to be “strongly implicative.”Put differently, we compare the actual observed

and the number of counterexamples that can be expected under the independence assumption

(Gabadinho et al., 2011). The gap between the expected and the observed number of counterex-

amples and its significance are calculated using adjusted residuals of a contingency table with

continuity correction (Struffolino et al., 2016; Studer, 2015). In order to improve the readability

of the graphs, we follow previous studies and use the reverse of the implicative index, which

otherwise would be highly negative for significant rules. The implicative index measuring the

relevance of the rule “A implies B”reads as follows:

IA!BðÞ¼

nBAþ0:5ne

ﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃ

BA nB_=nðÞ1n_

A=n



qÞ

with nBA referring to the observed number of counterexamples, ne

BA to the expected number of

counterexamples under the independence assumption, nB_to the number of times that B is

observed, n_

Ato the number of times that A is observed, and nto the total number of cases. As

an example, the state of full-time employment is considered typical for East German post-

reform mothers if the rule “being a post-reform mother in East instead of West Germany

implies being in the state of full-time employment”has a limited number of observable

counterexamples.

A FOCUS ON THE 2008 CHILDCARE REFORM 11

As the sample size impacts the strength of the implication, we can only compare the abso-

lute values of the implication within subsamples but not between them. For the same reason,

we did not use population weights, as this would lead to inflated results for the implicative sta-

tistics indices, which are dependent on sample sizes and cannot account for weighted sequences.

Results of the BIC and the LRT allow similar conclusions using weighted or unweighted

sequences (Table S3). Following previous studies (Struffolino et al., 2016), we will only focus

on whether the line for each state is above or below the significance thresholds (95%, 99%, and

99.9%) when comparing results across subsamples. A rule is considered statistically significant

at the 5%, 1%, or 0.1% level if it exceeds the 95%, 99%, or 99.9% confidence line. Confidence is

measured using a normal distribution (Studer, 2015).

RESULTS

Prevalence of employment states around first childbirth before and after the

reform

To address the first research question, Figure 1presents the state distribution plots for the

employment trajectories around first childbirth (corresponding to month =0) of our four

groups of mothers. Before and after the ECEC reform, most mothers worked in full-time jobs

before giving birth. Levels of full-time employment pre-birth were higher in West Germany

(above 70%) than in East Germany (around 60%) both before and after the reform. In contrast,

more East German mothers experienced periods of education and training, as well as unem-

ployment, before giving birth. The former finding might be explained by the on average lower

age at first childbirth of East German women giving birth in the decade after reunification

(Federal Institute for Population Research, 2023b), while the latter finding is likely owed to the

higher labor market attachment of East German women, combined with worse labor market

conditions in the East (Matysiak & Steinmetz, 2008; Schnabel, 2016). In the months directly

antecedent to childbirth, the share of mothers on maternity leave increased rapidly so that in

the month of childbirth as well as the following months, the vast majority of mothers were on

maternity leave in all four groups. Differences between the four groups become more apparent

as children grew older.

Before the reform, the share of East German mothers on maternity leave was relatively sta-

ble for the first 10 months after giving birth and then quickly reduces. For West German pre-

reform mothers, the share of those on maternity leave decreased earlier but also much slower.

Thus, towards the end of our observation window, more West German than East German

mothers were on maternity leave. This might be explained by longer maternity leave taken by

West German mothers. Another explanation could be the birth of a second child. Following

reunification, fertility rates in East Germany initially fell below those in West Germany. How-

ever, they quickly began to increase again and since 2010 fertility rates are similar in East and

West Germany (Federal Institute for Population Research, 2023a). We observe a gradual

increase in part-time employment for pre-reform mothers in West Germany as children grew

older, but the share of full-time work remained relatively constant at low levels (11% in month

36). We also see a steady increase of inactivity in the group of pre-reform West German

mothers. Contrary to employment (and unemployment), inactivity plays virtually no role for

East German pre-reform mothers. Post-birth full-time employment was much more prevalent

among the mothers in the East. Shares of full-time work increased markedly once children turn

1 year old, reaching 31% by the third year after childbirth. The share of part-time working

mothers was somewhat lower for pre-reform mothers in East Germany compared to those in

the West.

12 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

FIGURE 1 State distribution plots for mothers’employment trajectories around first childbirth. Source: SOEP (v38, 1990–2021), own calculations. [Color figure can be viewed

at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

A FOCUS ON THE 2008 CHILDCARE REFORM 13

After the reform, we observe a stark decrease of mothers on maternity leave once their child

turned 1 year old in both East and West Germany, which highlights the implications of the

parental leave reform in both East and West Germany. When we look at the type of jobs

mothers have after giving birth, we observe an increase in part-time employment compared to

the pre-reform period. This increase was more pronounced for East German post-reform

mothers. Hence, the share of mothers working part-time after giving birth is now nearly the

same in East and West Germany. However, shares of full-time work have changed little in both

regions across the two periods, so full-time employment has remained more prevalent among

East German mothers than West German mothers even after the reform.

As a supplementary robustness check (Figure S3), we split the post-reform period into two

periods, an early and a late post-reform period. This allows for more insights into the timing of

the observed changes. As the increase of childcare availability was more pronounced in the

early post-reform years and tailed off in more recent years (BMFSFJ, 2022), we might expect

that the changes we describe above happened rather quickly after the implementation of the

reform. Indeed, state distribution plots covering the early post-reform years (i.e., mothers giving

birth between 2008 and 2012) look very much like the post-reform plots presented above, espe-

cially for West Germany mothers. For East Germany mothers, we also see that the biggest

increase in part-time employment happens in the early post-reform period. However, for East

Germany, we also see some changes between the early and the late post-reform period

(i.e., mothers giving birth between 2013 and 2017). Namely, the prevalence of full-time employ-

ment after giving birth did decrease slightly, although it has remained higher than in West

Germany. This decrease in post-birth full-time employment for East German mothers giving

birth in more recent years might be the result of partly converging gender norms between East

and West Germany (Zoch, 2021).

Testing the significance of qualitative East–West differences in mothers’

employment sequences before and after the ECEC reform

Are these differences statistically significant? To assess this and to investigate our expectations

of decreasing East–West differences after the reform, we turn to the results of the LRT and the

BIC differences. Table 1displays the results for the comparison between employment trajecto-

ries of East and West German mothers before the reform and after the reform. Each of the dis-

similarity measures emphasizes one specific aspect of the difference between the groups of

sequences, that is, differences in the timing of sequence states (HAM), order of states

(SVRspell), or duration of spells (OM).

For pre-reform mothers, differences in employment trajectories were statistically significant

in terms of the timing of states (LRT =11.09, p-value =.001). With the BIC difference

TABLE 1 LRT statistics and BIC differences for employment trajectories around first childbirth, East vs. West

German mothers.

Period

Timing (HAM) Order (SVR spell) Duration (OM)

LRT (p) BIC difference LRT (p) BIC difference LRT (p) BIC difference

Pre-reform 11.09 (.001) 5.79 4.73 (.034) 0.57 11.83 (.001) 6.53

Post-reform 5.99 (.017) 0.69 4.31 (.045) 0.99 5.98 (.017) 0.68

Note: Likelihood Ratio Tests (LRT) for statistical significance of differences between sequences, the Bayesian Information Criterion

(BIC) difference depicts the meaningfulness of differences. Interpretation of BIC differences: 0–2=negligible, >2–6=moderate, >6–10 =

strong, >10 =very strong.

Abbreviations: HAM, Hamming distance; OM, optimal matching; SVRspell, subsequence vector representation.

Source: SOEP (v38, 1990–2021), own calculations.

14 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

reaching 5.79, we can consider them to be moderate. Differences were statistically significant

(LRT =11.83, p-value =.001) and strong concerning the duration (BIC diff =6.53) of

sequence states. As we expected, differences in the order of spells were negligible (BIC

diff =0.57), although they were statistically significant (LRT =4.73, p-value =.034).

After the reform, differences were still statistically significant, albeit less so than before the

reform, in terms of timing (LRT =5.99, p-value =.017) and duration (LRT =5.98,

p-value =.017). More importantly, as expected, differences were now less sizable. Differences

in timing (BIC diff =0.69) and differences in duration (BIC diff =0.68) of sequence states were

now negligible.

Differences in the order of spells were still negligible (BIC diff =0.99), as they had been

also before the reform and they were also still statistically significant (LRT =4.31,

p-value =.045)—albeit less so than before the reform.

We observe a clear reduction in East–West differences in employment trajectories of

mothers who gave birth after rather than before the reform, which supports our expectations

of differences in timing and duration decreasing after the ECEC reform. However, we still do

not know the exact sequence states (e.g., maternity leave, inactivity, full-time, or part-time

employment) to which these differences pertain and when they occur along the studied

trajectories.

The implicative statistics give us leverage to fill this gap and characterize the typical state

for each of our four groups at each time point around childbirth. Put differently, under this

framework, the typical employment state for each comparison group (i.e., mothers in East and

West Germany before and mothers in East and West Germany after the reform) are compared

at each time point of the sequences (i.e., for each of the 12 months before and of the 36 months

after giving birth). Figure 2(left panel) displays the implicative statistic for the rule “being a

West German pre-reform mother (instead of an East German one) implies being in labor force

state xin month t.”The opposite rule is the base for the implicative statistic presented on the

right panel of Figure 2. The horizontal dotted lines indicate the significance thresholds for con-

fidence at different levels (95%, 99%, and 99.9%). For any lines crossing these thresholds, we

can say that the respective employment state is “typical”for this group of mothers but not the

comparison group.

For West German pre-reform mothers, the pink line shows that being a West German

instead of an East German mother implied having a full-time job in the year before giving birth,

after which this rule turns insignificant. Put differently, before giving birth, being in full-time

employment was “typical”for West German but not East German mothers.

Around the time the child was born up to when they were around 1 year of age, West Ger-

man pre-reform mothers were more likely to have a part-time job (yellow line). This rule turns

insignificant after the child was 1 year of age but becomes significant again towards the end of

our observation window, that is, when the child reached age two. Starting at about the same

time, West German pre-reform mothers became more likely to be on maternity leave (dark blue

line), indicating longer maternity leaves compared to East German mothers.

Throughout the whole observation window, and increasingly after giving birth, West Ger-

man pre-reform mothers had a higher prevalence for inactivity (light blue line) than East

German mothers, supporting our expectations and attesting to the lower labor market attach-

ment of West German pre-reform mothers. Among East German pre-reform mothers, results

indicate a higher prevalence of being in education/training (turquoise line) or unemployment

(purple line) in the year before giving birth and then again after the child turned one. When the

child was born up to about age one, East German mothers were more likely to be on maternity

leave. After that, East German pre-reform mothers were more likely than West Germans to

work full-time, confirming the higher importance of full-time employment for East German

pre-reform mothers.

A FOCUS ON THE 2008 CHILDCARE REFORM 15

Figure 3displays the implicative statistic for post-reform mothers. As expected, we observe

fewer significant differences after the reform. For West German post-reform mothers, we again

see a higher prevalence of having a full-time job in the year before giving birth (Figure 3, left

panel). Following birth and until the child’s first birthday, we do not observe any significant dif-

ferences compared to East German post-reform mothers, attesting to the impact of the parental

leave reform, which gives strong financial incentives for mothers in all of Germany to take

maternity leave of 12 months. After the children’s first birthday, West German post-reform

mothers were more likely to work in marginal positions until their child was about 2 years old.

Starting when children were about one and a half years old, West German post-reform mothers

were also more likely to be on maternity leave, although they were no longer more likely to be

inactive. This partly contradicts our expectations and indicates that post-reform West German

mothers are still more likely to take longer maternity leave. However, more in line with our

expectations, we no longer observe any differences in the prevalence of post-birth part-time

employment. Supplementary analysis shows for both East and West German mothers that the

prevalence of part-time employment after giving birth significantly increased with the childcare

reform (Figures S4 and S5), which is in line with previous studies (Müller & Wrohlich, 2020;

Zoch, 2020).

FIGURE 2 Implicative statistic applied to sequences of typical states analysis: Comparison of mothers in East and

West Germany giving birth before the reform (1991–2007). Source: SOEP (v38, 1990–2021), own calculations. [Color

figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

16 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

For East German post-reform mothers, we observe, first, that they were more likely to be in

education/training or unemployment before giving birth and for a few months post birth

(Figure 3, right panel). Second, East German post-reform mothers were more likely to work in

full-time jobs, starting from when their children were a little over a year until the end of our

observation window. We interpret this finding as an indication that, despite of a convergence in

part-time employment after the ECEC reform, post-birth full-time employment is still more

widespread among East German mothers.

CONCLUSION

In this study, we have investigated East–West differences in employment trajectories of German

mothers who gave birth after reunification, looking at a period of extensive ECEC expansion

introduced by a childcare reform. The main goal of the childcare reform was to facilitate

mothers’labor force participation after giving birth. The potential impact of the reform was

expected to be especially strong in West Germany, where historically, not only the share of chil-

dren visiting care institutions but also mother’s labor force attachment was lower. Against this

FIGURE 3 Implicative statistic applied to sequences of typical states analysis: Comparison of mothers in East and

West Germany giving birth after the reform (2008–2017). Source: SOEP (v38, 1990–2021), own calculations. [Color

figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

A FOCUS ON THE 2008 CHILDCARE REFORM 17

background, our overall research question was whether East–West differences in mothers’

employment trajectories around first childbirth have decreased in Germany after the reform.

Our observation window covered mothers from 1 year before they gave birth for the first time

up to when their children turned three. We compared mothers giving birth before the reform

(1991–2007) with mothers giving birth after the reform (2008–2017) in either East or West

Germany, respectively. We employed sequence analysis methods to measure differences

between these four groups of sequences, namely an adapted version of the LRT and the BIC

(Liao & Fasang, 2021). On the one hand, we document persisting East–West differences regard-

ing the prevalence of employment states before and after the reform. These mainly pertained to

the prevalence of post-birth full-time employment and maternity leave once children reach

1 year of age and thereafter. For pre-reform mothers, East–West differences in employment tra-

jectories were both moderate to strong and statistically significant. These differences were

driven by the timing and duration of sequence states but not by their order. Taken together,

these results indicate that for both East and West German mothers, employment around first

childbirth generally follows a highly standardized process of dropping out of the labor market

upon childbirth and returning to it sometime after—while there are nonetheless important

East–West differences in the duration (of maternity leave, inactivity) and the timing of labor

market return.

On the other hand, we also document substantial convergence, showing that differences in

employment trajectories between East and West German mothers reduced after the reform.

While they were still statistically significant, their magnitude could be considered negligible on

all dimensions (i.e., timing, order, and duration), supporting our expectations of convergence of

employment trajectories after the reform. Further, the implicative statistics framework we used

allowed us to track when exactly around childbirth specific states became salient for the differ-

ent groups. After giving birth, pre-reform West German mothers’trajectories were character-

ized by significantly more part-time employment and maternity leave until their first child was

older than two as well as more inactivity for the whole period observed. In contrast, East Ger-

man pre-reform mothers were more likely to be on maternity leave while their child was youn-

ger than 1 year old and in full-time jobs thereafter. By contrast, we observed fewer and less

significant East–West differences in the occurrence of specific sequence states after the reform.

Increased similarity was mainly driven by a convergence of the prevalence of part-time employ-

ment in the years after the ECEC reform. This finding is in line with previous studies showing

that the effect of the ECEC reform was mainly driven by increasing part-time employment of

West German mothers (Müller & Wrohlich, 2020). Nonetheless, we find that East German

mothers were still more likely to work in full-time jobs after their children turned one. Further,

we observed no East–West differences from the time of first childbirth up to the children’s first

birthday, which confirms further that taking maternity leave upon giving birth has become the

norm for most mothers across Germany, and especially so for West German mothers also after

the childcare reform. This finding highlights the substantial and similar implication for all

mothers across Germany of the 1-year maternity leave introduced by the 2007 parental leave

reform.

Our study is not without limitations. First, we compared two rather broad time periods,

which saw many societal developments besides the ECEC reform and the parental leave reform.

For example, the important Hartz labor market reforms were implemented from 2003 to 2005.

Second, we differentiate between eight separate employment states, but we cannot account for

the exact amount mothers worked per week as working hours are only measured on an annual

basis in the SOEP. While we are able to make the important distinction of separating full-,

part-time, and marginal employment, we cannot further differentiate the extent of part-time

employment. We might thus underestimate differences between mothers’employment trajecto-

ries to some extent. However, this still adds more nuances to previous findings on mothers’

post-birth employment behavior, showing that, among post-reform mothers, working in

18 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

marginal jobs after giving birth has been and remains more prevalent among West German

than East German mothers. This indicates the still higher prevalence of the male breadwinner/

female homemaker model in West Germany, where women often act as secondary earners.

Finally, we could not account for regional differences in childcare availability within East and

West, which can be quite substantial (Boll & Lagemann, 2019; Zimmert, 2023).

To conclude, our study adds to the understanding of the dynamic nature of differences

between mothers’employment trajectories, providing important contributions to the literature

on gender, work, and family. First, drawing on the life-course approach and the concept of pro-

cess outcomes, we conceptualized and measured these differences in terms of timing, order, and

duration of events over time. Although more research is needed to identify causal effects, over-

all, our findings highlight the value of descriptive longitudinal evidence in evaluating the

longer-term implications of any social policy, and in our case the ECEC reform. Second, we

elaborated on the role of regional and policy settings in shaping the set of opportunities and

constraints within which individuals’life courses unfold. By adopting this approach, our study

contributes to previous literature substantively by demonstrating how cross-country difference

in welfare regime policies can contribute to typologies of employment trajectories entailing dif-

ferent levels of gender specialization and degrees of standardization (Möhring, 2016).

As our results show, the ECEC reform has (partly) achieved its goal of increasing mothers’

post-birth employment, especially by increasing part-time employment after birth in both East

and West Germany. However, increases in post-birth full-time employment—especially in West

Germany—may take longer to unfold. From a social policy perspective, the predominance of

part-time employment contributes to the persistence of long-term gender inequalities (e.g., in

pension income), so facilitating full-time employment should also be a goal. Previous country-

comparative studies have already highlighted that family policies that are intended to foster

maternal employment and the reconciliation of work and family obligations may have actually

resulted in the consolidation of male-breadwinner/ female-secondary-earner life courses, while

in countries such as the United States, the lack of family supportive policies in combination

with a strong private childcare market, results in less gendered employment trajectories

(Aisenbrey & Fasang, 2017). While these studies give valuable insights into the relevance of

contextual characteristics for the unfolding of life courses, studies that address how changes in

policy causally effect life courses are still missing, pointing to important avenues for future

research.

Overall, our findings foster the understanding of how policy settings and reforms shape life

courses in a context-dependent fashion. A potential theoretical frame for fully understanding

our findings can be found in Pfau-Effinger’s(

2004) argument for the interplay between gender,

culture, and norms in mediating the impact of institutions on men’s and women’s behaviors.

Further, Fasang et al.’s(

2024), life course boat approach underscores how historical time and

place shape unfolding life course outcomes at the populational, relational, and individual level.

In our case, a reform with potentially region-neutral effects on maternal employment resulted

in region-specific increases in part-time employment; however, it did not change the prevalence

of full-time employment in either region, due to the persistence of prescribed family and work

dynamics in both regions. These findings are also in line with a recent study showing that the

implementation of the ECEC reform in Germany led to a quicker polarization of mothers into

those who are employment-orientated and utilize the increased opportunities for part-time

employment after giving birth as a stepping stone to full-time employment and less

employment-oriented mothers who may be stuck on a so-called “mommy track,”entailing long

periods of part-time employment and few opportunities for career progression and earning

increases (Brehm & Milewski, 2024).

The insights provided by our study point to several fruitful avenues for future research with

relevant policy implications. The comparative approach could be broadened by examining fine-

grained differences across localities in gender norms and ECEC reform implementation within

A FOCUS ON THE 2008 CHILDCARE REFORM 19

Germany or by comparing variation across time in Germany to dynamics in other countries

that adopted similar reforms but that may differ in terms of gender norms or other relevant pol-

icies. Likewise, the convergence of employment trajectories due to childcare availability or simi-

lar family policy reforms could be explored across ethnic, racial, and class groups, also taking

gender norms into account. Such an approach would contribute to recent advancements in the

life-course literature, which highlights that next to time and place, membership in specific social

groups (i.e., social location) is an equally important driver of life-course variety (Fasang

et al., 2024).

With respect to policy implications, our study highlights the potential (at least partial) dis-

crepancy between the intended goal and the actual effects. If the aim is to increase all mothers’

full integration into the labor market, “merely”increasing the availability of public childcare

might not be enough to overcome existing gender norms or other policies, such as joint taxation

in the German case, that still favor male breadwinner/female secondary earner family models.

Similarly, public childcare availability as such might not be sufficient to change mothers’behav-

ior with respect to labor market participation (Stahl & Schober, 2020), because uptake might

further be influenced by the actual (or perceived) quality of the service (Keys et al., 2013; Stahl

et al., 2018) or the availability of full-time care (Zoch, 2020).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Anette Fasang, Maria Hornung, Nicole Kapelle, and Lili Vargha for their helpful

comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this article. We also thank Esmeralda Dueñas

Marmolejo for her support in reviewing the relevant literature. Replication files for this article

can be found here: https://osf.io/a3qug/. Open Access funding enabled and organized by

Projekt DEAL.

FUNDING INFORMATION

This research received funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG, project number

492434941).

ORCID

Sophia Fauser https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9992-2659

Emanuela Struffolino https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6635-8748

Asaf Levanon https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2190-1281

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SUPPORTING INFORMATION

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How to cite this article: Fauser, S., Struffolino, E., & Levanon, A. (2024). Converging

mothers’employment trajectories between East and West Germany? A focus on the

2008-childcare-reform. Journal of Marriage and Family,1–24. https://doi.org/10.1111/

jomf.13040

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Is part-time employment a temporary ‘stepping stone’ or a lasting ‘mommy track’? Legislation and mothers’ transition to full-time employment in Germany

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J EUR SOC POLICY

Research on reconciling family and employment debates if maternal part-time employment works as ‘stepping stone’ to full-time employment or as gateway to a long-term ‘mommy track’. We analyse how mothers’ transition from part-time to full-time employment is shaped by changing reconciliation legislations and how this is moderated by reconciliation-relevant factors like individual behaviours and macro conditions. We extend the literature on work–family reconciliation by investigating mothers’ employment behaviour after the birth of their last child, i.e., after the family formative phase. We draw upon Germany with its considerable regional and historical heterogeneity. Using event history methods on SOEP-data, we observe mothers who (re)enter part-time employment (i.e., up to 30 weekly working hours) after their last childbirth. Results suggest that the impact of reconciliation legislations depends on the moderation by other factors. Recent reconciliation-friendly legislations may have contributed to the polarization of maternal employment patterns: more and less employment-oriented mothers diverge sooner after childbirth than before. Legislations co-occur with increases both in childcare institutions and part-time culture, but their moderation effects compete. Hence, boosting part-time work as either a ‘stepping stone’ or a ‘mommy track’ requires a deep understanding of the mechanisms behind legislations as well as more explicit policy incentives.

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Full-text available

Nov 2023

Rita Schmutz

Early child care and the employment potential of mothers: evidence from semi-parametric difference-in-differences estimation

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2023

Franziska Zimmert

This paper examines the effect of an expansion of subsidized early child care on maternal labor market outcomes. It contributes to the literature by analyzing, apart from the employment rate, the adjustment of agreed working hours and especially of preferred working hours. Semi-parametric difference-in-differences estimation based on survey data from the German Microcensus results in positive effects on the employment rate, as well as on agreed and preferred working hours by up to 20% of the pre-reform mean. As agreed and preferred working hours adjust in line with each other, the expansion of early child care can tap labor market potentials beyond those of currently underemployed mothers. Moreover, conditional effects show that especially better educated and non-single mothers respond to the reform.

Family formation trends and patterns of women's work trajectories in South Korea: determinants and cohort differences

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2022

We use sequence analysis on data from the Korean Labor & Income Panel Study (1998–2019) to investigate trajectories of women’s labour market participation in the eight years after first childbirth. We pay special attention to the type of employment through which mothers participate in the labour market, distinguishing between regular full-time employment, non-regular employment, self-employment, and non-employment. After creating employment sequences, we use cluster analysis to reveal patterns of employment trajectories and average marginal effects derived from multinomial logistic regression to identify women’s characteristics on the distinct trajectories. We find that women of younger cohorts are less likely to solely focus on family and childcare in the years after childbirth. However, their chances of steady work in regular jobs did not increase. Instead, they are more likely to be on unsteady pathways, combining childcare with regular or non-regular jobs. Our results suggest that increases in females’ employment might be partly attributed to mothers’ higher probability to obtain precarious non-regular work.

Where does public childcare boost female labor force participation? Exploring geographical heterogeneity across Germany 2007–2017

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2022
DEMOGR RES

BACKGROUND Franz Neuberger1 Tobias Rüttenauer2 Martin Bujard3 Public childcare provision and female labor force participation (FLP) have strongly increased over the past decades in European societies. However, studies offer heterogeneous findings on the link between public childcare and FLP. OBJECTIVE We investigate the link between public childcare and FLP, using different indicators of childcare and accounting for heterogeneous time trends and regional heterogeneity. METHODS Based on a balanced panel of all German counties from 2007 to 2017, we estimate the effect of an increasing enrollment rate for children aged 0–2 and 3–5 on FLP. We compare fixed effect (FE) and fixed effect individual slope estimators (FEIS) to control for county-specific time trends. Subsequently, we compare the results across regions with different levels of urbanization. RESULTS We find that most FE results are biased due to selection on trends. Still, when accounting for selection on trends, childcare enrollment for the age group 0–2 increases FLP in West Germany and in urban areas. Furthermore, childcare enrollment for children aged 3–5 years is associated with higher FLP in West Germany, in rural and, most strongly, in metropolitan areas. CONCLUSIONS Our study highlights important heterogeneity in the general time trends of FLP and the effectiveness of childcare arrangements across different regions in Germany.

Life-Course-Sensitive Analysis of Group Inequalities: Combining Sequence Analysis With the Kitagawa–Oaxaca–Blinder Decomposition

Article

Feb 2024

Processes that unfold over individuals’ life courses are often associated with inequalities later in life. The literature lacks methodological approaches to analyze inequalities in outcomes between groups, for example, between women and men, in a life-course-sensitive manner. We propose a combination of methods—of sequence analysis, which enables us to study the multidimensional complexity of life courses with Kitagawa–Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition. This approach allows us to distinguish the share of inequalities between groups that is due to group-specific life courses from the share that is due to group-specific returns to similar life courses. We illustrate the combination of the two methods by analyzing work–family life courses and gender pension gaps in Italy and Germany. Our contribution is to systematically compare possible core analytical choices when combining typologies derived using sequence analysis with the Kitagawa–Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition. For future applications, we propose a set of practical guidelines for sequence analysis–Kitagawa–Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition.

The life course boat: A theoretical framework for analyzing variation in family lives across time, place, and social location

Article

Jun 2024

Objective We propose a life course theoretical framework for understanding variation in family life courses between birth cohorts (historical time), societies (place), and social groups (social location). Building on the life course paradigm, we explain how key predictors on different levels of analysis can reinforce, precondition, counteract, preclude, or alter each other's influence on family life courses in specific contexts. The proposed framework re‐organizes and extends core principles of the life course paradigm into family life course predictors and outcomes on the individual, relational, and population levels. Background The life course approach is a well‐recognized interdisciplinary paradigm in family research but often remains too abstract to guide hypotheses about family life course variation. Method We demonstrate the utility of the proposed framework with a qualitative case study on family life courses in Senegal and a quantitative case study on family life course change between Baby Boomer and Millennial cohorts in the United States using sequence analysis. Results Findings of the two example applications support that fertility decline in Senegal was primarily driven by material considerations and not by ideational change and that family life course de‐standardization was greater between White Baby Boomers and Millennials compared to Black Boomers and Millennials. Conclusion Developing narrower mid‐range theories that fill the basic life course principles with substantive content and target specific fields of application, such as family life courses, is promising to advance life course theory.

The evolution of family policies and couples' housework division after childbirth in Germany, 1994–2019

Article

Aug 2023

Objective We examine how the re‐traditionalization effect of childbirth on couples' division of housework has evolved over time as a result of major family policy change. Background Supportive family policies are associated with a more egalitarian division of labor. However, it remains unclear how a country's transition from a modernized male breadwinner regime that supports maternal care to family policies that promote maternal employment and paternal caregiving change couples' gender‐typical division of housework in the long run. Method We use representative survey data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel (1994–2019, N = 14,648) and estimate the re‐traditionalization effect of childbirth on mothers' absolute and relative time‐use on housework over four policy periods with linear fixed‐effects regression models. Results Across all periods, mothers took on larger absolute and relative levels of housework after childbirth, with a more pronounced and persistent gender‐typical division in West than in East Germany. However, mothers spent somewhat less absolute and relative time on housework in recent periods with stronger levels of de‐familiarizing and dual‐earner/dual‐carer policies than in earlier periods with policies supporting maternal caregiving. Conclusion We find somewhat smaller and less persistent re‐traditionalization effects of childbirth in more supportive work–family policy periods. In sum, the small changes illustrate that even in contexts of enormous policy change, progress toward a less gender‐typical division of housework has been slow and rather small.

Equalizing or not? Public childcare and women’s labour market participation

Article

Jun 2023
J EUR SOC POLICY

Within the scientific literature and debate on social investment, public childcare provision plays a pivotal role. At the same time, critics have argued that social investment is often unable to reduce social inequalities and, to the contrary, tends to reproduce them (the so-called ‘Matthew effect’). The article focuses on a specific facet of social investment policies: their capacity to support mothers’ employment and its effect on social inequality, by investigating empirically to what extent an expansion of public childcare can help to increase women’s labour market participation and how this eventual support is homogenously distributed among different mothers’ profiles. To give a convincing answer to such a question requires careful attention to methodology, in order to avoid drawing the wrong conclusions. Whereas existing research has predominately focused on cross-national variation and has often been static in nature, the present study assesses the effects of public childcare expansion on women’s labour market participation and employment by examining region-specific within-variation over time of public childcare coverage. The study relies on data from the European Social Survey (2002–2018) that were integrated with an original collection of regional-level information on public childcare. It finds a positive association between increases in public childcare coverage and mothers’ labour market participation. Furthermore, it shows that public childcare helps to fight social inequalities among households with young children. Low-educated mothers are the ones who profit most from an increase in public childcare, and positive employment effects are most pronounced at lower levels of childcare coverage. Therefore, this contribution highlights the importance of public childcare policies as an equalizer in society, especially in contexts in which an intervention is most needed, because expanding childcare fosters mothers’ labour market participation

Methods of Life Course Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches

Book

Jan 1998

Converging mothers' employment trajectories between East and West Germany? A focus on the 2008‐childcare‐reform

Abstract

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