Lead
Two feelings coexist for many parents on leave: the anxiety that "doing nothing during leave will leave me behind," and the reality that "between nursing and night wakings, there is nothing left for learning." This article is not here to push you either way. It is here to lay out the data that belong in that decision before you make it — what parental leave actually looks like for learning, how wage profiles change after career interruptions, and what international comparisons suggest about where the real constraints lie.