Sickness absence and disability pension three years before and seven years after first childbirth: A Swedish population-based cohort study.

There is a widely held belief, in Sweden and internationally, that women with children are more likely to be on sickness absence (SA) than their nulliparous counterparts. However, empirical findings in the field are limited and inconsistent. We aimed to explore initially nulliparous women's patterns of SA and disability pension (DP) three years before and seven years after 2009, by later parity. We conducted a longitudinal cohort study of nulliparous women in Sweden on 31 December 2009 ( Women remaining nulliparous had consistently more standardized mean SA/DP days than women giving birth. Compared with women with one birth, women with several births had similar mean numbers of standardized SA/DP days during Y