What Makes Mothers Decide (Not) to Become Entrepreneurs? Unpacking the Role of Time and Money in Parental Leave Policies

Titelangaben

Theunissen, Pomme ; Kensbock, Julia M. ; Schüler, Jens ; Baum, Matthias ; Gerards, Ruud:
What Makes Mothers Decide (Not) to Become Entrepreneurs? Unpacking the Role of Time and Money in Parental Leave Policies.
In: Journal of Management Studies. (23 April 2025) . - 43 S..
ISSN 1467-6486
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13215

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Abstract

Whether mothers become entrepreneurs after childbirth may depend on the generosityof the parental leave that they receive. We apply a resource perspective to disentangle the impactof the policy’s time and money components on mothers’ likelihood of becoming entrepreneurs.Against the common belief that generous parental leave discourages entrepreneurship, we suggestthat offering more time and monetary resources through parental leave can promote mothers’entrepreneurship. In a natural experiment (n = 181 mother entrepreneurs from the German Socio-Economic Panel), we find that a German time-contractionary policy reform (2001) reduced theodds of mothers becoming self-employed by 17 per cent. A subsequent money-expansionary re-form (2007) was unrelated to mothers’ entrepreneurial entry. Our second study, a conjoint experi-ment (n = 2176 decisions nested within 136 women), confirms these findings, showing a significanteffect for only the time but not the money component of parental leave on women’s likelihood ofself-employment. We further explore boundary conditions that underscore nuanced effects of thesepolicies depending on household burdens and socioeconomic context. We conclude that it is thetime component of parental leave policies that matters most, while money affects the likelihood ofbecoming an entrepreneur only among mothers heavily burdened with household responsibilities.