Employment characteristics and transitions of mothers in the longitudinal study of Australian children

Executive summary: For women, the life stage at which combining employment with other commitments is most challenging is when they are raising their children. This report focuses on this time, providing information about mothers’ employment from those with babies through to those with primary school-age children. The report provides some broad descriptive information about mothers’ employment patterns, including work hours, job contracts and occupations, in addition to the simpler measure of whether or not they are employed. It also explores how patterns vary across the characteristics of mothers and families. The report is based on the first four waves of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC), including families of children from both the B cohort (‘birth’ at Wave 1, born between March 2003 and February 2004) and the K cohort (‘kindergarten’ at Wave 1, born between March 1999 and February 2000). The data are primarily taken from reports of mothers of these children and specifically relate to characteristics of their employment at each wave. This allows analyses of differences in employment characteristics of mothers who have different personal and family characteristics and also allows analyses of mothers’ employment transitions from one wave to the next. Both approaches are used in this report