Most families change their usual way of living with the birth of a child. They “maneuver” in search of a more effective distribution of childcare responsibilities, and adjust their work strategies to the needs of children. Support options to keep family and work balance for Belarusian parents are limited due to rooted social patterns (distribution of roles in the family) and institutional conditions based on them (f.e. family policy design). The most common model of family adaptation to childbirth in Belarus is the long-run “dropping-out” of a mother of her professional activity, despite the existence of a range of labor guarantees for workers with family responsibilities.
This work is part of a study of the attitude of the Belarusian population to the social protection system, which is conducted by the IPM Research Center together with BEROC.
The Policy Paper is available only in Russian.