Parenting Journal · Volume 1 · Issue 5 · Licensed source edition
Health before pregnancy and eligibility for parental leave benefits: a Swedish total population cohort study
Originally published 2025-03-18 · BMC Public Health
BMC · DOI 10.1186/s12889-025-22248-8 ↗
Working-family evidence
Work, care and the whole person.
Examines how health before pregnancy relates to earnings-linked leave eligibility, exposing the risk that employment-based benefits least support parents with weaker labor-market attachment.
Directly examines work and family life, parenting, caregiving or employment policies for families.
Editorial reading guide · Trust
Can a parent with a prior health condition actually qualify for our most protective benefits?
Examines how health before pregnancy relates to earnings-linked leave eligibility, exposing the risk that employment-based benefits least support parents with weaker labor-market attachment.
Study context
151,452 first-time mothers aged 25–45 resident in Sweden and giving birth in 2009–2013.
Age / stage: Mothers aged 25–45; newborn period.
Read with three questions
- How were prior specialist care, chronicity and earnings-related eligibility defined?
- Why were mental-health conditions especially relevant to the eligibility pattern?
- Which eligibility rule, rather than a parent’s motivation, might produce an access gap?
Keep the limits in view
Register associations reflect Sweden’s benefit structure and cannot establish that a particular employer rule caused later health outcomes; health-care records omit untreated illness.
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Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Amy Heshmati; Andrea Dunlavy; Eleonora Mussino; Sara Fritzell; Sol P Juárez (2025). Health before pregnancy and eligibility for parental leave benefits: a Swedish total population cohort study BMC Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-025-22248-8
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-05. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.