Abstract

While the link between atypical work and family formation has been widely explored in the literature, less attention has been paid to the impact of the type of contract on women's employment continuity around motherhood. By drawing on the last wave of the "Longitudinal Survey on Italian Families" (ILFI, 2005), in this paper we analyse the life courses of Italian women from their first job to the age of 30-40 and their risk of moving from employment to unemployment or inactivity around the birth of the first child. Our results show that, in the cohorts observed, low-educated women are those most at risk of withdrawing from the labour market to become "housewives", regardless of whether they are temporary or permanent workers and/ or self-employed. However, the type of contract seems to affect the timing of their decisions: women in temporary jobs exit at the same rate as those in permanent jobs, but when they exit, they tend to do so before having children, regardless of whether they are high or low educated. In addition, atypical workers are at greater risk of unemployment, which can also translate into discouragement and permanent withdrawal from the labour market and, once withdrawn, into the decision to have children.