Within the child’s first year of life we estimate an increase of 3-3.5 months among those eligible for the leave.5 This led to a significant increase in the duration of breastfeeding in the first year – over 1 month for eligible mothers—and in the duration of exclusive breastfeeding—over one-half month. [...] The proportion of 9 This suggests that the reform led to an increase in the pre-birth employment of mothers, but the match is not exact because each survey runs from April though January of the following year and the reference period is for employment in the 12 months preceding the birth of a child who can be up to 12 months old. [...] We attempt to separate the effects of breastfeeding and parental care through our choice of outcomes and the age groups we use for analysis, but the intrinsic duality of the treatment remains a qualification for this part of the analysis. [...] We use data from the second (2003) and third (2005) cycles of the survey.15 We sample the same birth cohorts as in the 15 Data from the first cycle has a different coding of the breastfeeding duration variable and no information on the introduction of food or exclusive breastfeeding. [...] The observations on the older children will control for any year-specific environmental factors affecting the health of children of all the ages, or any systematic survey instrument effects: subtle changes in the wording or delivery of the survey across waves that affect the responses to the health questions.