Abstract

In recent decades, European countries increased funding for early childhood education and care (ECEC), aiming to support maternal employment and foster child development. Yet, little is known about the simultaneous development of childcare utilization and employment, and their joint influence on child development. Therefore, we examine (1) the interplay between maternal employment and diverse childcare types until age four, and (2) their consequences of different combinations for child development. Drawing on life-course-theory, we focus on the linked-lives paradigm to explore the interplay between mother’s and children’s life domains (Elder et al., 2003). Based on rational cost-benefit-considerations and the theory of Cunha and Heckman (2010), we expect that mothers with more advantaged family characteristics have higher opportunity costs for maternal childcare, therefore choosing earlier employment and enrolment in ECEC to foster child development through high-quality learning environments. We contribute by providing novel evidence on the interplay between childcare histories and maternal employment trajectories from a trajectory-based perspective in exceptional depth, demonstrating their impact on family dynamics and child development, thereby deepening our understanding of social realities. Using a linkage of the German National Educational Panel Study and administrative maternal employment trajectories, we identify childcare-work-patterns conducting multichannel sequence analysis.