The Cost of School Holidays: Mothers Pay the Price

Every summer, parents rearrange their working lives around school holidays, yet whether this recurring disruption affects their health remains largely unexplored. Using data from the French Labour Force Survey and a Regression Discontinuity in Time design, we provide the first empirical evidence that summer school holidays significantly worsen mothers’ self-reported health, with an estimated decline of 0.126 standard deviations. In contrast, fathers’ health remains unaffected. This negative effect is concentrated among full-time working mothers and is not observed among parents who were on leave at the time of the interview. Likewise, non-parents are unaffected by the national school holidays. These findings are consistent with a mechanism operating through intensified unpaid caregiving burdens. Our results reveal a previously overlooked source of gender inequality in parental health, suggesting that the school calendar contributes to the disproportionate caregiving and health burden experienced by mothers, with important implications for family support and leave policies.