Parental leave and return to work: The design and implementation of a national survey.

Abstract

While comprehensive surveys of parents and employers on the use and impact of parental leave provisions are regularly conducted in countries such as the UK, information on the use of maternity and paternity leave policies and the work experiences of parents following the birth of a child is extremely limited in Australia. There is a lack information on basic issues such as the number of women in paid work prior to the birth of a child, the proportion who are eligible for maternity leave, take up rates of paid and unpaid leave, and patterns of return to work following the birth of a child. Additionally, almost nothing is known about access to and use of paternity leave. In this paper we outline the design of a survey to fill these gaps and to provide a comprehensive basis for the analysis of parental leave in Australia. We begin with an overview of currently available statistics, then describe the type of sample and survey questionnaire necessary to move beyond these limitations and inform more detailed analyses. Subsequent sections of the paper report on a dress rehearsal for the survey (conducted in September/October 2004), and provide some preliminary results to assess the capacity of the research design to address our goals.