Abstract
Previous studies have shown that childrearing has a different impact on a mother's professional
career, depending, among other reasons, on how much time passed from birth to returning to work. In
this paper, we use a competing risks model to determine which variables may explain time out of work,
as well as the transition back to work for young mothers in France. In our study, mothers can decide to
go back to the same employer, change employer and/or change labour supply. Our results show that it
is mostly the age of the mothers at birth, their pre-birth wages, tenure, firm size as well as the state of
the economy as a whole that play a large role in the way young mothers go back to work, if at all. This
research highlights the key factors on which causal research should be based in order to advise firms and
also the state on how to influence mothers' labour supply behaviors.