Parental leave appears to be beneficial. There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that babies do better when their mothers take some maternity leave. In the US, for example, research has shown that when the FMLA was introduced, babies did better. Premature birth went down, as did infant mortality.7 The mechanism may be that if moms are off work with small babies, they are better able to get care for them when they are sick. This policy may also have encouraged leave before birth for women with difficult pregnancies, which could account for the effect on premature birth.
