Only 23% of women return to work six months after pregnancy

This emerges from a study conducted among 221 randomly selected couples conducted by Rita Borg Xuereb as part of the requirement for her degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Malta.

The study shows that at the commencement of the pregnancy, only 13% of the women involved in the study were not in paid employment.

But six months later – among the 117 couples who replied to the questionnaire at this stage – the number of stay-at-home mums had risen to 46.2%.

While 29.4% of mothers had planned to resume work by six months postnatal, only 23.1% of the first-time mothers had actually managed or wanted to return to work.

A qualitative study of 13 couples  showed that both the male and female respondents took it for granted that it was the woman who would ‘be there for the baby’.

Only one father had considered taking parental leave for three months until his wife went back to work, while another mother wanted her husband to consider taking parental leave for a year, though he was reluctant to do so.

One father had to take three months’ parental leave in the postnatal period to be with his wife, who was suffering from postnatal depression. The rest of the couples did not mention the possibility of the father taking leave to care for the child.

Commenting on this study, industrial relations expert Anna Borg from the centre of labour studies concludes that “gender roles in Malta are still very traditional, with mothers assuming most of the share of the caring work associated with their first baby and the majority of fathers not even considering sharing parental leave with the mother.”

According to Borg, the reasons why only 23% of the first-time mothers had returned to employment by six months after the birth of the child do not emerge clearly from the study.

“However, one can speculate that Maltese mothers may either be reluctant to leave their child to go to work at such an early stage of their infant’s life, or that they may be facing real difficulties in doing so. Because of traditional gender roles, one can also assume that a number of mothers will never return to the formal labour market.”