As self-employment offers greater flexibility compared to wage and salary contracts, women might choose it to achieve a better work-family balance. Past empirical research on this topic yielded equivocal results, however. We add to this discussion and provide evidence for Poland. Public support for working parents in Poland is relatively poor and women need to develop strategies in order to combine work and care. Running one’s own business might be such a strategy. We adopt a life-course perspective and investigate whether self-employment encourages childbearing and whether women who have already given birth are more likely to opt for self-employment. We estimate multi-process hazard models, using the Generations and Gender Survey. We find that self-employment neither affects women's fertility decisions nor does it attract mothers on wage and salary contracts. Nevertheless, it is chosen by non-employed mothers as it may be the only opportunity for them to enter the labour market.

与工资和薪水合同相比，自营职业提供更大的灵活性，女性可能会选择它来实现更好的工作与家庭平衡。然而，过去关于该主题的实证研究得出了模棱两可的结果。我们加入这个讨论并为波兰提供证据。在波兰，公众对在职父母的支持相对较差，女性需要制定战略以兼顾工作和照料。经营自己的企业可能就是这样一种策略。我们采用生命历程的视角，调查自营职业是否鼓励生育，以及已经生育的女性是否更有可能选择自营职业。我们使用世代和性别调查来估计多过程危害模型。我们发现自营职业既不会影响女性的 的生育决定，也不会吸引有工资和薪金合同的母亲。尽管如此，它仍被未就业的母亲选择，因为这可能是她们进入劳动力市场的唯一机会。