StatCan study says new moms more likely than other women to become self-employed
OTTAWA — A new study from Statistics Canada suggests that new mothers who become self-employed after having children are able to better manage their weekly hours of work, giving them a better work-family balance.
The study released Friday finds that women who work full- or part-time jobs when they don’t have children for the most part work 40 hours a week, but that clustering effect fades with new mothers who take the leap into self-employment.
Instead, the study finds an even distribution of work hours, meaning roughly the same percentage of new mothers work 10, 20, 30 and 40 hours a week, suggesting they tailor their hours to the family’s child-care needs.
The study is the first of its kind in Canada to mine empirical research — in this case results from the 2006 mandatory long-form census and the 2011 voluntary national household survey — for insights into the work choices new mothers make.