Brehm and Engelhardt (2015) revisited the cross-country correlation be- tween total fertility rates (TFR) and female labour force participation rates (FLFP), that turned from negative to positive after 1985. They contribute an important analysis by age groups. However, the pre-1985 negative corre- lation is taken as support for the hypothesis that for women having young children and being employed are (partially) incompatible, implying that the correlation turning positive contradicts that hypothesis regarding the later period. This note provides three comments on why this cross-country corre- lation is not informative to critically test hypotheses on the degree to which women combine motherhood and employment

Nieuwenhuis, R. (2015). Association, Aggregation, and Paradoxes: On the Positive Correlation Between Fertility and Women’s Employment. Demographic Research, 32, 1–5.