[What Happens After Childbirth? Changes in Partners' Employment Patterns Three Years After the Transition to...

For many couples, the transition to parenthood also marks a transition to gender-specific employment arrangements. However, decisions about employment arrangements after the birth of the first child can be critical for future employment patterns and old-age provision. This article focuses on two questions: first, whether after the transition to parenthood there is a convergence in the employment patterns of younger parental couples born in the 1980s compared with birth cohorts born in the 1970s, and second, whether a division of labour before the transition to parenthood plays an increasing role in employment arrangements afterwards. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we analysed the employment patterns of 900 couples over 36 months after the transition to parenthood using sequence, cluster, and regression analysis methods. It was shown that even though traditional employment arrangements have declined in importance, they continue to dominate. Furthermore, the convergence observed is due more to the increasing discontinuities in men's employment trajectories than to the birth of the child. Moreover, the prebirth division of labour has a rather minor influence on the postbirth employment arrangements of younger parental couples. The findings suggest that greater efforts should be made to reduce gender inequalities in the labour market in order to create further incentives for a more equal division of labour in the couple context.