Tímea Laura Molnár, Assistant Professor in CEU’s Department of Economics and Business, will co-lead the research project, “Mothers’ Return to Work After Childbirth, and the Role of Spousal Involvement in Shaping Parents’ Mental Health and Children’s Development”. The joint project with Gaëlle Simard-Duplain (Carleton) was granted 24,774 CAD of funding by the Vanier Institute of the Family, a Canadian independent think tank committed to research on enhancing family wellbeing.
“There is a large and still growing literature showing that the earnings of mothers decrease following childbirth, to an extent not experienced by fathers, leading to a large gender pay gap associated with childbirth,” Molnár explained. “In this context, considerable work has focused on policies that may facilitate the return of mothers to the workplace. However, we still know very little about the implications of the timing of mothers’ return to work on their mental health and on their children’s development, and about the role fathers’ supportive involvement at home. Our proposed research fills in this gap in the context of the large labor market involvement of mothers with small children, the inter-relatedness of being productive at work and mentally balanced at home as a parent, both shaping family circumstances in early childhood.”