Working life, health and well-being of parents

Objective: Birth cohorts collect valuable and under-utilized information on employment and health of parents before and during pregnancy, at birth, and sometimes after birth. In this discussion paper, we examine how these data could be exploited to study the complex relationships and interactions between parenthood, work, and health among parents themselves. Methods: Using a web-based database of birth cohorts, we summarize information on maternal employment and health conditions and other potentially related variables in cohorts spread throughout Europe. This provided information on what data are available and could be used in future studies, and what was missing if specific questions are to be addressed, exploiting the opportunity to explore work-health associations across heterogenous geographical and social contexts. Results: We highlight the many potentialities provided by birth cohorts and identify gaps that need to be addressed to adopt a life-course approach and investigate topics specific to the peri-pregnancy period, such as psychosocial aspects. We address the technical difficulties implied by data harmonization and the ethical challenges related to the repurposing of data, and provide scientific, ecological and economic arguments in favor of improving the value of data already available as a result of a serious investment in human and material resources. Conclusions: There is a hidden treasure in birth cohorts that deserves to be brought out to study the relationships between employment and health among working parents in a time when the boundaries between work and life are being stretched more than ever before. This paper was written within the scope of OMEGANET, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology), project CA16216: Network on the Coordination and Harmonisation of European Occupational Cohorts. Maribel Casas holds a Miguel Servet fellowship (CP16/00128) funded by Instituto de Salud Carlos III and co-funded by European Social Fund “Investing in your future”. We acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the “Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa 2019-2023” Program (2018-000806-S), and support from the Generalitat de Catalunya through the CERCA Program. Milena Maule’s work was supported by the Compagnia di San Paolo “Bando per il finanziamento ex-post di Progetti di Ricerca di Ateneo – Anno 2018”. Ghislaine Scelo’s work was supported by a LifeCycle fellowship (Grant Agreement No. 733206 LifeCycle). Working life, health and well-being of parents: a joint effort to uncover hidden treasures in European birth cohorts.