十九世纪初出现了针对孕妇和新妈妈的劳动力市场政策。这些政策的主要动机是确保母亲及其新生儿的健康。随着女性劳动力市场参与度的提高，研究的重点逐渐转移到产假政策对womenÃ①â， â”①劳动力市场结果和性别平等的影响上。支持在产假期限、福利和工作保护方面延长母亲产假权利的人认为，这将支持mothersÃ①â， Ëœ劳动力市场依恋，允许她们在分娩后从工作中抽出一段时间，然后安全地回到产前的工作中。还有人指出，延长产假对母亲来说可能是一把双刃剑:如果年轻女性可能要休假几个月，甚至几年，雇主在招聘和提拔员工时可能会考虑到这一点。因此，这些政策可能最终会对womenÃⅱâ， â”ⅱ的劳动力市场结果产生不利影响。这导致人们更加关注激活父亲休陪产假，2019年，欧洲议会批准了一项指令，要求成员国确保至少两个月的指定陪产假。在过去的几十年里，关于产假的文献大量涌现。关于这一主题的研究越来越多，得出了一些一致的发现。首先，研究发现，引入短产假既有利于产妇和儿童的健康，也有利于mothersÃ①â， â①劳动力市场的结果。 Second, there appear to be negligible benefits from a leave extending beyond six months in terms of health out-comes and children’s long-run outcomes. Furthermore, longer leaves have little, or even adverse, influence on mothers’ labor market outcomes. However, some evidence suggests that there may be underlying heterogeneous effects from extended leaves among different socioeconomic groups. The literature on the effect of earmarked paternity leave indicates that these policies prove effective in increasing fathers’ leave-taking and involvement in childcare. However, the evidence on the influence of paternity leave on gender equality in the labor market remains scarce, and somewhat mixed. Finally, recent studies that focus on the effect of parental leave policies for a firm find that in general, firms are able to compensate for lost labor when their employees go on leave. However, if firms face constraints when replacing employees, it could negatively influence their performance.