Women's Employment and Homemaking Careers: A Lifespan Perspective

Women’s Employment and Homemaking Careers To my loving parents, Margaret Gleason Skromme and Lawrence Hilmer Skromme ...

Author: Cherlyn Skromme Granrose

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Women’s Employment and Homemaking Careers

To my loving parents, Margaret Gleason Skromme and Lawrence Hilmer Skromme

Women’s Employment and Homemaking Careers A Lifespan Perspective

Cherlyn Skromme Granrose Berry College, USA

Edward Elgar Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Cherlyn Skromme Granrose 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2009942054

ISBN 978 1 84720 354 0

04

Typeset by Cambrian Typesetters, Camberley, Surrey Printed and bound by MPG Books Group, UK

Contents Figure and tables Preface and acknowledgments PART I 1

2

vii viii

BACKGROUND

Introduction to the women, the study, and the context Changing childbearing and employment patterns in the US from 1980 to 2006 Phase I Phase II Phase III Phase IV Lifespan integration of employment and family: past theory and research findings Life stage theories Process theories Decision theories Summary and conclusion

PART II

3 3 5 7 9 10 16 16 18 20 35

CAREER PATTERNS: STORIES AND EXPLANATIONS

3

Careerists and breadwinners, working full-time Manager, wife and mother – Margaret’s story Divorced careerist and parent – Daniela’s story Career woman and stepparent later in life – Sophia’s story Non-parent breadwinner career woman – Naomi’s story Summary and conclusions 4 Part-time careers Careerist with an unexpected part-time career in the same occupation – Carla’s story Part-time careerists who changed occupations – Corinne’s story Part-time homemaker with a continuous occupation – Patricia’s story Homemaker and part-time career changer – Beatrice’s story Summary and conclusions v

49 50 58 61 64 69 72 73 75 77 80 84

vi

5

6

Women’s employment and homemaking careers

Homemaking careers Full-time homemaker – Hannah’s story A homemaking career after initially returning to work – Lettie’s story Returned to work after full-time homemaking – Ann’s story Homemaker and part-time mixed career – Ursula’s story Summary and conclusions Entrepreneurial and self-employed careers Self-employed family supporter – Patti’s story Husband and wife family-business owners – Dorothy’s story Employee, homemaker, and self-employed consultant – Susan’s story Childcare entrepreneur – Helen’s story Entrepreneur who became a homemaker – Laura’s story Summary and conclusion

88 89 91 96 100 104 107 108 110 112 116 119 121

PART III CONCLUSIONS AND LESSONS 7

What lessons have we learned? Summaries of each group Changing beliefs and norms: Phase I to Phase III Consistency and change in life choices between college and mid-life Future plans Implications for women Implications for husbands Implications for employers Implications for social scientists Future research

127 127 130 133 138 138 144 144 146 151

Appendix A Appendix B

157 176

Index

189

Figure and tables FIGURE 2.1

A rational decision-making model of intentions to work following childbirth

21

TABLES 7.1 B.1 B.2 B.3 B.4 B.5 B.6 B.7

B.8

B.9

Comparison of Phase I intentions and later behavior Changes in consequences of working including all subjects Changes in consequences of not working including all subjects Changes in normative influences including all subjects Changes in consequences of working of Phase IV subjects only Changes in consequences of not working of Phase IV subjects only Changes in normative influences of Phase IV subjects only Differences in consequences of working between full-time career women, part-time career women, homemakers and entrepreneurs Differences in consequences of not working between full-time career women, part-time career women, homemakers, and entrepreneurs Differences in normative influences between full-time career women, part-time career women, homemakers, and entrepreneurs

vii

135 176 178 179 180 181 182

183

185

187

Preface and acknowledgments This book was written to provide a comprehensive look backward and a small glimpse forward of the lives and work–family balance decisions of a group of Northeastern college-educated, US women currently in middle age. It includes both those who have chosen a continuous employment career, those who have chosen a continuous homemaker career and those who have been in and out of the paid labor force during the past 25 years since their college graduation. Hopefully this account will provide some ‘aha!’ familiarity among other midlife women and present a guidepost for younger women who follow. The book also contains information from other scholars who have studied women’s lives and uses their theories to give shape to the data and provide an understandable framework. Scholars may be more interested in the summaries of this scholarly work in Chapter 2 and in the data tables presented in Appendix B. I have tried to limit the number crunching in the text to provide a more readable account, but the primary evidence is included in these Appendix tables and in previously published accounts of this longitudinal project. Readers who are not scholars by profession may wish to skim lightly over these parts of the book. Throughout the book the word ‘work’ means paid employment of more than ten hours per week, unless stated otherwise, but this is not to imply that homemakers are not also doing significant, important, hard work. Also, when I say that women ‘do this’ or ‘believe that’ I am referring to US collegeeducated women similar to those in this sample unless I say otherwise. I would not presume to generalize from this group of women to all US women or to women in general. One cannot write about integrating family and employment without acknowledging the many people in both family spheres and employment who shaped my life and this book. Forgive me if this is a long list, but it reflects just a fraction of the many individuals who participated in my 67-year road to this volume. Five generations have contributed to my own sense of family revealed in this book. My grandparents showed the pioneer and immigrant spirit that brought them to the US and guided them through the Midwestern dustbowl and Great Depression. My mother Margaret Gleason Skromme gave me life, courage, a love of beautiful things, and respect for those who choose a homemaker lifestyle. My father Lawrence Hilmer Skromme showed me that I could viii

Preface and acknowledgments

ix

combine shrewd business sense and tearful sentimentality without embarrassment. My sisters Inga Baird Hill (a Ball State University strategic management professor) and Karen Nash Sequino (a Connecticut judge) gave me a competitive edge and contributed models of how to balance work and family that I continue to admire. My former husband John T. Granrose (a philosophy professor and Jungian analyst) who introduced me to an intellectually, esthetically and politically exciting academic life, was a willing, nurturing children’s caretaker in the mid-1960s when this certainly broke the norms for husband and father. My three children taught me more than any book about the difficulties and rewards of balancing career and family; they seem to have mercifully forgiven the times my work kept me from important events and remembered the times we shared happiness together. My eldest daughter Karen Granrose Friend showed me how a woman of the twenty-first century successfully integrates her life as she combines employment with a dizzying family schedule with Bruce and three of my grandchildren whom I adore, Anthony, Ashley, and Rose, darting from church consignment sales to swim team to baseball, football, and soccer games. My middle daughter Kathleen confounded me daily with the intellect that led to her PhD in Spanish Language and Literature from the University of Virginia as she nurtured my handsome grandsons, Xavier and Daniel Rodriguez Granrose. Her death reminds me daily that no life escapes pain and disappointment, no matter how carefully we plan. My son Jonathan serves not as a role model but as a practical assistant bailing me out of every computer difficulty as he continues his career in Silicon Valley and reminding me that every life needs to contain an element of dance. My career path has contained an even longer list of people who shaped my approach to and content of this book. As a biology Master of Science degree student my prescient chair warned me that in the 1960s most colleges would not employ both a husband and wife (from his personal experience) and I should not take the qualifying examinations for the PhD since he knew that my husband was pursuing his PhD as well at the University of Michigan. My first mentor, Dr Joseph Hindman found a way around the Georgia state law, forbidding a husband and wife to both hold permanent positions at the unversity, by reappointing me repeatedly as an adjunct instructor of biology while my husband was a faculty member at the University of Georgia. Dr Hindman also helped me find a position at Kansas State University after a difficult divorce left me so drained I could barely look for a job. My new friend, Ann Darby, another single mother of three, literally dragged me up by the bathing suit straps around our apartment pool every evening as she demonstrated, in her quiet, kind way, how one woman could teach junior high school English with mountains of papers to grade and still create a single parent family with grace and street smarts. Her continuing friendship over the years often reminds me

x


that the extended family, that includes friends scattered across the globe, play an important role in a balanced life. At Kansas State University, my friend Dr Ann Smith and her husband Dr Chris Smith have shown me how professional husbands and wives managed to negotiate the tricky career waters in the 1970s and 1980s to emerge as faculty members in the same department of one University while raising a lovely family. Neurobiology Professor, Dr Ann Kammer, my second mentor, and Jan Sloan, a creative historian, showed me how to apply for a grant and together we co-authored a book on women in science, my first published efforts to understand how women with dreams of individual life work decide what they have to do to make that dream a reality and how their decisions affect their family lives. My other mentor in Kansas, Dr Hal Orbach, introduced me to the field of gerontology and the study of lives through time as well as some of its most gifted practitioners, and, when the University of Chicago and study with Dr Bernice Neugarten were financially out of the question, he advised me to go to Rutgers to study with Dr Lois Hoffman, a pioneer scholar of what we then called ‘working mothers’. Before Dr Hoffman returned to the University of Michigan, she broadened my horizons by providing me with an opportunity to attend the University of Hawaii’s ‘Summer Seminar on the Value of Children’, pointing to the effect of children on mother’s lives and also introducing me to the other great intellectual love of my life, Asian culture. Dr Lillian Troll, Dr Edith Neimark and that most helpful longitudinal methodological whiz, Dr Eric LaBouvie, guided me patiently though the pitfalls of my developmental psychology doctoral studies and dissertation, the fateful Phase I of the present study, when I was anxious to graduate in time to get a job and help put my eldest child through college. At Temple University, my fourth mentor, Dr Jim Portwood, took me to the Academy of Management in 1982 and introduced me to the Careers interest group and I found my way into the Women in Management interest group as well and thus entered the community of scholars that has sustained and guided me in the longitudinal study of women’s family and employment careers to this day: Susan Adams, Mike Arthur, Lotte Bailyn, Yehuda Baruch, Dan Feldman, Bernardo Ferdman, Karen Gaertner, Jeff Greenhaus, Hugh Gunz, Tim Hall, Lynn Isabella, Alison Konrad, Ellen Kossek, Laura Larwood, Barbara Lawrence, Lisa Mainiero, Suzyn Ornstein, Saroj Parasuraman, Freida Reitman, Joy Schneer, Uma Sekharan, Jeff Sonnenfeld, Lynda Stroh, Sherry Sullivan, Jim Werbel, and many others helped me with their scholarship, example and guidance. At Temple University, I expanded my study by collecting more data for Phase I and began to receive help from a legion of research assistants who coded data, ran analyses and helped me through each new phase of data collection. My records are not complete but among these graduate assistants, Evelyn

Preface and acknowledgments

xi

Cunningham helped broaden the diversity of the Phase I sample and increase its size. Rama Devi, Madan Annavarjula and his wife Shoba, and others assisted with distributing and coding Phase I and Phase II. At Berry College, Libby Allen, Sam Duenckel, Stephanie Panos, and Laura Chappell helped find new addresses, mail out letters and questionnaires, code data and match Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III questionnaires to keep the longitudinal process going, Chris Stegall and Lisa Nagel helped code Phase Four; and Marcelo Peterlini and Bethany McDaniel helped correct respondent copy and analyze data. As undergraduate students, they assumed important and sometimes difficult responsibilities and came through with flying colors, living up to the Berry College tradition of serving others and developing head, heart, and hands. For Phase II, Phase III, and Phase IV various members of the Rutgers and the Temple Alumni/ae Associations helped track down current addresses. Those who helped included Dick Lloyd, Brian Crockett, Terry Callaghan, Eugene Armstead, Tom Edmonds, M. Isabel La Venuta, and David Bensman at Rutgers; and Bill Hart, Stuart Sullivan, Mathew Engle, and Carrie Robertson at Temple. Faculty colleagues also participated in various study phases along the way. Dr Eileen Applebaum provided encouragement and friendship during Phase I when we were both Temple faculty members discussing loss of lifetime earnings when women left the labor force, and she continued her support through Phase VI of this study when she invited me to become a Fellow at the Rutgers Center for the Study of Women and Work, my academic home for the process of Phase IV data collection and writing. Dr Eileen Kaplan was the leader and torchbearer for Phase II interviews and co-author of the previous book.1 Without her, I might never have been able to translate my early plans for a longitudinal study into reality. Dr Barbara Woods McElroy and Dr Paula Danskin Harveston Englis worked on analyzing and writing up entrepreneurship data from Phase III, while we shared faculty responsibilities at Berry College. Secretarial help has varied throughout the project. Earlier work was assisted by B.J. Reich and Jane Gray at Claremont Graduate School. The administrative assistants at Berry College who helped specifically with Phase III, Phase IV, and this book include Barbara Henderson, Kathleen Peacock Woods, Lynda Eden, Rita Fraser Akins, Marsha Wilson, Kerrie Dalrymple, Melinda Lyons and Heather Brand. They kept my financial records organized, translated my illegible handwriting and in particular, mysteriously produced mailing labels from Excel spreadsheets and aligned table columns – skills that still elude me. Financial help was provided primarily by Temple University and Berry College. In addition to paying for countless mailings and telephone calls to find participants, I received the following grants to support this project.

xii


• • • • • • • • •

$1000, Grant in Aid, Rutgers University, 1980–81 $1500, Grant in Aid, Temple University, 1982–83 $3000, Grant in Aid, Temple University, 1990 $4200, Research Incentive Fund, Temple University, 1990 $4000, Radcliff Research Award, Radcliff College, 1990 $1700, Faculty Research Grant, Berry College, 2001–02 $2500, Summer Research Stipend, Berry College, 2006 Full Salary Sabbatical Award, Berry College, Spring, 2007 $2000 Faculty Development Award, Berry College, Summer, 2007

Finally after all of the data were collected and words put to paper, the ultimate help in producing a book came from my publisher, Edward Elgar. My most supportive champion has been Alan Sturmer, Acquisitions Editor. In addition Caroline Phillips in the UK and Tara Gorvine in the US managed the process, and Katy Wight, Francine O’Sullivan and Hilary Quinn helped develop and execute the marketing plan. Christine Gowen and other unnamed proofreaders and copyeditors painstakingly corrected my poor grammar, abysmal punctuation, and tendency to obfuscation, but one person particularly stands out for help in going from draft to final product and that is Bob Pickens, a most patient and intelligent editor. Obviously it takes a group to write a book, particularly one that has been in the making for more than 25 years. I cannot ever repay the debts I owe to the people, named and unnamed, who helped me along the way. This volume is better for their contribution; the mistakes and forgetful omissions remain my own responsibility.

NOTE 1. Granrose, C.S. and E.A. Kaplan (1996), Work-Family Role Choices for Women in Their 20s and 30s, Westport, CT: Praeger.

PART I

Background

1. Introduction to the women, the study, and the context What is it like to be a college-educated woman in your forties in the US in the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century? How have mid-life women tried to create lives that have meaning and joy as they have made choices about how to balance employment and family responsibilities? How have they coped with conflicts and hassles that came with their choices? What paths did they travel to create the complex lives they live? What kind of future do they envision going into their fifties and sixties? This book addresses these questions using answers that one group of female graduates from two Northeastern state universities in the US have reported between their final days in college in the early 1980s and the middle of their lives in 2006–07. The primary focus of both the original study and of this book was to ask women while they were still at college whether or not they expected to be employed during the first three years after the birth of their first child and what they thought it would be like if they were or were not employed mothers. Then one decade and two decades after they first participated in the study we sent written questionnaires to the women asking about the same topics and also asking what they had done and how their families and employers were influencing their choices. Finally, 25 years after we began the study, we tried to find the women again. Those women we did find we interviewed in person or on the telephone and asked them to reflect upon their life course since college and asked them to tell us about their most important life events. As time passed, the study lost track of some women but we have maintained contact with enough women to gain some answers to these questions that might help other women understand their own experiences, share knowledge of similar joys and sorrows, anticipate their own future, and perhaps even learn to avoid some mistakes. To set the stage we can look at how US women’s lives changed during the years included in this study.

CHANGING CHILDBEARING AND EMPLOYMENT PATTERNS IN THE US FROM 1980 TO 2006 There is some consensus that women’s home lives in North America changed 3

4


between 1980 and 2006 in ways that were both predicted and unpredicted. Women continued having fewer children and having them later in their lives. For example, in 1980 the average number of children each woman had was three and by 2004 that number had dropped to less than two. The number of all women under 45 who had never had children doubled from 10 percent in 1980 to 20 percent in 2005, and the number of women delaying childbirth also doubled: in 1980 about 7 percent had their first child when they were in their forties compared to 14 percent in 2005.1 The labor force participation of women also changed, with an upward swing between the 1980s and 1990s and a slight decrease after 2000. In the early 1980s, 48 to 49 percent of women with infant children (one year old or under) were in the labor force. By 2001, 55 percent of mothers in the labor force had infant children, down from a record 59 percent in 1998. This marked the first significant decline in the labor force participation of mothers of infants since the US Census Bureau began collecting these data in 1976. In that year, 31 percent of mothers of infants were in the labor force.2 In addition to the increase in maternal employment, more women were working full-time and in a broader range of occupations. During the period of this study several trends have occurred in the range of employment opportunities. The number of women in professional and managerial occupations has gone from 40.6 percent in 1980 through 46.5 percent in 1990 to 51.1 percent in 2006.3 Women also have appeared in increasingly higher levels of management in organizations, but not to the extent one would expect from the number of men and women with similar aspirations in middle management.4 The glass ceiling that inhibits many women from obtaining promotions seemed to have cracked but was not broken by the change to the twenty-first century. In the meantime organizations downsized and the number of levels from top to bottom decreased so that promotions were more difficult for everyone to attain. In the beginning of the twenty-first century, downsizing and global competition have so altered the old psychological contract of ‘a good day’s work and company loyalty in exchange for future job security and promotions’ that many people believe that even if they do good work they could still lose their jobs.5 Those who do not lose their jobs are increasingly asked to perform the work of laid-off colleagues, thus increasing workloads and decreasing the amount of individual flexibility in how people do their jobs and when they do them. Further changes in technology have seen most managers connected to their workplace day and night through cell phones, beepers, and Blackberries, decreasing the possibility of separation between work and family spheres.6 The economic recession of 2008–10 had not occurred when these data were collected, so the many changes that are related to that phenomenon are not reported in this volume.

Introduction to the women, the study, and the context

5

In summary, the important work and family changes that occurred during the phases of this study are as follows: more women are having fewer children at a later age; they are employed in management and professional jobs with constrained upward mobility opportunities and overloaded schedules that spill over into their family time. Taking into account these broad changes in US women’s lives that have occurred in the past 25 years, we can more clearly understand the specific lives of the women in this study. First, we describe the cultural context and then the women’s lives in the early 1980s as the study participants were leaving college. We then introduce the cultural context and their lives after they left their undergraduate days behind and progressed to become mid-career employees and homemakers.

PHASE I The Cultural Context The first phase of data collection started in the Spring of 1980 and continued through the academic year 1981–82. By the beginning of the 1980 election season the US was reeling over the prolonged hostage crisis in Iran. In 1980 Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter’s bid for a second term and the hostages returned from Iran on Inauguration Day.7 The 1980s had The Cosby Show and Family Ties on TV and popular movies included Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters, The Empire Strikes Back, Rain Man, Airplane!, Amadeus, and Rocky III. In music, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, and Bon Jovi were popular entertainers and the Rubik’s Cube was a national craze.8 The underdog US hockey team defeated the highly favored Russian team in the semifinals of the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. The US team would go on to defeat Finland for the gold medal and Bjorn Borg defeated John McEnroe in the final of Wimbledon.9 This was the US popular cultural atmosphere as the study began. The Women who Participated in this Study The women who provided the Phase I data-set in 1980 included 202 respondents out of 300 randomly selected juniors and seniors from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, who filled out a written questionnaire placed in their campus mail boxes. This sample was expanded to 433 women in 1981 and diversified by sending out a second wave of about 100 questionnaires to seniors in the Temple University School of Business and School of Social Work, and 200 more seniors at Rutgers and Douglass Colleges of Rutgers University.

6


The women in the final group of Phase I came primarily from small towns or rural areas in the US Northeast and they were often the first or second generation to attend college in their families. About 17 percent were AfricanAmerican and 40 percent were Catholic. The majority had fathers and mothers with a high school education or less. Less than one-third had mothers who were employed when their daughters were less than three years old, but about three-quarters of their mothers were employed by the time these students were teenagers. In college, about half of the participants were in a steady relationship but only about 18 percent were engaged or married. When they began to participate in the study about half of the women also had held some kind of job for a total of a year or more if one added all their work experience, and they worked primarily in service industries. Employment and Family Plans of College Women in 1980–81 In college most of the women had plans that included a general goal or direction or occupation, but the majority had limited career plans with few alternatives or back-up strategies other than a general idea of what kind of job to seek after college. In the early 1980s about 45 percent of these young women believed they would have two children and about one-third believed they would have three children. Their average plan for spacing between children was two to two and a half years for white women and one and a half to two years for African-American women. Their plans for childrearing primarily consisted of plans about what to teach their ‘perfect’ children. Few women had plans that anticipated illness, disability or absence of their spouse or children. In contrast to their career plans and childrearing plans, most women had well thought out and specific plans for integrating their employed work and childrearing plans. The strategies for combining employment and childrearing most commonly included working part-time, waiting until after the children were at school to return to work, hiring help in the home, placing their children in day-care centers, and/or getting their husbands to help.10 Mothers and potential husbands also influenced women’s plans. Some women wanted to do as their mothers had done, while a slightly smaller number of others saw their mothers as poor examples and wished to make different plans. Women wanted or expected to have a particular kind of spouse in order to have the kind of lives they desired, usually someone who would help with housework and childcare. Those who already had husbands or partners had a more realistic picture of limited assistance and their partners had more consequential effects on these women’s plans. Women who were actually part of a couple during college were more likely than those not involved with a partner to have developed specific work and childrearing plans beyond


7

graduation, and to have more detailed alternative strategies for combining work and childrearing if their first strategies were blocked.11 Because plans for combining work and childrearing were the central focus of this study, one specific question addressed their plans to combine these two activities: ‘How likely is it that you will work during the first three years after childbirth?’ As college women, one-third of white women and two-thirds of African American women said they expected to return to work in one year or less following childbirth. Half of the white women and 84 percent of the African American women believed they would return to work within three years of the birth of their first child.12 A previous volume describes how the women in this study changed during the first decade of their post-college lives13 and several academic articles describe various aspects of their plans and their decision-making process.14 These other sources may be consulted for a more detailed account of the information that is summarized here.

PHASE II The Cultural Context The second phase of data collection occurred in the 1990–91 academic year. George H.W. Bush had been elected President, and the US was entering a war in the Middle East. Bush led the United Nations coalition in the 1990–91 Gulf War to remove Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces from Kuwait. An economic recession from July 1990 to March 1991 was a contributing factor to his defeat in the 1992 Presidential election.15 Popular culture in the 1990s included the drug Viagra, Beanie Babies toys, Furbies toys, and Boy Bands. Music hits included ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ by Billy Ray Cyrus, ‘Ice Ice Baby’ by Vanilla Ice, ‘Macarena’ by Los Del Rio, ‘Vogue’ by Madonna, ‘Supermodel’ by RuPaul, ‘Wannabe’ by the Spice Girls and ‘Candle in the Wind’ by Elton John.16 Popular movies included Saving Private Ryan, Silence of the Lambs, Legend of the Fall, Philadelphia, Evita, Forrest Gump, and Pulp Fiction. In sports, the decade began with Buster Douglas defeating Mike Tyson to become the heavyweight boxing champion on 11 February 1990, and ended with the US women winning the World Cup soccer tournament, 10 July 1999.17 In this US cultural context, we sought out the women and asked them to answer a follow-up mailed questionnaire. Young Career Women and New Mothers in 1990–91 The women who responded to Phase II were less likely to be African-

8


American, less likely to have lived in a big city and less likely to have intended to return to work following childbirth than those who responded to Phase I but did not respond to Phase II. This was probably due to a lower response rate from one university which had more urban, African-American, career-oriented students. The 205 women who participated in Phase II of this study had maintained an educated, middle-class lifestyle during the 1980s. Of these women onethird went on to earn graduate degrees and 8 percent completed an MD, LLD or PhD degree. The most common occupations included manager (25 percent), housewife (11 percent), scientist (9 percent), and computer specialist (8 percent). Over 72 percent were working 35 or more hours per week in jobs they had held for the past three years. Their average income was slightly over $30 000 and for those who were married (about 90 percent), their spouses made about $50 000 annually in 1990. When asked about the factors that might encourage them to change jobs or leave their current employer, the most common responses were to have more time with their children, to care for their children because they could not find adequate childcare, and to find a more challenging job with more opportunity to advance. Family life was delayed longer than anticipated. In 1980, 91 percent had expected to have had their first child within ten years, but by 1990, only 46 percent of the women had at least one child; of those who had children, 20 percent had two children and 4 percent had three. Over 95 percent of those who had not yet had children in 1991 expected to have a child within the next five years. The participants generally believed that they were the best caretakers for their children, whether or not they were the only caretakers and most were self-confident in their abilities at home and at work. After collecting the data for Phase II we divided the women into four groups depending upon whether or not they intended to be employed during the first three years following the birth of their first child and what they actually did. The cut-off point was chosen to be three years after childbirth because by the age of three many children are in nursery school and childcare is somewhat easier to obtain for this age and above than for infants and toddlers. This child age was a common age for mothers to return to work in the early 1980s when the study began, although mothers actually returned to work much earlier in the 1990s and into the twenty-first century. Women working more than ten hours per week in paid employment were considered employed for purposes of this four-way classification. Thus the employed group includes part-time employees. In cases where women had not yet had a child by 1990, intentions to return to work if they were to have a child were used to classify the women. The four groups were homemakers, breadwinners, nesters, and careerists. Homemakers reported a higher probability that they would stay home after


9

childbirth in both Phase I and Phase II and careerists reported a higher probability that they would return to the labor force in both Phase I and Phase II. Breadwinners thought they would stay home in Phase I but actually reported in Phase II that they had returned to employment within the first three years after childbirth. Nesters changed their minds in the opposite way – reporting that they believed they would return to work in Phase I but that they had actually stayed home after childbirth in Phase II. The details of the comparison of women in each of these groups formed the basis of the first book which reports the results of this study and further details are available in that volume.18

PHASE III The Cultural Context Phase III of these data were collected in the 2000–01 academic year. Since Phase II many political changes had occurred. In 1993 the Clinton Democrats entered the White House, but by 1995 the Republican Party dominated the legislature. Hillary Clinton’s strong role in the administration led to criticism of the First Lady. Bill Clinton fulfilled a campaign promise by signing the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, which required large employers to allow their employees to take unpaid leave because of a family or medical emergency. Clinton’s proposals to rewrite health care failed but revisions of welfare legislation passed, and gays were partially tolerated in the military (under the ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ rubric). Clinton presided over continuous economic expansion, reductions in unemployment and growing wealth through a large rise in the stock market. However much of Clinton’s presidency was overshadowed by scandals, including the Kenneth Starr-led Whitewater investigation with no finding of wrongdoing by the Clintons and the President’s sexual encounters with Monica Lewinsky, for which he was impeached by the US House of Representatives but not convicted by the US Senate in votes largely following party lines.19 In 2000, George W. Bush became the winner of one of the closest general elections in American history – defeating Democratic Vice President Al Gore by five electoral votes, while Gore won a plurality of the nationwide popular vote in a contest ultimately decided by the US Supreme Court. The legislature was Republican, ‘Family Values’ was the buzzword of the day and the stock market crash of 2000–01 was led by the technology sector mired in a millennium hangover. After the 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center Twin Towers, George W. Bush announced that the US would implement a policy of preemptive strike against any nation it saw as a threat, and the war on terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq began.20

10


In 2000, reality shows became prime time models for TV – Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire and Survivor were popular. Other pop culture icons included digital music copied on Napster, DVDs, wireless communications, cell phone mania, scooters, and the fourth Harry Potter book.21 At the movies, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Gladiator were well attended and in sports, Evander Holyfield regained the world heavyweight title, becoming the first boxer to win the world heavyweight title four times. Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France, Michelle Kwan was the Ladies’ Olympic ice skating champion and Venus Williams won the US Open and Wimbledon tennis championships.22 In this cultural context we again asked the study participants to answer a mailed questionnaire. Careerists, Entrepreneurs, and Homemakers in 2000–01 In 2001, we located addresses for 265 women and sent them questionnaires. Of those, 96 usable responses were received (36 percent of those sent questionnaires and 22 percent of the original participants). Though this would generally be considered a rather low response rate, 36 percent of the women we contacted retained an interest in the study 20 years after its inception, despite lives busy with work and children. Among the Phase III respondents 29.2 percent had obtained graduate degrees by 2001. The respondents had increased their family size and their family income considerably. In 2001, 83 percent had had at least one child (up from 46 percent in Phase II), 63 percent had two children and 26 percent had three or more children (up from 4 percent in Phase II). In Phase III, at least 78 percent of respondents were employed (up from 72 percent in Phase II) and 22 percent were homemakers (in detail, 20 were entrepreneurs, 52 were employees, 20 were homemakers and the remaining four did not answer the employment question clearly). The average income of the women was over $40 000 (an increase of about $10 000 over Phase II) with a range from less than $20 000 per year to one woman who made over $180 000 per year. In Phase III, their spouse’s income averaged over $80 000 per year (an increase of about $30 000 during the past ten years) with a range from one person who earned less than $20 000 to ten who earned over $200 000, the highest option given in the salary range question.

PHASE IV The Cultural Context By 2005, many in the US were beginning to wonder how the nation could


11

extract itself from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Republican majority in the legislature was hotly contested in 2006. Walk the Line, Wallace and Gromit and Cinderella Man were the top movies of the day,23 My Name is Earl and Grey’s Anatomy held sway on many HD TVs and Kelly Clarkson from American Idol was singing a pop hit ‘Since U Been Gone’.24 This is the context of the final interviews, collected in 2006–07. Participants in Phase I Compared to Participants in Phase IV In 2005–06, we began to try to find participants again and with the help of the alumni/ae offices of both universities. We gathered 76 responses to a mailing to all women for whom we had an address, asking women if they would be willing to be interviewed in person or on the telephone. Of these respondents, 71 completed interviews were conducted and coded. This is 93 percent of the women contacted, 73 percent of those we had found in Phase III, 34.6 percent of those we had found in Phase II, but only 16.4 percent of the original college women who participated in Phase I of the study. Because of the small response rate compared to the original group of women, we must be very cautious in generalizing to the whole sample let alone for a population of all women who graduated from Northeastern US universities in the early 1980s. We did do some statistical analyses to compare those who responded to Phase IV to those who did not respond to Phase IV but who participated in Phases I, II or III using background data available from respondents in each phase. We found that the Phase IV respondents were remarkably similar to the original Phase I sample in all but two background variables and one significant study variable. The women interviewed in Phase IV were not significantly different from those who responded to Phase I in age, birth order, mother’s or father’s education, religion, or residence in rural area, town or city when growing up. The Phase IV respondents also did not differ from those who responded in Phase I in terms of total children expected, age they expected to have their first child, or length of time they expected to return to employment after childbirth. The respondents to Phase IV also did not differ in education level from what the respondents in Phases I, II, or III achieved, or in average own income or average spouse’s income expected in Phase I, or earned in Phases II, or III. The two significant background differences between those who responded to Phase IV and those who responded to Phase I were in marital status when in college (64.8 percent were not in any relationship in college of those who did not respond to Phase IV, compared to 51.5 percent of those who did respond in Phase IV)25 and mothers (but not fathers) born in the US (87.3 percent of respondents in Phase I, compared to 97 percent of Phase IV respondents).26

12


The most relevant variable that has a clear implication for drawing conclusions about the women in Phase IV was that they were more likely to predict in Phase I that they would work following childbirth than those women who did not respond to Phase IV but who participated in Phase I.27 We did not ask many questions in the interviews that required numerical answers that could be statistically analyzed and compared with Phase I, II, and III responses so we have not weighted cases in these reports of interviews conducted during Phase IV. However, it is important to remember not to use the Phase IV descriptions to draw conclusions comparing the number or percentage of women who did or did not do as they predicted in college or who became or did not become homemakers in their mid-life, since the Phase IV sample under-represents women who thought they were unlikely to be employed during the first three years after the birth of their first child. Career Women, Part-time Workers, Homemakers, and Entrepreneurs in 2006–07 The religious heritage of 28 percent of the women who did respond in Phase IV was Protestant, 42 percent were raised as Catholics, and 13 percent were raised in the Jewish faith. The majority of the women (81 percent) were raised in a town, and the rest were about evenly divided between growing up in the country and growing up in a large city. All graduated from a four-year college course, 38 percent went on to get a Master’s degree and 8 percent completed a PhD, MD, or LLD degree. The most common occupation was as a teacher (10 percent), followed by scientist (9 percent), and some type of managerial position (9 percent). At the time of the interviews 23 percent were not employed, 50 percent were working 40 or more hours per week and the remaining 27 percent were employed part-time. About one-quarter of the women had personal incomes of under $20 000 per year and 23 percent were making more than $100 000 per year whereas less than 5 percent of spouses were making under $20 000 per year and 61 percent of spouses were making more than $100 000 per year. Most women were married, 83 percent married once and another 9 percent married twice. About half of the women (53 percent) who have had a child had their first child by 1990 or a decade after college, but ten women (14 percent) never had children. Most commonly women had two children (40 percent), but 21 percent had one child, and 24 percent had three children. We tried to divide the Phase IV respondents into the categories used in Phase II of careerists, breadwinners, homemakers and nesters, based on the combination of their college plans to be employed or not following the birth of their first child and their actual behavior, however we found that real women’s lives did not fit as neatly into those four categories more than 25


13

years after college graduation. We also found that a significant group of women had part-time employed lives and another group had become entrepreneurs. Thus, we have chosen to focus on four slightly different groups, identifying what their college plans were as we describe their lives. The largest group of women followed a career of full-time work (35 hours or more) and did not leave the labor force for any reason for more than three years regardless of their childrearing responsibilities. Examples of their life stories are described in Chapter 3. This group contains both careerists and breadwinners following the categories we used in Phase II. The second group did not seem to be apparent during their first decade after college but we now see that they have followed a distinct pattern of part-time work for three or more years during their careers. Their lives are described in Chapter 4 and they might have been called careerists or breadwinners in Phase II. The third group includes women who have become full-time homemakers for at least three years or more at some time during their life. This includes those who left the labor force after the birth of their first child as well as those who may have kept their positions after the birth of their first child but left to become full-time family caretakers later in life, perhaps after a later childbirth. Thus, this group, whose lives are described in Chapter 5, does not identically match those we called homemakers in Phase II and might also include nesters and some careerists and breadwinners if the women worked after their first childbirth but became homemakers later. The last group is composed of women who started their own businesses, some as an occupational choice and some because they saw starting a childcare service in their homes as a way to bring in income and stay close to their own children. These women are described in Chapter 6 and include women we might have called homemakers or careerists or breadwinners in Phase II. Each of the following four chapters contains narratives of individual women’s lives. The names have been changed and the narratives were sent to the women we could locate when the manuscript was completed to give them a chance to ask us to disguise any aspects of their lives that might be too identifiable and to check that we had not made errors in describing their lives. Most women had few changes and these usually involved changing locations or dates that might be personally identifiable. In one case, we found that a Phase II questionnaire had been misidentified and this error was corrected. The interview records were coded by the principal investigator and recoded to check for consistency by two research assistants. When coding discrepancies were found, we discussed each case and came to agreement about how each should be coded. A summary of coded responses and the narratives is located at the end of each chapter. In order to interpret the content of change, factors that influenced the

14


change as well as the change process itself, in addition to considering the cultural context changes as well as the sample changes, we can look at two other sources of information: first, previous theory and literature about how women balance work and family across time and second, the stories of the women themselves about what they thought about influences on the critical events in their work and family lives. Chapter 2 will highlight important scholarly theoretical and empirical work in this arena. Chapters 3 through 6 will tell the women’s stories of what they did and why they thought they did it, as related in the interviews for Phase IV that were conducted in person or on the telephone during 2006–07. The life stories in each of the chapters in Part II contain information from open and closed ended questions from Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III questionnaires as well as their retrospective accounts of their important life events discussed in Phase IV interviews. The integration of each of these sources of data helps to reduce biases in retrospective memory and to illustrate changes in attitudes and behavior across the years of the study. Final conclusions synthesizing information from all phases and the existing literature are presented in the final chapter.

NOTES 1.

2.

3.

4. 5.

6.

US Census Bureau (2005), ‘Table H2. Distribution of women 40 to 44 years old by number of children ever born and marital status: selected years, 1970 to 2004’, available at http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/fertility/tabH2.xls, date accessed 3 October 2006; Bergman, M. (2003), ‘Women edge men in high school diplomas, breaking 13-year deadlock’, United States Department of Commerce News, CB03-51, available at, http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-ff07.html, date accessed 3 October 2006. O’Connell, M. (2001), ‘Labor force participation for mothers with infants declines for first time, census bureau reports’, United States Department of Commerce News, CB01-170, available at, http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/cb01-170.html, date accessed 3 October 2006. US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (1991), ‘Statistical tables’, Employment and Earnings, Jan. 1991 38 (1), Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office; US Census Bureau (2006), ‘S2401. Occupation by sex and median earnings in the past 12 months (in 2006 inflation-adjusted dollars) for the civilian employed population 16 years and over’, available at, http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/STTable?_bm=y&-geo_id= 01000US &-qr_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_S2401&-ds_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_, date accessed 3 October 2006. Morrison, A.M. and M.A. Von Glinow (1990),‘Women and minorities in management’, American Psychologist, 45 (2), 200–208. Arthur, M., S.N. Khapova, and C.P.M. Wilderom (2005), ‘Career success in a boundaryless career world’, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26 (2), 177–202; Hall, D.T. and J.E. Moss (1998), ‘The new protean career contract: helping organizations and employees adapt’, Organizational Dynamics, 26 (3), 22–37; McDonald, P., K. Brown, and L. Bradley (2005), ‘Have traditional career paths given way to protean ones? Evidence from senior managers in the Australian public sector’, Career Development International, 10 (2), 109–29. Bailyn, L. (2006), Breaking the Mold: Redesigning Work for Productive and Satisfying Lives (2nd edn), Ithaca, NY: ILR Cornell University Press.

Introduction to the women, the study, and the context 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

15

USA Presidents-Info, ‘Ronald Reagan’, available at, http://www.usa-presidents.info/ reagan.htm, date accessed 3 October 2006. The ’80s Server, available at, http://www.80s.com/Entertainment/, date accessed 3 October 2006. http://www.authentichistory.com/audio/1980s/1980s_popculture.html, date accessed 3 October 2006. Granrose, C.S. (1985), ‘Plans for work careers among college women who expect to have a family’, Vocational Guidance Quarterly, 33 (4), 284–95. Granrose, C.S. (1987),‘Intentions to work after childbirth of single and partnered college women’, Career Development Quarterly, 36 (1), 66–80. Granrose, C.S. and E. Cunningham (1988), ‘Post-partum work intentions among black and white college women’, Career Development Quarterly, 37 (2), 149–64. Granrose, C.S. and E.A. Kaplan (1996), Work-Family Role Choices for Women in Their 20s and 30s, Westport, CT: Praeger. Granrose, C.S. (1984),‘A Fishbein-Ajzen model of intention to work following childbirth’, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 25 (3), 359–72; Granrose, C.S. (1985), ‘Anticipating the decision to work following childbirth’, Vocational Guidance Quarterly, 33 (3), 221–30; Granrose, C.S. and E.A. Kaplan (1994), ‘Returning to work following childbirth: the relationship between intentions and behavior’, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24 (10), 874–96; Kaplan, E.A. and C.S. Granrose (1993), ‘Factors influencing women’s decision to leave an organization following childbirth’, Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 6 (1), 45–54. USA President-Info, ‘George Herbert Walker Bush’, available at, http://www.usapresidents. info/bush.htm, date accessed 3 October 2006. http://www.popculturemadness.com/Entertainment/90s-Music.html, date accessed 3 October 2006. http://www.authentichistory.com/1990s.html, date accessed 3 October 2006. Granrose, C.S. and E.A. Kaplan (1996), Work-Family Role Choices for Women in Their 20s and 30s, Westport, CT: Praeger. USA Presidents-Info, ‘Bill Clinton’, available at, http://www.usa-presidents.info/ clinton.htm, date accessed 3 October 2006. USA Presidents-Info, ‘George Walker Bush’, available at, http://www.usa-presidents.info/ gwbush.htm Gettings, J., ‘2000 Pop culture trends’, available at, http://www.infoplease.com/spot/ 00poptrends1.html, date accessed 3 October 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_in_sports#Baseball, date accessed 3 October 2006. Internet Movie Database, ‘Top rated “2000s” titles’, available at, http://www.imdb.com/ chart/2000s, date accessed 3 October 2006. http://www.tv.com/shows/topshows.html?pop=1&tag=subnav;top_shows, date accessed 3 October 2006; About.com, ‘Top pop songs of 2005’, available at, http://top40.about.com/ od/news/a/pollsingle2005.htm, date accessed 3 October 2006. χSq. = 13.35, df = 4, p= 0.009. χSq. = 4.99, df = 1, p= 0.025. M = 2.77, SD = 1.29 for non respondents compared to M = 3.32, SD = 1.39, for respondents, p = 0.04 on a scale of 1–5 where 1 = very unlikely and 5 = very likely.

2. Lifespan integration of employment and family: past theory and research findings An effort to discover how and why women change as they mature resides at the heart of this study. The most common scholarly explanations in developmental psychology focus on maturation processes linked to physical development. Changes usually are described in terms of different stages of development sometimes derived from the lives of men and sometimes identified as specific to the lives of women. A second type of scholarly explanation found more in the cognitive and social psychology or sociology literature explains individual change primarily through individual intentional decisionmaking as well as by socialization processes, role norms, opportunities, and barriers created by parents, peers, schools, and jobs. For a full picture of all of the influences on women’s development, we need to consider both schools of thought, however, there is greater detail in the explanations of the psychological theories that guided the study. This is not a comprehensive review of all proposed theories and empirical data, but rather a selection based on relevance to the central theme of the volume about the choices women make about how to balance employment and family in their lives.

LIFE STAGE THEORIES Adult development theories focus on issues and tasks faced by individuals through the lifespan. A common theme is the belief that their lifespan development progresses in a systematic and orderly way. That is, an underlying order in the progression of lives exists, not only in childhood and adolescence but in adulthood as well. The work of Daniel Levinson is particularly relevant because work and career occupy a more central place in his conceptualization than in other theories of adult development. Levinson proposed that the life course follows an underlying universal pattern, although there are endless cultural and individual variations. According to Levinson and his associates, the life cycle follows a basic sequence which is divided into four qualitatively different seasons: childhood and adolescence, early adulthood, middle adult16

Lifespan integration of employment and family

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hood, and late adulthood. These age-linked developmental periods each last about 20 years. Within each period, there are alternating stages of stable structure-building and unstable structure-changing transitional periods of about five to seven years. During periods of stability in the life structure, people pursue goals and create a particular lifestyle. During the unstable structurechanging transition periods, people reassess their lifestyles and consider the possibility of change in one or more aspects of their lives. Thus the tasks of the transition periods are to develop critical new choices that become the basis for developing a revised life structure. These periods of reassessment suggest the likelihood of focusing on decisions (such as whether to stay home or continue one’s employment career when one has a baby and so on). At each transitional juncture, the individual reviews his or her life structure in terms of how satisfactorily it expresses a life dream. Both internal psychological processes and external reality influence these modifications. It is important to note the role of individual decision-making appears to be important in this noted theory of life stage development.1 One of the most controversial aspects of theories of adult development such as Levinson’s is whether women go through the same phases of adult development as men. In one of the few women’s life stage models, Helena Lopata proposed a life stage model for the occupation of housewife that described women’s lives as having a first stage which she named Becoming, that lasts from marriage until the birth of the first child. The next stage, Expanding Circle, extends from birth of the first child to birth of the second child, and the presence of two or more pre-schoolers is labeled the Peak stage. The Full House Plateau starts when the youngest child enters school and ends when the first child leaves the home. The following stage, Shrinking Circle, extends from the first to the last child leaving home and the final stage, labeled the Minimal Plateau, begins when all children have left the home.2 This stage also has been called the ‘empty nest’ stage in the popular press. According to these stage theories, the women in this study would start in early adulthood and be moving into middle adulthood according to Levinson, and according to Lopata, the majority of study participants could be described as having moved from the Becoming stage between Phase I and Phase II into the Full House Plateau stage by Phase IV. The movement through Lopata’s life stages categorizes how childbearing and physical and psychological maturation influences the life course, but does not consider in detail the impact of social factors that might be influenced by policy and individual decision. The social nature of how these reproductive functions influence women’s change through their adult lives has been explored more clearly by scholars interested in developmental processes.

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PROCESS THEORIES Process theories of adult change look more at the social factors and individual decision-making that affect how individuals change through time rather than changes brought about by aging. Some process scholars looked specifically at how employment changes across a lifetime – usually labeled career development. Career, here, is defined as a sequence of work experiences and attitudes extending through the person’s work life.3 D.E. Super has divided the process of career development into four stages which he called Exploration, Establishment, Maintenance, and Disengagement. He also introduced seven career patterns for women that were descriptions of life alternatives, not based on age or stage of development or descriptive of social or choice processes. This classification included: conventional (work outside the home until marriage), stable work (work continuously), double track (combine work and homemaking), interrupted (women return to labor force some time after childbirth), unstable (repeated labor force participation (LFP) with interruptions for childcare), and multiple trial (unstable job history). In today’s context, stable homemaking and conventional career patterns may describe a smaller percent of women than they did when Super first proposed his theory.4 In addition another limitation of using Super’s theory is that his descriptions did not address when or why any given women would choose a particular pattern, but other scholars did address that choice. Larwood and Gutek identified several considerations explaining the pattern of employment career development of women. They include: (1) career preparedness – education and the mental and physical preparation for a job; (2) opportunities available in the society; (3) the influence of marriage, pregnancy, and childbirth; and (4) age and timing – the age that a woman is in a particular stage in her life that may affect her career development. For example, whether a woman has her first child at age 35 or before her career has even begun at age 18, may influence whether or not she may decide to give up or modify her employment role. The important additions of these perspectives are the consideration of individual differences in career preparation, consideration of work opportunities in the broader society, and acknowledgment that life choices appear to be different when they occur at different chronological ages. Rapoport and Rapoport proposed a network model which depicts career behavior as a triple-helix process that takes into account employment, social forces, and the interaction of employment with the family. In this model women may move into and out of employment at different periods in their lives as family or career take precedence and as influenced by social opportunities and governmental actions.5 This theory is particularly inclusive of the interaction of individual, social, and family influence on women’s life course.


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Another theoretical proposal tries to integrate stage and process theories using the metaphor of a kaleidoscope. Mainiero and Sullivan suggest that women are influenced by relational factors at home and in the workplace and make changes based upon the search for challenge, balance and authenticity at different points in their lives; like a revolving kaleidoscope shifts pieces of glass, women can shift roles at different periods of their life course. They also suggest that women may focus on challenge early in their lives, may be more likely to seek more balance at mid-life, and more likely to want authenticity in later stages of their lives, although all three play a role in decision-making in every choice point.6 An even more complicated, but more inclusive process model has been proposed by Moen and Han. In their model they look at family patterns, work patterns, and the work–family interface as it exists for a couple and as it moves across time. This perspective has three advantages: it looks at both spheres of activity – employment and family; it looks at the couple as an important unit of analysis; and finally it tracks different trajectories across time. Unfortunately, although the present study started out to gather husband data as well as data on women, that portion of the project was not consistently funded. While this perspective has much appeal, we are unable to use it for this study.7 During the 1990s, a concept of boundaryless careers was applied to employment changes across time for both men and women when organizations could no longer promise a lifetime employment of upward mobility. Boundaryless careers are enacted by individuals who are tied more to their profession or occupation or to a network of peers than to continuous employment in a particular organization.8 Boundaryless careers include not only changes through time in upward mobility but also changes due to lateral mobility or mobility through a network of jobs and related occupations in multiple organizations. In some cases of people with careers not tied to any organization, the professional network and staffing agencies become the extraorganizational career development vehicle for both men and women.9 Some individuals who follow a changing employment career committed to individual career goals pursue a path labeled ‘protean career’ by Tim Hall. In protean careers individuals have a guiding commitment related to particular personal career values, which might be upward mobility, or a particular occupation, or to integrate the multiple sub-identities into a balanced life or other personal values. The individual defines the value as part of his or her own identity and growth. This value is used to guide changes in their life decisions of employment and family as time passes.10 The theory of boundaryless careers to some extent, and to a greater extent the theory of protean careers in particular, emphasize the role of individual values and choices in influencing lifespan changes, while also acknowledging that these choices take place in a particular economic and social environment in contrast to the other theory

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alternatives. A longitudinal study of MBA recipients found that those in protean careers that moved them from one organization to another (only one among many possible types of protean careers), when compared with the 30 percent who were following more traditional careers with a single employer, did not differ in upward mobility, salary, or raises.11 Whether seeing change across time as a function of stages or processes, most individuals today believe that the balance of career development has shifted from counting on the employer or organization to take care of you, to making individual decisions about how to take care of yourself.12 This perception has shifted the focus of adult developmental change away from physical development and toward individual decision-making and how it may be influenced by individual thoughts and values as well as by collective or social processes.

DECISION THEORIES Two different theoretical perspectives have guided the exploration of women’s intentions to work following childbirth when seen as a decision. Although both perspectives are based on the study of decision-making, they have different assumptions and often yield different results. The two perspectives may be labeled rational expected utility and decision rules and scripts. We will now examine the rational expected utility perspective and discussion of the decision rules and scripts perspective will follow. The Rational Expected Utility Perspective The first decision-making perspective used to explain women’s work–family decisions is rational expected utility. This theory is based on the assumption that people will choose a particular alternative that they expect will yield the most positive consequences. This is usually measured by asking people to evaluate how likely they think certain consequences are to occur and how much they value each consequence. These ratings are combined to obtain a total score, and the alternative with the highest positive score (the maximum utility) predicts the decision or choice the person will make. These calculations usually create accurate predictions but do not describe how people actually think when they make a decision. Fishbein and Ajzen used the rational expected utility perspective to predict intentions and behaviors in what they termed the Theory of Reasoned Action. In their theory, the utility estimations of likely consequences of each alternative and the value of each consequence are labeled as a measure of attitudes toward the intended behavior. These attitudes, plus the norms of significant


21

others, plus the person’s own prior experience with this behavior predict intentions and behavior (see Figure 2.1). Subsequently vicarious experience and perceived control of events between intentions and behavior were added to the original model. The theory of reasoned activity has successfully predicted returning to work following childbirth intentions and behavior.13 There is some indication that later work attitudes, composed of values and expectations according to the expected utility perspective, might also be a consequence of prior behavioral experience in addition to or instead of a predictor of future behavior.14 The theory of reasoned action is the theory that was used to create the written questions that were used in Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III of this study, so these ideas and empirical evidence are discussed in greater detail than other alternative theories.

Vicarious work experience

Perceived control

Own work experience Intention

Behavior

Attitude

Subjective norm

Source: Adapted from Granrose, C.S. (1984), ‘A Fishbein-Aizen model of intention to work following childbirth’, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 25 (3), 359–72; and Granrose, C.S. and E. Kaplan (1994), ‘Returning to work following childbirth: the relationship between intentions and behavior’, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24 (10), 873–96.

Figure 2.1 A rational decision-making model of intentions to work following childbirth

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Values: employment and homemaking Values are in general, usually fairly stable, internalized beliefs about how a person should behave and what is desirable or preferred. In the work and family domains, beliefs about how a person should behave may broadly be labeled as a preference and internalized norm for employment or homemaking.15 There is theoretical and empirical evidence that women differ in their preferences for these two alternative lifestyles and that these preferences, as well as family background and subsequent experiences with work or family, predict their employment behavior.16 For example, college-educated women, whose traditional values emphasize homemaking and childrearing roles have several things in common. They rarely discuss balancing career and family life, tend to compartmentalize education, family life, and employment life, see employment careers and homemaking as mutually exclusive. These women experience guilt and ambivalence over wanting both a career and a family.17 When used as a part of attitudes in the Theory of Reasoned Action, values are considered to be preferences for particular consequences of a choice alternative, in this case the choice to stay home or return to employment following childbirth. There is considerable empirical evidence to suggest that differences in values and consequences are related to differences in life choices in this domain. Women who choose to remain home tend to have strong social and religious values, whereas economic and political values are stronger among women who are employed.18 Those women who do choose to work are likely to choose an occupation congruent with their values and to value doing an excellent job. If the women find themselves in an organization that holds values similar to their own, they are likely to be more committed, more satisfied, and higher performing. Individual values may also have an effect on job satisfaction and dissatisfaction. If the values are congruent with organizational opportunities for balancing family life, job satisfaction may increase. If individual values of balancing family life with career obligations are not met with organizational support for families, job satisfaction may decrease.19 The other component of the attitude function of this model is consequences. The primary consequences that women consider are consequences to themselves and their careers, consequences to their husbands, and consequences to their children. Consequences for women When deciding how to combine employment and family lives many women consider the effect that a family leave (time taken off from employment) will have on their career advancement and pay. While their perceptions may not be entirely accurate, most women are familiar with and consider the same factors that empirical research has discovered really do have an influence on career


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advancement and pay. Although the relative strength of the effect on advancement of each of the following factors seems to differ between men and women, the majority of the weight of current empirical evidence suggests that career advancement for both men and women is usually assisted by the following: (1) supervisors who provide support; (2) mentors who provide guidance and information about upper level decision-making in an organization; (3) participation in networks that provide information and contacts that assist people in job performance and job opportunities; (4) formal training opportunities; (5) formal or informal developmental assignments that aid people in learning new skills and presenting their talents to others who may have the power to advance their careers; and (6) individual education, skills and motivation, drive, or impatience.20 However, barriers still exist that keep women from advancing to the highest levels of US corporations.21 Women with children have different experiences from women who do not have children, not only because they may have less total work experience if they decide to stay home with their children, but also because some coworkers and supervisors may fail to include them in networking or fail to give them guidance, mentoring, training, or developmental assignments, if they assume that the women either are less committed to the workplace or will be more likely to leave the organization for family reasons. If some women are more family-oriented and less motivated to pursue organizational mobility and recognition, they may obtain less preparatory education and training and be seen as a less promising investment of effort by others in the organization. Women differ from men on average by having less total employment experience, less network inclusion, less mentoring, and fewer opportunities for, or pursuit of, training and development. The results of these gender differences are differences between men and women in the area of career promotions and advancement, far greater for women with children than it is for single women or married women with no children. There is also evidence that failure to obtain challenging tasks and lack of organizational or supervisor support is related to women deciding to leave an organization, either to stay home with her child or to find another job.22 An individual’s pay usually increases with increasing career advancement. Scholars have also found similar gender differences in pay across many, but not all, occupations. The gender gap in pay decreased between 1959 and 1999, but still ranges from 8 percent to 20 percent in a variety of studies. Most of the difference in pay between the genders is attributed to lower levels of education, lower total participation, and more intermittent labor force participation related to childbearing. The earlier childbearing occurs in a woman’s career the greater the penalty on lifetime wages she can expect, however this does vary according to the firm she chooses to enter. There is some evidence that indicates that women do not seem to use money as a key factor in deciding whether or when

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to leave the labor force because of childbearing and evidence that also suggests that women might choose certain occupations because the pay penalty for gaps in employment might be lower than in other occupations. However, in spite of the potential loss in earnings, the earlier the childbearing occurs in a woman’s career, the more it can result in positive emotional responses for her.23 A woman who chooses homemaking as her career may have very positive psychological consequences similar to those experienced by a woman who chooses employment, if in each case the individual is following her personal values and preferences. Both homemakers and women employed in professional occupations report that they obtain gratification from opportunities for decision-making and authority, independence, and service to others. Homemakers are more likely to report opportunities for creativity, flexibility, and self-direction as rewarding consequences and employed career women are more likely to report opportunities for compensation, advancement, co-worker interaction, recognition, and job security as rewarding.24 Another consequence of women’s choices to stay home or return to employment following childbirth is the effect these decisions have on the way they spend their time. On average, adults spend less time in employment, leisure, and personal care when they have children compared to adults in households with no children. Women who are employed (compared to women who remain at home) do spend less time with their children, however, it is not in direct proportion to the amount of time they spend working outside the home or to the time they use non-parental childcare. Use of childcare as a substitute for maternal care while employed does not reduce the amount of time mothers spend talking, reading, or playing with their children. Employed women reduce the time they spend eating, sleeping, grooming, and enjoying leisure activities and reschedule non-childcare activities to early morning, late afternoon, evening or to weekends in order to maintain a nearly equivalent amount of time with their children, as those who are not employed.25 Consequences for husbands There are three common types of consequences for a husband if his wife is employed after she becomes a mother. These include: effects on his career, effects on his time, and effects on his self-esteem, and perceptions of himself as powerful. In general, being known as a family man (that is, a man who values family as equal to his employment), but career-oriented, has a positive effect on a husband’s career, both because of positive stereotypes about stability and responsibility of family men compared to bachelors, and because of actual help and emotional support that wives give their husbands, whether or not the wives are employed. For example, career-oriented men with pre-school children receive higher merit pay increases than both family-oriented women


25

with pre-schoolers and family-oriented men with pre-schoolers, who may be seen to be breaking the norms of men as providers. Therefore men who are family-oriented are discriminated against in salary because of their commitment to their families.26 If their wives are employed, men on average spend more time and energy helping with household chores and with childcare than men whose wives are not employed. The amount of time husbands helped their wives increased between 1977 and 1997, therefore increasing husbands’ perception of work–family conflict. The amount of childcare and work around the house is not usually equally distributed. Wives with children still spend about 10–12 hours more each week doing household chores and childcare than their husbands, even when both parents work outside the home.27 Another possible impact on a husband if his wife is employed following childbirth (and at other times as well), is that the increase in a wife’s income tends to give her increased independence and influence compared to wives and mothers who do not have an independent source of income. Even when a wife makes more income than her spouse, however, husbands tend to retain an equal or greater amount of power in the family because they often retain decision-making authority about how family money is spent as well as authority over other key family decisions. Husbands also gain self-esteem if they are perceived as giving support to their wives when their wives work – emotional support, career support, and support around the house.28 Consequences for children For young women who are thinking about whether to return to work or stay at home after childbirth, one of their primary concerns is how it will affect their child. If they believe their child will be affected negatively they are more likely to stay home after childbirth.29 Despite normative changes that increasingly accept employment of mothers, a common belief persists that childcare given by anyone other than mothers is inferior.30 This simple assumption of a direct connection between maternal care and child welfare is inconsistent with contemporary scholarly findings. There are many factors that affect child welfare and whether or not maternal employment might benefit or harm a child. Several key considerations seem to create positive influences on a child. A mother who is able to spend significant time with her child during the first year after childbirth, who is committed to parenting, who is satisfied with her job and her choice to work so that her guilt about employment does not result in inconsistent discipline as her child matures, and who interacts with her child in a cognitively stimulating manner, will have positive effects on her child, regardless of whether or not she is employed. Likewise, a father who gives emotional support, approval, and physical assistance to his wife and helps to

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create positive interactions within the family, also contributes to positive outcomes for the child, especially when the mother is employed. Employed mothers who have sufficient income or competent relatives to be able to provide non-maternal childcare that includes cognitive stimulation, appropriate attention when needed, and positive social interactions, also have children who are independent, socially competent, hold less stereotypical gender role beliefs, and have sound intellectual development. Negative effects on children of mothers who are employed seem to occur in very limited circumstances but they have been reported, and in some research they seem to apply more often to sons. Sons of employed mothers who are raised in homes where fathers believe strongly in traditional gender roles, or in homes where fathers are not present, and sons who are unsupervised in an urban environment when they are older children or adolescents, are more likely to show poor achievement at school, show less social adjustment, and adhere to stereotypically traditional gender role behavior themselves, than sons of homemaking mothers in similar circumstances.31 Employment Education and training Compared to men, on average, women have less human capital, that is, they obtain less education, have fewer firm-sponsored training activities, and have fewer years of work experience, as women leave the labor force for family responsibilities, and this accounts for significant differences in objective measures of career success like pay and promotions. There is some indication in the US that previous gender differences in training may be less common in some occupations, perhaps due to particular training needs in computer-related, female-dominated clerical jobs, although this is a controversial finding.32 Part-time versus full-time employment experience Some women who have children, especially those who had inflexible jobs and who have others such as elderly relatives to care for, are likely to choose part-time jobs rather than fulltime jobs. Most of the part-time jobs that are available are dead end jobs with no opportunities for promotion and few salary raises. If and when the women want to return to the labor force, they will be penalized because they have less total employment experience. There are a few part-time jobs that offer intrinsic job satisfaction such as autonomy and flexibility which do make them desirable choices for those who value autonomy more than career opportunities and salary. The labor market is segregated into women’s jobs and men’s jobs and the women’s jobs which are part-time have less prestige and fewer benefits. For example, in the academic, medical, and legal professions, the pay and prestige of the part-time labor market associated with more women, was


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lower than that of the full-time labor market associated with more men.33 The gender segregation of part-time and full-time jobs tends to depend on the extent to which the organization favors part-time work and supports women and men who request it. Women who work part-time, compared to women employed full-time, may receive roughly equal hourly pay rates and are less likely to change employers, but they often receive fewer promotions and smaller percent salary increases. Their performance, commitment and job satisfaction seems to vary widely depending upon whether they work for one organization or a temporary employment agency. The differences seem to be related to whether the women themselves choose to work fewer hours and whether the only part-time jobs offered to them and open to them are not equivalent to the full-time jobs they previously held. Some women also mitigate negative effects of part-time employment by gaining more education while working part-time, hoping that when they return to full-time employment as children mature, they will get a better job and suffer fewer negative effects of the time out of the labor force than they would have if they had taken part-time jobs but no extra education. Recently, more emphasis has been placed on those who choose part-time and other contingent work arrangements as a preferential way to balance work and family. Those who choose to work part-time for an agency, rather than for a single organization, are sometimes able to make this a viable long-term career choice with high work satisfaction, job performance, and comparable hourly compensation.34 Employment interruptions and leave The consequences of employment interruptions – leaving the labor force entirely for a period of time – are different from the consequences of staying in the labor force full-time or part-time. This interrupted career pattern is the most common pattern for US women; estimates range from about 50 percent of women leaving the labor force shortly after the birth of their first child to a high estimate of 90 percent of women who have left the labor force at some point by the time their oldest child is 11 years old. The way in which women take a leave may be changing, since one study found that of those women who graduated from an MBA program in the 1970s, the majority of them were more likely to take an employment break, whereas fewer women who graduated in the 1990s were taking employment breaks and their breaks were on average shorter in duration. This seems to extend a trend that started in the late 1960s.35 Among higher level managers, however, women are less likely than men to take a leave or to turnover (to leave an organization), especially if they had recently been promoted or have more education. Women who do take leaves of absence tend to receive fewer wage raises and promotions than those who do not take a leave of absence. The amount of lost income is more pronounced for women

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who take leaves early in their careers, for those taking a higher number of leaves, and for those taking a recent leave of absence because they are getting lower pay when they return after a leave of absence and they have not had time to get raises for good performance.36 Another set of consequences of following an intermittent career pattern is the difficulty of finding a job and adjusting to it when a women is ready to return to the labor force later in her life. Women have difficulty finding a job because they have difficulty explaining a long period of unemployment, they may face age discrimination, they may have out-of-date skills, and their career interests may have changed to a field where they have less applicable skills. The other issue is that the women have learned relevant skills while parenting but have no way to document that they have gained these skills as they did not learn them on a paying job. When they actually get a job, they face the common challenges of balancing family care with employment demands as well as the challenges of a new social situation. Organizations can ameliorate this transition with effective socialization programs for new employees and the transition may also be enhanced by a supportive spouse, working shorter hours, valuing a career, and feeling confident of high quality childcare.37 Barriers to employment advancement Institutional barriers as well as individual choices made by people in positions of power may prevent women from obtaining experience as well as from obtaining career rewards that they might expect as a result of certain career experiences. Empirical examples of discrimination still exist, although many younger women believe gender discrimination is diminishing.38 There may be a difference in hiring preferences of individual recruiters or a difference between the female gender role expectations and the job role expectations leading to less positive performance evaluations once a job is obtained.39 Another source of employment barriers are biased employment policies that result in women not having equal access to career enhancing resources and opportunities. Women also may experience negative emotional reactions to discrimination that may have negative work outcomes.40 Norms: parents Women’s earliest influences about how they should combine employment and homemaking come from their parents or early caretakers. Through processes of identification and socialization, girls tend to adopt beliefs and attitudes similar to their mothers about how to care for children. They tend to adopt attitudes similar to their fathers and their employed mothers (if their mother has been employed) about their potential role in the workplace. That is, mothers who were employed while their daughters were children are more likely to have daughters who plan to be employed mothers rather than homemaker


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mothers. However, contingencies such as opportunities for marriage and fertility as well as family income needs may interfere with preferences to become a homemaker, and labor force opportunities and barriers may interfere with parental influences toward employment.41 Norms: spouses Women who have husbands with supportive attitudes toward non-traditional gender roles and toward career women are more likely than others to become employed mothers. In addition to their attitudes, if spouses provide practical help with childcare and housework, husbands can influence the consequences of employment and reduce the conflict between demands of family and demands of employment, and make it more likely that their wives will spend more time employed. Spouse relocation, however, may have a negative effect on a wife’s career.42 Norms: supervisors and coworkers Friends, co-workers and bosses may provide both attitudinal support by holding norms supportive of staying home or of employment following childbirth, and they may also provide practical support for women who decide to return to work after childbirth. In particular, women with supervisors who not only approve of post-childbirth employment, but also provide flexibility and create a supportive work culture, are more likely to return to work following childbirth and are more likely to return more quickly.43 Plans and intentions Cognitive psychologists and artificial intelligence scholars provide guidelines for a definition of planning. According to scholars, a plan is guided by a goal of a desired outcome and may include several parts. It might contain one or more strategies that could result in movement toward this goal. A complex plan could also include a smaller plan for organizing plans to co-ordinate with each other, one for choosing among alternatives, and one for deciding when a plan should start and stop.44 When thinking about employment after childbirth, a woman’s plans might include a goal of what she wants for employment roles and childrearing roles, as well as strategies for achieving and combining these goals and integrating them with her spouse. She might have alternatives she would try if she were blocked, and some notion of when the plans might begin and end. Less sophisticated planners might omit one or all of these components when they think about their future lives.45 Intentions may be equated with the goals of formulated plans, but also may occur without specific strategies and other aspects of fully developed plans. Sometimes there is not a clear differentiation between intentions as a specific goal to achieve, expectations of what individuals may think will happen to

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them in the future, and aspirations or hopes for the future, although these three alternatives may not be identical. If intentions or plans are seen as goals, if they are high but achievable, specific, and accompanied by self-confidence, feedback, and appropriate environmental facilitators, they will be likely to enhance behavioral performance of the goal. There is some skepticism among scholars about the extent to which women plan, however, there is evidence that women do plan and that their expectations of consequences and experience and norms of others influence intentions and behavior in this domain. Even though some organizations have career planning as part of their human resources and succession planning, not all women make their plans public, some women have career strategies that they may decide to keep secret in order to obtain career success in a political organizational atmosphere.46 For an example of how young women’s plans are related to their later behavior, consider that white daughters, whose mothers were employed during their daughter’s childhood, expect less conflict between employment and family life and plan to marry later, to have children later, and to be employed after childbirth sooner than daughters whose mothers were not employed. AfricanAmerican daughters’ expectations did not seem to influence their intentions or behavior to the same extent, however they did plan to be employed following childbirth sooner than white girls.47 There is other evidence that suggests that expectations and plans are related to later behaviors. However, life events that occur between the plans and behavior do affect the eventual outcome. When actually faced with these decisions, experience may alter their intentions. In one three-generation study of women’s ambitions, maternal ambitions were more influential than grandmothers’ ambitions on daughters, but there was more similarity within cohorts than within families, indicating that social norms and events were influencing all of the members of a single generation more than mothers were influencing the daughters. Other studies of the relationship between plans and behavior also found intervening events such as whether or not a woman got married or found a satisfying job within a supportive organization, influenced intentions to become a homemaker or career woman respectively.48 The Decision Rule and Scripts Perspective: Role Norms as Decision Rules The decision rule perspective does not assume that, in real life, people always think or act in a rational way by seeking to ‘maximize their utility’; instead, this perspective seeks to describe the way people really do think or decide. In this view, the same factors described above in the rational expected utility decision-making perspective might affect a person’s actions, however, this perspective proposes that in real life, people do not examine every possibility


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and calculate the benefit or utility of each choice. Instead, people’s decisions may be guided by selecting the first alternative that matches general scripts or schemata or decision rules. A decision decided by a schema might be something like ‘my mother worked when I was a child, and it turned out all right, and that’s what most of my friends are doing, so that must be the way to do this’. For example, when women have been asked to describe what was influential when they actually thought about their decision to work or not work following childbirth, the two factors that women repeatedly mentioned are family income and child welfare. Personal accomplishment was a distant third. The factors that are most important may depend upon how the question is phrased. If asked ‘what would be most likely to influence you to go to work?’, the most common answer was financial need. When asked ‘what would be most likely to influence you to stay home?’, the most common answers were a sick child or child welfare.49 The most common explanation for how women and men acquire decision rules for working and for family life is through socialization in the home, in school, and in the media, recognizing what behavior is specific and appropriate for particular gender roles. Thus explanations for behavior in these realms are not based upon maximizing utility or doing what is perceived to be the best of the sum of all possible consequences of an action. In addition, behavior may be influenced by social cues about what is appropriate behavior for men and for women in a particular social context. The guidelines for these social contexts are contained in norms for specific roles. Gender role socialization Gender role socialization theory explicitly defines gender roles within the family and affects the roles people adopt outside of the family as well.50 In the traditional view, boys are taught that a man’s role is that of the breadwinner outside of the family and decision-maker inside the family, while girls are taught that a woman’s role is largely domestic, as a mother, wife, and homemaker. In this context, the paid ‘work’ role refers to the direct contribution to the production of goods and services consumed by society, while the ‘family’ role refers to the bearing, nursing, caring, and raising of children, and the feeding and caring of adult men as well as caring of siblings and elderly parents.51 Because of the physiological characteristics of childbirth and nursing, many cultures consider the family role of women to be a primary life role regardless of whether a woman works in the home without wages or for pay outside the family. The work of a housewife and mother is not just something you do, it is somebody you are, that is, a sub-identity even though other aspects of identity may be affected by the social context.52 More modern role messages might contain information that either men or

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women can work outside the home and can care for children, but some traditional role messages still occur. Gender role socialization further reinforces the sexual division of labor, with the family as women’s primary role obligation, even when both spouses are working outside home. Gender role socialization may affect women’s career choices early in their lives when as young girls, social influences cause them to prepare for careers that fit their stereotype of those appropriate for women or to prepare only for the roles of wife and mother, even though statistically most will be employed at some time during their lives.53 Men in the US still find the worker role more salient to their identity while women find other roles such as mother, wife, homemaker, more salient and central.54 Traditional gender role perceptions exist among young people as well as adults. Among Canadian and Chinese college students, career success was an important value for both men and women, but the young women were more likely to rate work–family balance more highly in their work goals than young men, and similar samples of college students could predict occupations based on gender stereotypical information.55 US high school youths are apparently similar in their job-related values. Both girls and boys valued extrinsic rewards (such as pay and promotions) equally, but girls were much more interested in intrinsic rewards (such as feeling liked or feeling a sense of accomplishment) and in work–leisure or work–social contribution balance. In a change from earlier findings, boys seemed more interested in having time for family, however girls anticipated more work–family conflict than boys.56 These beliefs may persist into adult behavior and beliefs. For example, in the US women continue to do more housework than their spouses, and some do not perceive this to be unfair.57 Role interactions Paid work roles and unpaid family roles affect each other. For a variety of perspectives on all aspects of the ways work and family roles interact, see the volume edited by Kossek and Lambert, since a full treatment of this topic is not possible in this chapter.58 When girls prepare for careers that they believe are appropriate for gender roles that fit their stereotype of what is female, they also limit the types of occupations open to them later in life. Later, in trying to adapt and make personal adjustments to balance their working and family life, their career paths and patterns may vary greatly from that of a man, as well as from that of a woman who initially assumed as a girl that she would work outside the home. The reverse can also occur and women’s actions can affect how work and family roles are perceived. When women are socialized into jobs consistent with traditional gender roles corresponding to their primary responsibility of home management and childcare, these jobs are feminized, and as a result,


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many women are segregated into low paid, boring, monotonous, routine jobs. Persistent gender differences in values may influence differences in pay and occupational segregation as well.59 Recent studies of gender occupational segregation in the US concluded that by including the occupation of housewife in the analysis, measures of occupational segregation declined over time, revealing that in fact, occupational desegregation was not due as much to changes in the gender composition of various occupations as it was to the movement of women out of the occupation of housewife.60 This means that as more women enter the paid workforce, they join co-workers who are also women, and this stereotyping of occupations is as much a result of gender role socialization as it is a function of women choosing to inhabit the occupation of housewife. Another role interaction effect between family role norms and women’s employment is that devotion to family roles may increase a woman’s time spent out of the labor force as discussed above in the section on consequences of decision-making. Childbirth and childrearing often cause the intermittent pattern of a woman’s employment career. A bi-modal work profile (leaving work to care for children and returning when the children go to school) provides the basis for employer prejudice. If employers expect to lose women to childrearing, they are less willing to hire them and less willing to train them.61 Role conflict Role conflict is another type of role interaction where both work–family roles are being enacted.62 Working women today often face inter-role conflict and there is a substantial literature describing the causes, coping mechanisms, and consequences of this conflict; only the highlights will be mentioned here. More detailed study in the conflict literature separates the influence of work on family from the influence of family on work, and does not treat the conflict as a one way source of stress. There seems to be a preponderance of evidence that suggests that conflict that occurs from one role can affect the other role and that it goes both ways, that is, conflict at work can arise at home and conflict at home can arise at work. Role conflict occurs for both men and women, but perhaps in different ways, and not all role interactions are conflicted.63 Some causes of work–family role conflict for US women include the relative importance of and commitment to employment and family roles in a woman’s value system, the number and ages of children she has, and the number and flexibility of the hours she works.64 Some women become entrepreneurs because they believe they will have more autonomy and control to create a flexible schedule, however, this is not always the case and many entrepreneurs find this work as stressful from a work–family role conflict perspective as working in

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another type of organization. There is some evidence that entrepreneurs may also generate more family-friendly human resources policies than firms not run by female entrepreneurs.65 The consequences of work–family role conflict can include reductions in family and work satisfaction as well as life satisfaction, and increases in perceived stress that may affect psychological and physical health. In the US, the emotional stress and psychological pressure from competing demands of having to handle the two roles, as well as the physical, and the time demands of fulfilling each role, combined with guilt arising from being unable to play the two roles well, may make it even more difficult to undertake each role effectively and efficiently. This role conflict may require frequent trade offs that can have a negative effect on either the family or work role enactment and on a woman’s physical and psychological well being.66 There are several mitigating factors and coping strategies that may reduce work–family conflict or its consequences. In some cases women decide to relieve the conflict by reducing their time or commitment to the labor force by mechanisms such as absenteeism, turnover to a less demanding job, reduction of hours to part-time work or decisions to leave the work force. Alternatively, some women may reduce their family role demands by having no children or a smaller number of children later in their career when they will have more financial resources to hire help or have more flexibility in their professional position.67 For those who choose to remain fully engaged in both spheres, executives and professionals report a variety of work–family coping strategies such as: using their home as a sanctuary by not taking any work home; using a spouse or other family members to cope with the home tasks and other aspects of the family sphere; using specifically coded and timed communications that indicate if the executive is or is not needed at home; using careful scheduling strategies; using time-out dating to maintain romance in their family lives; paying specific attention to rest, exercise, and nutrition; and taking a broader perspective so that they do not worry about the details or can relax their standards for some activities in some roles.68 A mediator between job and home role demands, perceptions of conflict, and stress for many women is the quality of childcare that they have been able to find while at work. If the women have found good childcare, even though there may be many role demands, they may feel less conflict and stress about it.69 Another consistent way of reducing stress arising from role conflict involves receiving direct help and emotional support from spouses, other relatives, friends, and community peers as well as from family-friendly employer policies and supportive bosses and co-workers.70 Role enhancement Enacting more than one role may also have positive effects. Even though there


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may be time conflicts, enacting multiple roles such as employee, mother and/or wife may create benefits such as added income, positive mental health, increased opportunities for success, increased self-complexity, and increased marital and work satisfaction.71 The mechanisms that have been proposed to account for these positive effects of work and family roles on each other include: buffering the effects of success in one role against failure in the other role; increased availability of social support from an expanded network of associates that occurs when new roles are added; additive positive effects of job satisfaction and marital satisfaction on overall life satisfaction and happiness; and expanded frames of reference due to experience gained, lessons learned, and even an increase in perceived similarity of male and female roles that may have a positive effect on a couple’s understanding within a marriage. There has been some discussion about work being a haven from home responsibilities and home being a haven from work responsibilities and this may be true for both men and women.72 Self-management of work–family roles Kossek and colleagues have synthesized many perspectives of role theory as they apply to integrating work and family roles. Their model includes most of the factors stated by respondents of this study. These authors propose a model that includes organizational antecedents such as formal work–family practices, and informal organizational work–family climate. This model also includes individual antecedents such as caregiving resources, living arrangements and caregiver demands; both of which lead to boundary management and role embracement as mechanisms for work–family role synthesis. The organizational antecedents and individual antecedents lead to fit between work–family strategy and organizational context, which predict work and family outcomes. The model outcomes include emotions and attitudes such as psychological distress and satisfaction at work and at home; quality of work, marital, leisure and family roles, organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Outcomes also include behaviors such as turnover, organizational citizenship, substance abuse, aggression, or withdrawal. The strength of this model is that family roles might both harm and enhance work roles and vice versa, a possible weakness is that it does not include other social arenas such as leisure roles.73

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION The broad theoretical perspectives that have guided the study of women’s work and family lives include stage theories and decision theories, and within the decision theories two perspectives, a rational expected utility perspective

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and a decision rules and scripts perspective that in this domain usually relies on gender role norms as a source of scripts. The stage models, developed first using male life patterns, and later supplemented by a few female life-stage proposals, rely primarily on descriptions of what constitutes a stage and what factors contribute to moving from one stage to another. In stage theories applied to women’s lives, stages are described in terms of chronological age as well as reproductive experience such as children entering and leaving or expanding and shrinking the home sphere. When employment is used to define stages for both men and women, preparation and exploration, establishment, maintenance, and disengagement are common stages. The career stages of women in this volume include preparation, establishment, and maintenance. In this study, most women might be considered to be in reproductive stages such as preparation and expansion spheres, although some have never had children. The limitations of stage theories are that no one has successfully proposed a stage theory that accurately describes the many alternative patterns women experience as they may move into and out of both home and labor force spheres, and few scholars have attempted to provide explanatory mechanisms for entering or leaving stages except the most basic physiological experiences of birth, life, and death. Thus, the most useful theories that can be applied to the life stories in this book come from the decision-making perspectives. The rational utility perspective of decision-making focuses on consequences of alternative actions. In this case, the actions involve the decision to remain in the labor force or become a homemaker following childbirth. Existing research on consequences relevant to this decision, as described in the chapter, portray positive and negative consequences of each alternative. The positive consequences of deciding to remain in the full-time labor force include greater lifetime income and thus independence and security, higher achieved job status and recognition, and higher self-esteem if the work role is valued, as well as possible enhancement of each role because of the other. Positive effects may also occur on a spouse’s career because married men and men who are parents are perceived to be more stable and reliable. Empirical consequences for children are mixed and depend primarily on the quality of childcare and consistency of child discipline the child has received, but do not support the assumption that childcare given by someone other than a mother is deficient. Negative consequences of continuous full-time employment primarily include stress related to multiple role demands and time constraints, lower standards for housekeeping and less attention to one’s own leisure life. Positive consequences of deciding to stay at home following childbirth include increased life satisfaction if the family role is highly valued, increased opportunities for independence, creativity, and service to others, more time spent in the presence of children (but not more time interacting with children),


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and the potential for more time spent supporting a spouse’s career. There is little evidence that consequences for children are inherently better if cared for by their mothers. Negative consequences for women who stay at home include lower lifetime personal income and lower job status as well as increased difficulty in finding a job if a woman decides to return to the labor force after childcare responsibilities decrease or if the need for increased household income arises. Evidence for the positive consequences of choosing to remain in the labor force but reducing hours to part-time work include less stress from role conflict and increased time for meeting family needs, and the ability to return to full-time work compared to those who decide to leave the labor force altogether. Negative consequences for choosing part-time work include diminished promotion and pay opportunities as a consequence not only of reduced hours, but also reduced opportunities for training, mentoring, and networking. Part-time workers may also experience more role conflict compared to fulltime homemakers. The rational expected utility model primarily focuses on the human decision-making process but the model does not take all alternatives and consequences into account, and the omission of external events and forces that prevent an individual from knowing or acting on the most rational alternative is one of the model’s limitations. The alternative decision rule and scripts model takes the characteristics of human decision-making into account and relies, in this instance, primarily upon scripts from social norms that promote traditional gender role behavior for men and women. The empirical research yields many examples of the effects of gender role scripts in contemporary US society. Although both men and women in contemporary US society say they expect to be employed, gender differences in expectations about the importance of and time given to family roles persist. In each of the empirical instances cited in this chapter, women and girls were conscious of their nonwork roles, of balancing family and employment roles in a way that gender role socialization theory predicts will have an impact on their careers, while the men in every study (except one study of US boys’ values) were less likely to take family roles into account. Thus, when one wants to describe work and family decisions today, a more complete discussion would include not only consequences and values, but also normative pressure of others that is important and relevant for the decision-making, as well as scripts about role conflict and role enhancement. The decision-making theory which guided the structured questions of Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III of this study, is the Fishbein–Ajzen theory of reasoned action, as found in Figure 2.1. It is a model that includes the rational expected utility perspective consequences of each alternative (to remain in the labor force or to leave the labor force following childbirth) as well as the

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value of those consequences, and also includes normative effects of family members, work peers, and superiors that may reflect the gender norm schemas of a decision rule and scripts perspective. This theory also includes life experience as well as intentions that may create unique individual decision scripts. As this study progressed, it became apparent that the most interesting changes that occurred through time were changes in values, perceptions of consequences, norms, and external events, or factors that enhanced or detracted from women’s ability to pursue previously made plans using both perceived utility and decision rules. Thus, Phase IV focused on the process of decision-making in response to key life events, and in particular to the event of the birth of the participants’ first child and their progressive decisions about employment that followed. The formal changes in perceptions of consequences of both alternatives, as well as the influence of normative others, are described in the last chapter and in the tables in Appendix B. When all women are included there are many differences that are statistically significant, but when the subgroups from each chapter are used, in many cases there are not statistically significant differences because the number of women in each of the three groups is small. The data are presented even when there are few significant differences in order to supplement the qualitative information described in the chapters. In the following chapters, excerpts from the written questionnaires from Phases I, II, and III as well as information from Phase IV interviews are used to describe the decision-making processes and factors that influenced or created the decision rules of the women in this study who chose full-time employment, part-time employment, full-time homemaking, and entrepreneurship as strategies for their employment and family roles.

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Women’s employment and homemaking careers 305–19; Bridges, J.S., and C. Etaugh (1996), ‘Black and white college women’s maternal employment outcome expectations and their desired timing of maternal employment’, Sex Roles, 35 (9/10), 543–56; Tangri, S.S. and S.R. Jenkins ( 1997), ‘Why expecting conflict is good’, Sex Roles, 36 (11/12), 725–46; Sen, B. (2003), ‘Why do women feel the way they do about market work? The role of familial, social and economic factors’, Review of Social Economy, 61 (2), 211–34. Whisler, S.C. and S.J. Eklund (1986), ‘Women’s ambitions: a three generational study’, Psychology of Women Quarterly, 10 (4), 353–62; Rexroat, C. and C. Shehan (1984), ‘Expected versus actual work roles of women’, American Sociological Review, 49 (3), 349–58; Tangri, S.S. and S.R. Jenkins (1997), ‘Why expecting conflict is good’, Sex Roles, 36 (11/12), 725–46; Hock, E., M.T. Gnezda, and S.L. McBride (1984), ‘Mothers of infants: attitudes toward employment and motherhood following birth of the first child’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, May, 425–31. Granrose, C.S. (1985), ‘Anticipating the decision to work following childbirth’, The Vocational Guidance Quarterly, March, 221–30; Hock, E., M.T. Gnezda, and S.L. McBride (1984), ‘Mothers of infants: attitudes toward employment and motherhood following birth of the first child’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, May, 425–31. Eagly, A.H. (1987), Sex Differences in Social Behavior: A Social-role Interpretation, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; Eccles, J.S., C. Freedman-Doan, and P. Frome (2000), ‘Gender-role socialization in the family: a longitudinal approach’, in T. Eckes and H.M. Trautner (eds.), Developmental Social Psychology of Gender, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 333–59; Gutek, B.A., C.Y. Nakamura, and V.F. Nieva (1981), ‘The interdependence of work and family roles’, Journal of Occupational Behavior, 2 (1), 1–16. Lim, Y.C. (1982), ‘Women in the Singapore Economy’, Economic Research Centre National University of Singapore occasional paper, Singapore: Chopmen Publishers, Voydanoff, P. (1988), ‘Work role characteristics, family structure demands, and work-family conflict’, Journal of Marriage and The Family, 50 (3), 749–61; Pleck, J.H. (1977), ‘The work family role system’, Social Problems, 24 (4), 417–27. Rowbotham, S. (1973), Woman’s Consciousness, Man’s World, Harmondsworth England: Penguin. Ely, R.J. (1995), ‘The power in demography: women’s social constructions of gender identity at work’, The Academy of Management Journal, 38 (3), 589–634. Sen, B. (2003), ‘Why do women feel the way they do about market work? The role of familial, social and economic factors, Review of Social Economy, 61 (2), 211–34 Botkin, D.R., O. Weeks, and J. Morris (2000), ‘Changing marriage role expectations: 1961–1996’, Sex Roles, 42 (9/10), 933–42 . Reitzes, D.C. and E.J. Mutran (2002), ‘Self-concept as the organization of roles: importance, centrality, and balance’, The Sociology Quarterly, 43 (4), 647–67. Bu, N. and C.A. McKeen (2001), ‘Work goals among male and female business students in Canada and China: the effects of culture and gender’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, 12 (2), 166–83; Zhou, L.Y., M.L. Dawson, and C.L. Herr (2004), ‘American and Chinese college student’s predictions of people’s occupations, housework responsibilities, and hobbies as a function of cultural and gender influences’, Sex Roles, 50 (7–8), 547–63. Marini, M.M., P. Fan, E. Finley and A.M. Beutel (1996), ‘Gender and job values’, Sociology of Education, 69 (1), 49–66; Cinnamon, G. (2006), ‘Anticipated work family conflict: effects of gender, self-efficiency, and family background’, Career Development Quarterly, 54 (3), 202–15. Grote, N.K., K.E. Naylor, and M.S. Clark (2002), ‘Perceiving the division of family work to be unfair: do social comparisons, enjoyment and competence matter?’, Journal of Family Psychology, 16 (4), 510–22. Kossek, E.E. and Lambert, S. (2005), Work and Life Integration, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Geib, A.E. and L.B. Lueptow (1996), ‘Sex, gender stereotypes and work’, in P.J. Dubeck and K. Borman (eds), Women and Work: A Handbook, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. 243–6; Hakim, C. (2006), ‘Women, careers, and work-life preferences’, British Journal of Guidance and Counseling, 34 (3), 279–94; Corrigal, E. and A. Konrad (2006),


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‘The relationship of job attribute preferences to employment, hours of paid work, and family responsibilities: an analysis comparing women and men’, Sex Roles, 54 (1/2), 95–111. Huffman, M.L. and P.N. Cohen (2004), ‘Racial wage inequality: job segregation and devaluation across US labor markets’, American Journal of Sociology, 109 (4), 902–36. Sullerot, E. (1971), Women, Society and Change, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. O’Leary, V.E. (1977), Towards Understanding Women, Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole; Adams, J.M. (1984), ‘When working women become pregnant’, New England Business Journal, February, 18–21; Pleck, J.H. (1985), Working Wives/Working Husbands, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Noor, N.M. (2004), ‘Work-family conflict, work- and family-role salience, and women’s well-being’, Journal of Social Psychology, 144 (4), 389–405; Blanchard-Fields, F., Y.W. Chen, and C.E. Hebert, (1997), ‘Interrole conflict as a function of life stage, gender, and gender-related personality attributes’, Sex Roles, 37 (3/4), 155–74; Greenhaus, J.H., and G.N. Powell (2006), ‘When work and family are allies: a theory of work-family enrichment’, Academy of Management Review, 31 (1), 72–92. Beutell, N. and U. Wittig-Berman (1999), ‘Predictors of work-family conflict and satisfaction with family, job, career and life’, Psychological Reports, 85 (3), 715–902; Milkie, M.A. and Peltola, P. (1999), ‘Playing all the roles: gender and the work-family balancing act’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61 (2), 476–90; Poelmans, S. (2005), ‘Playing all the roles: gender and the work-family balancing act’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61 (2), 476–90; Poelmans, S. (2005), Work and Family: An International Research Perspective, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Parasuraman, S.J. and C.A. Simmers (2001), ‘Type of employment, work-family conflict and well-being: a comparative study’, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 22 (5), 551–68; Shelton, L (2006), ‘Female entrepreneurs, work family conflict, and venture performance: new insights into the work-family interface’, Journal of Small Business Management, 44 (2), 285–97. Mennino, S.F. and A. Brayfield (2002), ‘Job-family trade-offs’, Work and Occupations, 29 (2), 226–56; Kossek, E.E. and C. Ozeki (1998), ‘Work-family conflicts, policies, and the job-life satisfaction relationship: a review and directions for organizational behavior-human resources research’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 83 (2), 139–49; Wiley, D. (1987), ‘The relationship between work/non-work role conflict and job-related outcomes: some unanticipated findings’, Journal of Management, 13 (3), 467–72; Grandley, A.A., B.L. Cordeiro and A.C. Crouter (2005), ‘A longitudinal and multi-source test of the work-family conflict and job satisfaction relationship’, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 78 (3), 305–23; Poelmans, S. (2005), Work and Family: An International Research Perspective, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; Baruch, G.K., L. Biener, and R.C. Barnett (1987), ‘Women and gender in research on work and family stress’, American Psychologist, 42 (2), 130–36; Oster, K.A. and E.D. Scannell, (1999), ‘Change in role perception, role conflict, and psychological health of working mothers’, Psychological Reports, 84 (1), 221–30. Moen, P., I. Cronell, D.D. McClain (1987), ‘Employed parents: role strain, work time, and preferences for working less’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 49 (3), 579–90; Gahr, E., (1998), ‘Is going home possible? Lots of families say yes’, The American Enterprise, 9 (3), 50–100; Gray, J.D. and M. Lynch (1983), ‘The married professional woman: an examination of her role conflicts and coping strategies’, Psychology of Women Quarterly, 7 (3), 235–43; Delbecq, A. and F. Friedlander (1995), ‘Strategies for personal and family renewal’, Journal of Management Inquiry, 4 (3), 262–69; Kossek, E.E. and C. Ozeki, (1998), ‘Work-family conflicts, policies, and the job-life satisfaction relationship: a review and directions for organizational behavior-human resources research’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 83 (2), 139–49; Bedeian, A.G., B.G. Burke and R.G. Moffett (1988), ‘Outcomes of work-family conflict among married male and female professionals’, Journal of Management, 14 (3), 475–91. Martins, L.L., K.A. Eddleston, and J.F. Viega (2002), ‘Moderators of the relationship between work-family conflict and career satisfaction’, Academy of Management Journal, 45 (2), 399–409; Hopkins, K. (2005) ‘Supervisor support and work-life integration: a social

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identity perspective, in E.E. Kossek and S. Lambert, Work and Life Integration, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 445–66; Haddock, S., T. Zimmerman, K. Lyness, and S. Ziemba (2006), ‘Practices of dual earner couples successfully balancing work and family’, Journal of Family and Economics Issues, 27 (2), 207–34; Mesmer-Magnus, J. and C. Viswesvaran (2006), ‘How family-friendly work environments effects work-family conflict: a meta analytic examination’, Journal of Labor Research, 27 (4), 555–74; Van Daalen, G., T. Willemsen, and K. Sandres (2006), ‘Reducing work-family conflict through different sources of social support’, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 69 (3), 462–76; Haddock, S., T. Zimmerman, K. Lyness, and S. Ziemba (2006), ‘Practices of dual earner couples successfully balancing work and family’, Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 27 (2), 207–34; Van Daalen, G., T. Willemsen, and K. Sandres (2006), ‘Reducing work-family conflict through different sources of social support’, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 69 (3), 462–76. 71. Barnett, R.C. and J. Shibley-Hyde (2001), ‘Women, men, work and family’, American Psychologist, 56 (10), 781–96, Edwards, J.R. and N.P. Rothbard (2000), ‘Mechanisms linking work and family: clarifying the relationship between work and family constructs’, Academy of Management Review, 25 (1), 178–99; Rothbard, N.P. (2001), ‘Enriching or depleting? The dynamics of engagement in work and family roles’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 46 (4), 655–84. 72. Ruderman, M.N., P.J. Ohlott, K. Panzer, and S.N. King (2002), ‘Benefits of multiple roles for managerial women’, Academy of Management Journal, 45 (2), 369–86; Kirchmeyer, C. (1993), ‘Nonwork-to-work spillover: a more balanced view of the experiences and coping of professional women and men’, Sex Roles, 28 (9/10), 531–53; Greenhaus, J.H. and G. Powell (2006), ‘When work and family are allies: a theory of work-family enrichment’, Academy of Management Review, 31 (1), 72–92; Kiecolt, K..J. (2003), ‘Satisfaction with work and family life: no evidence of a cultural reversal’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 65 (1), 23–35. 73. Kossek, E.E., R.A. Noe, and B.J. DeMarr (1999), ‘Work-family role synthesis: individual and organizational determinants’, The International Journal of Conflict Management, 10 (2), 102–29.

PART II

Career patterns: stories and explanations

3. Careerists and breadwinners, working full-time The careerists were the women who, when they were in college, believed that they would work continuously with a limited maternity leave after childbirth, and who acted on that belief. Breadwinners were the women who planned to stay home with their children when they were making life plans in college, but in actuality, some have had continuous full-time careers and their lives were so similar to the careerists, we have included them in this chapter. In college (Phase I), 41 percent of women believed they would have continuous careers and of the 72 women interviewed, 23 or about 33 percent fit this career pattern as they expected, including seven women who never had children. Of those interviewed, seven women expected to stay home when they were in college, but actually followed the breadwinner pattern of a continuous full-time career. This included two women who never had children. To be included in the groupings for careerists and/or breadwinners, the women had to have returned to full-time employment within three years after the birth of their first child and any subsequent child (or had no children) and were employed full-time (more than 32 hours per week) during their entire careers. We found 30 women who matched this selection criteria and they were placed in the groupings of careerists and breadwinners having a full-time career. Three additional women who fit these same criteria became selfemployed and their careers are reported in Chapter 6. The women who returned to work part-time and those who had employment histories with gaps out of the labor force for homemaking exceeding three years will be discussed in Chapters 4 and 5 respectively. In the careerists and breadwinners groups there was some variation in the career and family situations that highlights specific effects on the women’s employment history. The first group was of women who lived in a two-career family and balanced employment and motherhood throughout their lives. Most of these women’s careers were influenced in some way by their husband’s careers, sometimes negatively and sometimes positively, and a few women struggled to accommodate illnesses of a child or another family member. The second group of these women were divorced and became single parents, a third group married and became step-parents later in their lives, and 49

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the final group of married and unmarried women never became parents. For each of the career types, one woman’s story receives a detailed description that emphasizes things that influenced her decision-making processes and life course as her career progressed. These longer life histories are followed by short summaries of other women with similar experiences whose lives illustrate variation within the group. The stories are arranged within each group to highlight particular barriers or supports to maintaining full-time employment careers. In the case of breadwinners, specific responses are presented to illustrate how their thinking shifted from believing they wanted to become homemakers to becoming oriented to a full-time career. The chapter concludes with a summary of the findings that combines the statistical description of this group with the qualitative analysis of the characteristics of this group and their decision-making about their continuous careers.

MANAGER, WIFE AND MOTHER – MARGARET’S STORY During her childhood, Margaret lived in the outskirts of a small town with one younger sister and one younger brother and attended a Protestant church. Her mother, a high school graduate, did not work when Margaret was small, then worked part-time as a secretary when Margaret and her siblings started school, and returned to work full-time as an administrator when Margaret was a teenager. Margaret’s father, a college graduate, worked full-time in the Navy, Defense Department and GSA. Margaret babysat occasionally but held no other high school job. In college, Margaret worked in food service at several fast food restaurants, including one management position. Her most important values when in college included feeling a sense of accomplishment, wanting to feel close to her child and husband, and insuring that her children would have attention when they needed it. When asked about her plans for the future she said: If I had a position far enough up in the company and I would lose ground by staying out of the market, I would definitely work. Also, if my husband didn’t have a good job and we needed the income [I would definitely work]. I would definitely not work if (1) there were no childcare facilities, (2) my child was handicapped and needed extra attention, or (3) my husband’s income was high enough and he preferred I put off work.

Margaret had general plans to make her career her life focus, and to obtain a graduate degree. She planned to work when she had young children, but she planned to have fewer children (two) than she would have had if she did not plan to work, to have her children later (when she was about 30), and to have her children further apart (two or more years) because of her career. She declared:

Careerists and breadwinners, working full-time

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I feel that with good childcare, it shouldn’t hinder a child’s development as long as they know they are loved. I plan on making the quality of the time spent with my children make up for the lack of quantity. I also want my children to realize that even though I work, they are the most important factor and when they need me, they will have me.

Margaret graduated from college in 1982 and held a full-time job as an accounting clerk. She left work for two years to obtain her MBA and in 1986 she married an IBM analyst, and obtained a position as a financial analyst/senior accountant with a manufacturing firm. This job involved a 45minute commute and after several years this became routine. Changing her college opinion of delaying childbearing and having her children further apart to accommodate her career, Margaret had her first son in 1988, and took a maternity leave of two months. She had her second son in 1989 and took her employer’s six-week maternity leave. In her responses to Phase II in 1990 she reported high self-esteem, job satisfaction, career satisfaction, and very high marital and maternal satisfaction. In describing her decision process of returning to employment following her first childbirth she reported in her interview: We thought about whether we had enough money, as well as when it would be best for my career. I felt that it would be better to have children early in my career than later when I saw what was happening to my co-workers who had children. We decided we were both ready for the responsibility and emotional commitment. My mother decided she could watch my children, allowing me to decide to return to work. It really changed her life since she retired and gave up her freedom for my childcare. It was a total change in how we lived and was a big responsibility to become a mother. I underestimated how difficult it would be to balance both. To cope, we used a flexible schedule, my husband went in to work early and got home early and I went in later.

After the birth of her first son, Margaret found a new job as a corporate accountant for a nearby hospital but she took a disappointing cut in pay, a lower salary than she had formerly expected that she would have had if she had been able to keep the same job after her first child was born. She did meet her expectations for obtaining a job that gave her a sense of accomplishment and time for her sons to have enough attention when they needed it. Her husband was willing to help around the house and was supportive of her career, although he was perhaps slightly less supportive than she expected right after childbirth. By Phase III, Margaret was still very satisfied with every aspect of her life. She obtained a promotion to the hospital’s chief financial officer in 1995. In her interview, she revealed that her husband had again become very satisfied and supportive of her career, but her most difficult time of combining employment

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and family was ahead as his own career became a rocky road, linked to the fortunes of a major computer firm. She said: At the most stressful point, more so than when the kids were younger, when the children were teenagers, he took a demotion to become a night-shift manager in order to retain his job. This changed our whole lifestyle. He was not able to do as much housework, he was more tired, which was really difficult with two teenage boys, and he was only available to attend family events on weekend evenings. My mom and dad still stayed in my home during the day and helped out with carpooling and I just relaxed my standards for the house. My sons were old enough to stay alone at times and they learned to be more appreciative of the sacrifices we made to keep a job.

Her husband later changed employers when his division was sold to another firm but he had gained valuable experience and in 2005 he obtained his current job with an aerospace firm as a production control manager. In 2006, Margaret became chief executive officer of a long-term care facility with an annual salary exceeding $100 000. Her salary, her opportunities to advance, as well as her job challenge and variety had exceeded her expectations. She said: This was a big leap up for me. I had been in my previous organization for 20 years and I needed to do this. It just appeared and I took it. My old boss and my parents were more reluctant. I considered their advice but then I followed my own heart and it was a big promotion and opportunity to meet new people and do new things, so I just went for it! I didn’t realize how much I valued routine and old peers until I had no peers as CEO. My husband was my biggest supporter: he is back to doing more housekeeping and I have relaxed my standards again. The boys were for it and have lives of their own and both work after school so that was OK. The whole family keeps in contact with cell phones.

Looking into the future, Margaret hopes to stay with this organization, but says it depends upon her board of directors and the economic welfare of the region. She particularly looks forward to watching her own career and her sons grow as they pursue their dreams to be lawyers. She is also looking forward to playing more golf and tennis with her husband, as her children leave home. In summary, Margaret found that the supports for her lifestyle were her parents who helped with childcare, her husband who helped with housework when his work schedule permitted it, and co-ordinating work schedules between herself and her husband so that one went to work later in the morning and one came home earlier in the evening. The barriers that she experienced came from her own and her husband’s job situations. She took a job with lower pay and responsibility to get a more flexible schedule after childbirth and her husband needed to work nights to retain his job during a company downsizing. They coped by being more flexible with housework and with their own career expectations.


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Other Married Women with Children and Challenging Professional Careers – Careerists The family and career situations that resulted in full-time career trajectories were quite varied, and a few additional examples reveal different sources of work–family tensions and triumphs. For some professional women their own job demands were a major source of pressure on the integration of employment and family responsibilities, but they coped through a wide variety of childcare arrangements as their careers blossomed. Out of the women interviewed four women have had busy full-time professional lives as attorneys. We found that two had notable careers with the usual family–career balance issues of time constraints and changing childcare arrangements: one woman, Sara Beth, married another lawyer and had one child in 1991 taking a six-week maternity leave, returned part-time for a few weeks, and then resumed her fulltime career. Another lawyer, Kay, married a man with a background in science, who obtained his MBA and entered biotechnology management. The couple had two children in 1990 and 1994; she returned to the same firm after the birth of her first child but she changed jobs shortly before becoming pregnant with her second child. Of these women interviewed in Phase IV, two of them when in college had wanted to become physicians and succeeded, each marrying another MD, and having children. Viola had two children using a four-month childbirth leave each time, delaying her residency. She combined family and medical responsibilities by becoming employed by a major credit card company rather than opening a private family practice and later, when the commute into New York City became too stressful, Viola became a medical educator in New Jersey. Her husband is a radiologist in an outpatient clinic and has reasonable hours. Like Margaret, Viola maintained her career by changing firms to obtain positions with more flexibility, and depended upon a supportive spouse with flexible hours. The other physician, Dottie, opened her own nutritional clinic and her story is reported in the entrepreneurship chapter (Chapter 6). Women Who Did Not Originally Aspire to Become Career Women – Breadwinners For some women early family instability proved a career challenge that was overcome to become a successful career woman. Jeanne had her first child the year of Phase I when she was a college junior; she returned to college, graduated, got a job as a service manager and married her child’s father, an attorney, in 1982. In 1986 Jeanne was divorced, married her second husband, a pilot, and had her second child. She returned to work due to boredom in 1987 when she obtained a job as a service manager in a large firm and started her long-term

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upward mobility career trajectory rising to become the senior regional human resources manager of her firm by 2007. There were four other women who did not plan full-time continuous professional careers, but career opportunities and financial need changed their minds. In college, Betty preferred the choice of staying at home but thought she might work part-time after childbirth if she and her husband needed the income. After college graduation she worked as a fundraiser and then as a nonprofit organization manager. Betty married in 1993 and had her only child in 1997. She described the decision process to return to work this way: We had a live-in nanny and that made returning very easy. I asked for three months of maternity leave and to work part-time for a month or so after that, but I went back early when they needed me. I love my daughter but I get more satisfaction out of working than being a stay at home mom.

Robin believed she would not be employed during the first three years after the birth of her first child unless she ‘needed the money to live or unless she was in the middle of an important chemical experiment of high interest to the world of health.’ When she graduated from college she obtained a position in pharmaceutical quality control. Robin married another chemist in 1984 and had her son in 1991. She said: By the time I got pregnant I had wanted to be pregnant for a long time. I stayed out the maximum leave of 10 weeks and then I returned to second shift. My husband was working first shift. I knew I couldn’t go back part-time, that just wasn’t an option [with my job] and if we wanted to have a house I needed to work. My mother-in-law was against my working but my husband just put his foot down. He said ‘we don’t want to eat hotdogs every week. She needs to work.’ It was really stressful. I hated leaving him [her son] even though he didn’t cry. I felt guilty, [but] you go back and he was happy as a lark. I thought I’d have more kids but that didn’t work out. Career-wise, I fell into promotions, I didn’t look for them. At one point I would have become my husband’s boss so he found another job. If I had not had my son I would be in a higher position (VP) and be living in a different place. I turned down several promotions. I thought it was more important to be with him and have a stable life.

Robin has continued to work for the same firm since college graduation, rising to become the director of quality in 2006. This career path is the clearest example of a spouse and economic circumstances playing a very influential role in a woman having a full-time career even though her personal preference would have been to remain at home with her child. By the time she graduated from college in 1981, Mary was planning on having three or four children with about two years between each of them. She felt it was somewhat unlikely that she would work during the first three years after childbirth. Factors that Mary felt could change her decision were ‘Death


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of [my] husband, or inability of him to work, or a financial crisis. If my child has physical or mental problems or if I had another child’. Mary worked for a fabric designer in 1982, then married in 1984, she also began working in customer service for a cookie manufacturer in 1984. In 1988, Mary had her first child and quit her job to become a homemaker but that lasted only one year. The following year she began work for a textile firm. She explains why she did this: Boredom, I found I needed more than staying home all the time. There was a lack of extra income and losing income is hard. My child was independent from the beginning and was also very even tempered and loved being with other people. My husband and I talked about it; he said it was up to me. I happened to read about a job in a local paper that looked fun. I was able to take my daughter with me to the job (the woman I worked for worked at home) for almost a year.

Mary had her second daughter in 1990 and continued to work in customer service. She had a third daughter in 1992, and in 1993, she began working as the manager of customer service in the fabric design industry. She worked as an administrative assistant part-time in 1999 then became unemployed from late 1999 to 2001. In 2001, Mary and her family moved and she began working at a middle school as an administrative assistant. In 2005, she became a bookkeeper and this is the job she currently holds. Career Challenges Arising from a Partner’s Career – Careerists We found five career women who had a husband whose career had a significant impact on their lives and on their own continuous careers. In two cases the changes in a husband’s career had a stressful impact on their life together and thus created stress on the wife’s career; in another two cases, a husband’s transfer affected his wife’s career, one positively and one negatively. In the last case, the participant with her husband both made successful career changes to become entrepreneurs and their story will be related in Chapter 6 on entrepreneurs. The first woman, Erin, became an information technology professional and had two children, one in 1996 and the second in 2001. She had stressful family–work balance challenges similar to Margaret’s, when her husband’s engineering career was derailed by substantial changes at a major communications firm. In spite of this challenge, Erin has risen to the level of assistant vice president in the insurance industry. Another woman, Shannon, a psychologist with a continuous career, had one child in 1997 and then had a family crisis requiring her to support and maintain her family when her husband was imprisoned for a little over a year in 2005 because of problems with his job. Shannon was able to maintain her career in spite of this stressful family crisis;

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finding a new job within a month after moving. In both of these cases, the women felt pressure to maintain their careers to maintain family income in spite of increased family turmoil. Changing location because of her spouse’s job relocation can have positive or negative consequences on a woman’s career. One lawyer, Jennifer, worked after law school as a clerk for a federal judge. In 1996 she became a federal prosecutor, a position she held for 19 years. Jennifer moved to a different state because of her future husband’s job, but luckily had no career difficulties because of this relocation. Jennifer married, had a child in 2001, and became a Judge in 2005. In contrast, an African-American woman, Melanie, was unemployed for almost a year when her husband transferred to a new location and she had difficulty finding a job with similar responsibilities. Melanie began her career in work as a collegiate academic advisor and rose to manage this department. She had her first child in 1989 and had her second child in 1993. Her husband, a retail store manager, was laid off in 1991–92. He then joined a realty management company and after turning down two transfer offers, he was offered a promotion to a job in Pittsburgh and believed he could not turn down this transfer again. Melanie delayed moving the children from the East Coast for one year, was unemployed for a year in their new location, and took a lower-status job as classroom assistant for another year, before obtaining an administrative assistant position at a local university in 2006–07. Career Challenges Arising from Family Medical Problems – Careerists There were three professional women who married men who later went on to have serious medical problems, which both threatened the participants’ ability to remain in their jobs and also made it more important for them to continue a wage-earning role. In two other cases, the family medical challenge came from an ill or disabled child who required major medical intervention and extended care. In three families, the husband has assumed the role of primary child caretaker after suffering a serious medical problem. In the first case, Dottie, a medical doctor with a husband with severe arthritis started her own medical clinic, and as mentioned earlier, her story is related in Chapter 6 on entrepreneurs. Another woman, Maggie, a lawyer, married a social worker and during the process of fertility treatment Maggie discovered that her husband had cystic fibrosis. When her child was born in 2000, her husband took disability payments and became a house-husband while she continued to be the primary family wage earner. In another case, Becky has a supportive house-husband who worked part-time for a trade association, a choice they made because her income was greater than his and he was, at this time, struggling with alcoholism. Becky had an executive career trajectory in advertising for a major


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retailer but was suddenly laid off in 1995 when her children were five and two. Becky quickly took a job in Boston, but hated the commute from Connecticut, and after a few months she quit and found a job closer to her parents’ home in Pennsylvania so she could have a support network for her family. Becky has been employed for the last nine years at a large successful financial services company and her career is thriving. Her husband has been sober for over ten years and her children are now getting ready to enter college. Sometimes family members other than husbands provided the family health crises that strained the integration of family and work roles. For example, Lori and her husband worked in the same firm, both as data analysts. After Phase II, her first child was born with a hip dysplasia and they had to visit the orthopedic doctor every ten days to have the child’s brace adjusted during the period when the child was aged seven weeks to when it was seven months old. Later in her career, a decade after her child’s birth, Lori’s father died suddenly and since then she has been taking major responsibility for assisting her elderly mother, who lives alone, while continuing her employment. Another respondent, Alice, with a continuous career as a statistician, married a chemical engineer in 1979. She had her first child in 1985 and a foster child lived with them in 1992. She had a second child in 1995, who was born with a cleft palate, who required surgical repair and bone grafts, and her third child, born in 1997, had to be in a full body cast for four months and also suffered with a severe anxiety disorder since early childhood. Alice managed to continue her career, changing firms several times over the years, but when her nanny quit in 2002, Alice was able to make an individual flexible work arrangement with her employer, where she works four days out of five, being in the office two days per week, and working from her home two days per week. Alice still puts in about 35 hours per week meeting our definition of maintaining a full-time continuous career. In summary, a substantial number of women have persisted in full-time employment careers despite family medical crises and their own and their husband’s job losses, transfers, demotions, and downsizings. The women stayed out of the labor force for no more than one year following childbirth, and most of those who approached a year out of the labor force, did so because of employment challenges rather than family commitments. They coped with family medical and employment crises by taking more flexible jobs and obtaining emotional support and childcare support from their spouses, other family members, and other domestic help. Several women remained in the labor force to contribute to their family income even if they might prefer to be employed less. The women we have just discussed kept their jobs continuously with the assistance of a spouse, the majority of whom helped to support their family either financially and/or by doing childcare. The women we will look at next

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have had to become the sole financial and caretaking support of their children when they were divorced or widowed and did not remarry.

DIVORCED CAREERIST AND PARENT – DANIELA’S STORY Daniela grew up in a Catholic home in a large city. Her father had two years of post-high school education and worked as a toolmaker, eventually moving up to a quality control officer. Her mother had one year of post-high school education and stayed home to take care of Daniela and her younger brother, until Daniela was in high school. When Daniela was a college senior at age 26, she valued having fun, feeling a sense of accomplishment, having sufficient family income, and advancing her career. She also valued having her children feeling loved, having adequate childcare, and feeling close to her husband. When asked about employment after childbirth she planned to have two children a bit later than she might otherwise prefer (about age 30) because of her career plans and she said: ‘If somehow I became a single parent then I would have to work because of financial reasons [but] if we had to relocate to another city in another part of the US where we didn’t know anyone I would stay home for three years to raise the child.’ Daniela graduated from college in 1981 and began working for an insurance firm. She married in 1987 and had a son in 1989, returning to work 90 days later. In 1990 she said: ‘I enjoyed working and [I] have an interesting job that I was anxious to return to. The deciding factor was the availability of quality daycare. I discussed this return with my husband and my parents, who are the babysitters.’ Daniela’s husband lost his job in the field of hospital administration, a shrinking industry in 1993, and this was a key experience in her family and work life. He had a golden parachute and spent some time at home and ran up debts on their credit card while he was depressed and drinking. In 1994, they separated and he moved in with his parents; Daniela and her husband were divorced in 1999, and he had two strokes and died in 2002. In the meantime, she continued her career in the insurance industry, later holding a risk management position within city government. In her Phase IV interview Daniela described this difficult time in her life: I wanted him to get another job but he just stayed home. My company was for sale, and I couldn’t lose my job so I changed employers then too. The Judge ordered him to leave and I had to clean up the mess. I sold my house to cover the mortgage and pay his creditors and changed my name back to my maiden name because of the credit situation. It’s a heck of a thing to raise a kid by yourself! I tried to go to law school at night but had to drop out … I just put on my game face and go on doing


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what I’ve got to do to move forward. I work seven days a week now. I always have to keep moving, to keep making more money. I work hard. Money talks! My son suffered. He blames me but really I gave him everything I didn’t have, but he was in a school [where most kids had] two parent families and he wasn’t like that. There were few minorities and few blue collar kids at that school.

Daniela is now fairly satisfied with her life and her current boyfriend. She also is very satisfied with her relationship with her son, her parents, her mentor, and her $100 000-plus per year income. In the future she hopes to move back to the private sector insurance industry. Her son has had some problems with depression but she hopes he will be able to graduate from high school and go to college. Other Divorcées with Continuous Careers Three other careerists committed to continuous careers in college and two breadwinner interviewees who changed their minds about continuous careers after college became single parents as they divorced and/or their spouses died. The first careerist, Bethany, obtained a marketing position after college and married a chemical engineer in 1985. Bethany had her first child in 1991 and another child in 1993. She has worked for the same firm for 23 years despite several company divestitures, buyouts, and takeovers. She has managed to keep her career going even though her husband suffered from a genetic brain disorder. Bethany’s husband lost his job in 1994, moved to another job in Chicago in 1995, then lost that job, and went on disability in 1998. They separated in 1999, divorced in 2001, and he died in 2005. Another woman, Pam, married a private detective in 1978, graduated from college in 1981, and became an elementary school teacher. She returned to work eight months after the birth of her first child in 1983 and five months after the birth of her second child in 1988. In 1991, Pam obtained her MS in special education and she was divorced in 1996. Pam continued her career for ten years in teaching, counseling, and administration in special education while being a single parent. She married an information technology manager in 2006 as her children became young adults. Even though her new husband was diagnosed with cancer a month after their marriage, Pam looks forward to traveling together in their mutual retirement in about ten years. The third careerist divorcée, Isabel, had an active career in the Air Force. She enlisted in 1968 and became a commissioned officer when she graduated from college in 1981, committed to a continuous career. Isabel married a Civil Service Air Force logistics supplier in 1986, had a child in 1987, and worked her way up to the rank of captain and instructor by the time she had divorced in 1994. In order to keep custody of her child, she retired from the Air Force so that she would not be sent overseas and has supported herself and her child

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by working as a school teacher, curriculum design consultant, and college computer instructor since that time. Isabel suffered the death of her mother in 1994 and the death of a close friend to breast cancer in 1992, but has managed to maintain her full-time commitment to the labor force, sometimes combining two or more part-time jobs. One breadwinner, Claire, who, when she was in college expected to stay home with her children, in fact changed her mind by the time she had children and had a continuous career, later becoming a divorced single parent. In college, Claire said ‘I want my children to be raised by their parents therefore one will work full-time and the other doesn’t or else each one will obtain parttime jobs and share the responsibilities.’ By 1990, Claire was working as a finance manager in a small firm, was in a long-term relationship and expected to have her first child in about three years, but she had changed her mind and expected to return to employment six months to one year following childbirth. She commented: ‘I would not want to stagnate my intellectual growth and if at least a part-time position would help improve this feeling of myself, I would do it [work following childbirth]. This decision would be decided upon between my spouse and myself based upon our financial position at that point in time.’ In 1991, Claire married a purchasing manager for a nuclear power plant, who quit work one week before their wedding and started his own business selling refurbished office furniture. Claire had a child in 1993 and she stayed home for ten weeks. In her interview she explained how she felt after her childbirth: I was very concerned about juggling working and taking care of her. I preferred to be working part-time but that was not an option. My husband was not earning any money. I had to work. I thought about working from home but I needed health benefits. When my ten weeks of maternity leave were over, I went to my mom crying, ‘How can I do this?’ I had to be very organized but I enjoyed being a mother and I loved my company. I had been there for six years. I thought ‘I can do a good job of this balancing act.’ I never thought I had it in me. Right after I had her, a position came available that would require me to be in [the office] every weekend. I resented not being able to apply for it; now as she is a teenager and I look back, I adjusted my professional life to suit her. I chose this step to be a good mom. It’s hard work juggling. You can’t take it lightly. Having a child is the hardest thing. They are totally dependent upon you.

In 2001 Claire divorced. In 2002, she entered into a new long-term relationship with a reinsurance broker who had five adult children. After years of moderate satisfaction with her life, family, and job as a single working mom, Claire now reports high levels of satisfaction with all domains of her life and she looks forward to slowing down a little more and seeing her child graduate from college.


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The striking fact of this woman’s story is that her story is representative of the common experience of having the husband’s job loss or career change lead to marital dissolution. In the case of the divorcées, these women became the primary family provider without another adult to provide emotional, childcare, or financial support. Some women with continuous employment histories planned to have children but in fact they never had any children of their own. The first of these women, Sophia, represents three women interviewed who have lived with stepchildren after marrying later in life and one woman who never married but has had several foster children; the second life story, Naomi, represents those women who have continuous employment careers but have never had children.

CAREER WOMAN AND STEPPARENT LATER IN LIFE – SOPHIA’S STORY Sophia’s mother was a Danish housewife who divorced her German military father when Sophia was three and then went to work in a factory. Later her mother married a soldier in the US Army, had another daughter, and returned to being a housewife in a small US East Coast city. While in college Sophia held a summer job as a cashier and hoped to enter a bank training program when she graduated. She valued having a child who felt loved and secure as well as having a career that would give her a sense of accomplishment and having enough family income. She expected to work following childbirth and hoped to have one child a bit later than she might otherwise prefer (in her late twenties) because of her career plans to become involved in international business and rise to a management position. If she had problems with this plan she stated that she might possibly have her first child even later or decide not to have any at all. When asked in college about employment following the birth of her first child Sophia said: It depends on my attitude towards my career and the time of my childbirth. If I enjoyed it and believed that it would be more beneficial to continue working, I would do so. If my income was necessary or if my husband and I made an agreement about him staying home with the child [I would definitely work]. If the cost of working was greater than the income generated or if my husband and myself decided that it would be better that I stayed home with the child [I would definitely stay home].

A decade later Sophia reported that she intended to have her first child in about five years and still planned to continue her employment after childbirth. She had obtained an assistant buyer position after college, returned to obtain

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her MBA in accounting and became an accountant for a pharmaceutical firm after three years as a certified public accountant. Her job exceeded her expectations for salary, responsibility, challenge, autonomy and variety, and also in the hours of work required of her. In 2000, she was in a long-term relationship and she expected to have a child in about two years. Her career had continued its upward progress with several promotions to become a manager of financial analysts, and the primary reason she would leave her job would be to spend more time with a child because of inflexible work hours. In 2006, Sophia married a pharmacy professor who had two children from a previous marriage, a son born in 1985, who was now in college, and a daughter born in 1988, who lived with them two weeks of every month, and who planned to go to college in about a year’s time. In addition to caring for these two stepchildren, she has been financially and materially assisting her mother, who lives nearby, to raise the four children of her younger, alcoholic sister. In describing her life before she married, she told of helping her mother raise her nieces: I was single and the primary support of my widowed mother and my sister’s four children. She [my mother] gets some social security and disability payments but her income is low. I wanted a stable income for myself and I didn’t want to end up like my mom. I was worried that if anything happened to me she wouldn’t be able to take care of herself. I recently paid off my mortgage in my townhouse and have no debts and that freed me up and gave me the flexibility to choose to leave and move [to join her husband in their new home]. It really helped for me to be able to work for a big corporation and accounting suited my personality as well as my need for income, but I didn’t venture out to another company because I was worried that I might not be able to make such a good income. Now I have new project manager responsibilities, and it is a little frightening but it is good for me to get out of my comfort zone and learn new things. Sometimes I come home in a panic because it is such a huge project with 12 subordinates plus consultants and my husband has to talk me down, but I was doing the same job for 13 years and I didn’t want to do it for another 13 years at the same salary. I talked to my old boss and to my husband but I made the decision myself [to accept the new job with my company]. I could transfer [from one state to another] and be near my husband so it seemed the best thing to do. At this point we do not plan to have more children. That part of my life is over. I underestimated how difficult it was to be a stepparent because my husband gets in the middle when I talk to my stepdaughter. She manipulates him and I don’t like it. Sometimes it gets between me and my husband, but he is used to it because he was married for 20 years before this. We are finally living in the same house and I am very satisfied and my mother is really happy – she didn’t want me to be alone. I have to really balance my life now because I want to keep close ties to my mother and nieces as well as with my husband and his friends. Sometimes I am tired on the weekend and I have to say ‘let’s just stay home’.

In the future, Sophia wants to have a long-term satisfying home life with her husband. He wants to keep on working but she is thinking of cutting back


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to part-time at about age 55. She hopes that her stepdaughter can ‘get out of her angry mood’ and finish college and she hopes that her nieces do not have any problems with drugs or alcohol like their mother did. Sophia also looks forward to her mother having some time to relax and ‘stop worrying about everybody’. When asked if she had any other comments she said ‘How do people do it with kids? Sometimes it can be just too much’. Others with Continuous Careers and Stepchildren or Foster Children – Careerists In 1990, Amelia who had made a career in producing customer service software, married a man who was a machinist and in 1993 his two teenagers moved in with them. Amelia reported that the key incidents in her work–family balance were her stepchildren moving in, losing her job when her husband was self-employed, and her mother dying. Her husband worked for the same firm for 22 years, retrained after he lost his job in 1998, and opened his own appliance repair and air conditioning and heating business. Amelia worked for the same firm for 18 years, but was laid off and unemployed for three months in 2001, before finding another customer service position. In addition to her other responsibilities, she was the primary caretaker of her mother, while her mother was in a nursing home from 1998 to her mother’s death in 2005. Amelia’s recent life highlights included ‘the birth of our first grandchild and another one on the way’. Another participant in the study, Marley, became engaged to a man with two teenage children in 2003 and they plan to marry soon. She was an accountant for four years and then became a real estate agent for ten years because she wanted an unstructured work week. Marley has returned to accounting and has worked in that area for the past eight years. Her fiancé has been an IT manager for as long as they have been engaged. She said it was a good time for both of them to get married; he had been divorced for ten years and she was settled in her career and wanted to have a long-term relationship. Marley’s biggest concern was how to manage the stepchildren. She said it was easier the first few years but became more difficult as the stepchildren entered their teenage years. One woman, Quinn, who never married wanted to become a foster mother. She joined the staff of a tennis tournament and prospered in her career as a toplevel sports marketing manager, including at the Olympics level. Quinn then became a director of a children’s foundation which led to her family–career as a foster mother. Her godson joined her family in 2001 when aged about 13, and lived with her until he went to college; another two children spent considerable time in and out of her home through their middle and high school years. One foster child joined her in 2003 when aged about 14 and this child is now

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entering college. The other foster child joined her in May 2006 but left after about eight months due to some emotional problems. Quinn also helped care for her father for seven years while he was disabled by neurological disease before dying in 2003. Quinn said she has had difficulty remembering that she is not the only parent of her foster children but it brought balance to her life since ‘I was way too involved in my work’. The lives of these stepparents and foster parents highlight the special challenges when one gains a family of older children in mid-career. The primary work–family balancing challenges shift from finding childcare for young children to the interpersonal challenges of setting limits for older children, while gaining their acceptance and learning to integrate time consuming new friends and extended family members into an already-full employment career.

NON-PARENT BREADWINNER CAREER WOMAN – NAOMI’S STORY Naomi lived in the country with her father, a builder, and her mother, a homemaker and eventual caretaker of her father, who became disabled when Naomi was two due to a heart attack. In college, she was considering having two children about two and a half years apart, starting when she was about 30 years old. Her primary values centered around her home – to have a happy child and husband, while maintaining her income and career skills. Her fiancé majored in engineering and she majored in microbiology. They were married right after college graduation in 1981. Naomi first took a low-paying job as a laboratory technician but in about a year she obtained a professional research position which she held until 1989. At that time, she still considered having a child in about four years’ time, and was watching the childcare facility her employer was building with careful attention. In 1994, she lost her job and did full-time temporary work for a while. She was very discouraged but her husband reminded her ‘Don’t worry, we make more than the average family of four, we will be fine’. During that time she also cared for her husband who had a life threatening automobile accident in 1997. He was almost killed and I had so many forms to fill out while I was worried about him and also we eventually had to go to court about the other driver. My mother-inlaw helped care for him while I worked, some retired church members visited and his retired parents helped take him to physical therapy. I was very flustered and uneasy because I did not know the extent of his future recovery. Now he has more fun in his life, he plays golf, and we go to the theater and spend time with friends. Also we bought a big SUV for better crash safety.


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Her husband recovered after about three months of rehabilitation and continued to work on the East Coast until 2003 when he was promoted and transferred to the West Coast. They lived apart for three months until she moved west and started telecommuting and working in scientific writing. Naomi told about the move: I really preferred to stay in New Jersey because that’s where my mother, family, and friends were. We thought about both [of] our families, the climate, his promotion, and where we might like to live as we grew older and decided this [move] was the best thing. My father-in-law was really not in favor of it and we had to sell our house in New Jersey and sell the SUV too. I talked to my boss in New Jersey and he was very forward thinking. The company had very flexible policies as well, as I negotiated with my former boss, my future boss and the HR department to be able to telecommute from a remote location. I still wonder how long I can keep my job. Some days I start work at 6:00am and work till 4:30pm because of the time difference, but so far it is working. My husband was impressed that his wife is so valued the company would set up the telecommuting and he is happy in his new job. It was a surprisingly better move than we planned or imagined. I prepared for the worst and as a consequence it turned out better than I hoped. I never had children because for years I felt that it was unrealistic to meet the demands of my job and raise children.

Others with Continuous Careers and no Children – Careerists and Breadwinners There were two interviewees who, when they were in college, wanted to have both continuous careers and children, but ended up having no children and had continuous work careers. The first interviewee with no children, Esther, has had a self-employed career as a violinist and violin teacher. She has been selfemployed throughout her career and her story is discussed further in Chapter 6 on entrepreneurs and self-employed women. Another full-time career woman, Haley, has never married and has been an artist and has taken paralegal jobs to pay the bills. She returned to graduate school and obtained her MFA in 1996. Haley remained single for the next ten years until 2006. Although in college Haley thought she would have children, by 1990 she said that she did not intend on having any children, but in 2009 she and her partner started to discuss the possibility of adopting a child or serving as foster parents. They hope to be able to do this, however it may not be possible for financial reasons. We found four breadwinners who, when they were in college believed that they wanted to stay at home to care for their children after childbirth, in fact never had children and instead had continuous careers, one who married, one with a badly injured fiancé who never married, and another two who never married.

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The first woman, Ashley, who studied meteorology in college, was unable to find a job in her major and instead became a research scientist for an electronics firm. She married a photographer in 1985. In 1990, she still wanted to have a child: I feel very strongly about raising my child myself, that is not working outside of the home. The main factor that would influence whether I work is money. If we can live on one salary I would like to be a full-time mother. I don’t know at what point I would want to return to work. I feel that parenting is a very important responsibility and comes before my own sense of career accomplishment. …We will examine our finances and feelings about parenthood. We think we want children but not yet.

In 1994, Ashley and her husband decided to move to another state in the far west and she obtained a position on the senior technical staff of a research scientist at a nearby university. By 2000, they had decided to not have children, in part because of her husband’s osteoarthritis. Ashley continues her career as a scientist, taking an exciting professional trip to Easter Island to collect scientific artifacts, and her husband continues to work as a photographer. In 2007, she reported her life, family, and job satisfaction as seven out of seven and looks forward to more travel and enjoying their new Labradoodle puppy. When in college, Kasey, another breadwinner, wanted three children in about ten years and wanted to stay home with her children. In 1990, she was working as a tax analyst and she still expected to have children in about three years and still wanted to remain at home after childbirth. By 2007, Kasey reported that she had never married and never had children and has made a continuous career as an accountant and accounting manager in the communications industry as the industry transformed itself. Her biggest challenge was in deciding to take a buyout package from a large firm to move to a smaller firm after completing her MBA. I could have gone on a few more interviews but my boss’s boss knew someone and talked to some of his friends in the new firm and I didn’t want to stay on at the larger firm and then lose my job later on. It felt strange to meet so many new people, in a new culture but it was a better move for me. I was comfortable but a bit stale. It was good for me to get a more interesting job. In the future I look forward to buying my own home and furnishing it myself.

Another woman, Alex, who believed she would stay home to care for children, found herself caring for her badly injured fiancé instead and has never married or had children. Alex grew up in a small town with one younger brother, an older brother, and two older sisters. Her father was an electrician and construction worker. Her mother was a homemaker. In college Alex planned on having two children with one to three years between them. Alex


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believed that it was very likely that she would not work during the first three years after childbirth. Factors that could influence Alex’s decision were: If something happened that could cause my husband to be unable to work or if my husband didn’t want me to stay at home. If my husband had a very good paying job and lived comfortably, I would not work. I would have more time for the house and child and most likely more time for my husband.

After college, Alex held a variety of part-time and full-time jobs while she was trying to become a state police officer. She was eventually rejected for that job because of her eyesight. Alex started working as a waitress and bartender to cover her expenses when her fiancé was in a car accident and suffered from a severe brain injury that kept them from having children or getting married. Alex now is a full-time medical care worker – she is taking care of her partner’s daily needs, so she no longer works as a bartender or waitress. Alex looks forward to seeing her partner improve and spending time with her family. The last woman who believed she would stay home with her children but never had any children was Genevieve. Her father was a toolmaker and her mother worked on an assembly line until she decided to give up her job to take care of an elderly lady when Genevieve was 19. Her mother’s choice to work after the birth of her children influenced Genevieve because ‘I watched my mom be bored at times. I realized I didn’t want to be a “housewife”, variety is the spice of life.’ In college, Genevieve planned on having three children at around the age of 24 or 25 with one and a half to three years between them. She felt that it was very likely that she would not work during the first three years after childbirth. She felt that factors that would affect her decision to work or not work during the first three years after childbirth were: If my husband was to lose his job or if he wasn’t capable of working due to illness, or if the child was left with someone I can trust and not worry about. Also if the child was more mature. Less income could be a factor, and having more time with my child and husband.

Genevieve’s future plan after having a child was to ‘go back to work fulltime when [my] oldest child enters school. Try to arrange hours so that I’ll be home before my husband so I can be alone with my kid.’ After college she worked in retail for a couple of years then moved to part-time substitute teaching for several months. By 1990, she still planned on having her first child in about one or two years. She had changed her opinion and now felt that it was very likely that she would work during the first three years after the birth of her first child.

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Factors that influenced Genevieve’s opinion about whether or not to stay home were the following: If I find myself getting bored and restless and wanting ‘adult conversations’ after about six months I will definitely find work part-time. If I couldn’t find a friend or relative to care for my child I would ask my present employer if I can work out of my home on a part-time basis. I would definitely speak with my husband about returning to work (no one else because I don’t feel I need to explain my decision) and my employer. If he is not willing to let me work out of my home I would not return to work until after the child’s first birthday.

In 1990, Genevieve believed that a child should be six years old before its mother should work full-time again because ‘the child will be in school all day’. After being laid off in 1993 Genevieve began working two part-time jobs simultaneously until she moved to working full-time in the commercial mortgage industry in 1995. By 2006 she still had not had children, and no longer had specific plans for her future. She also resigned from her commercial mortgage career and was uncertain about her future employment. The stories of those who never had children highlight the different paths to the realization that they would never have the children they planned for when they were in college. Since a criterion of participating in the study was that a woman expected to have or adopt a child some time in her life, we cannot compare these histories to those who decided early in their lives never to have children. We can see that the decision not to have children arose from a variety of sources: ill health on the part of the woman herself or her spouse; belief that a career was too demanding to adequately care for children and still succeed in the world of employment; and partnership with other women without pursuing ways for the lesbian partners to become parents. For those who never had their own children, most of the significant career events came from organizational changes such as downsizing and lay offs or new and unexpected career opportunities. Many women with no children of their own had substantial caretaking roles for spouses, parents, and other family members, and there are similarities to those married mothers whose careers were influenced by job loss or illnesses of their spouses. Their employment–family balance stories remind us that many women who do not have children of their own are asked to balance employment with caretaking of a wide range of other family members, especially if their siblings have spouses and children, and expect them to be more able to become a caretaker because they have no children of their own.


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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The full-time career women in this chapter who worked an average of 44 hours per week at their current jobs, did not leave the labor force for more than a total of three years because of family responsibilities. They were more likely (p = 0.05) than the women with part-time employment or homemaker careers to be unmarried (77 percent married compared to 91–2 percent of the others), to have spouses who experienced more total years of unemployment (M = 2.9 years compared to M = 1.66 or less years for others), to have married about two years later. They were also more likely to have fewer than two children (40 percent compared to less than 7 percent of the part-time employed and homemakers), to have had their first child later (32 percent became parents by Phase II compared to about 50 percent of the others) and to have taken a shorter maternity leave (five months compared to 11 months for part-time career women and 24 months for homemakers). In Phase II, members of this group were more likely than others to believe they would have enough time for their child if they worked and to believe that their husbands would approve of their working after childbirth. They were also more likely to earn more income themselves and to have spouses with lower incomes than members of the other groups. In Phase III they were more likely to believe they would feel close to their child and have enough time for their husbands if they worked than other groups (see Appendix B). When the events not related to first childbirth from their Phase IV interviews were coded, this group was more likely to report relocation as a stressful event (20 percent compared to 10 percent or less for other groups). When the Phase IV interview event of deciding to work following their first childbirth was coded in a qualitative analysis which included full reports of every career woman, not just the excerpted comments printed in this chapter, members of this group reported the most common influential factor in their decision to remain in the labor force following childbirth was the company policies or characteristics of their own job (12 out of 43 comments), followed by concerns about childcare (seven out of 43 comments). Unsupportive employer policies and/or an unsupportive supervisors (four out of 19 comments) and infertility problems (four out of 19 comments) were the most commonly mentioned obstacles to following their desired path of combining employment and childrearing followed by unsupportive family and friends (three out of 19 comments). The career women reported their most common way of coping with these dual roles was receiving help from others: 12 out of 42 mentioned support from their parental family; four out of 42 mentioned help from their spouse; four out of 42 mentioned support from their boss; three out of 42 mentioned support from friends; and two out of 42 mentioned support from professionals. Other coping mechanisms included changing their job, moving to a new location,

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having sufficient funds to get help, ignoring the details, and just persisting in the face of any obstacles. When asked about the consequences of their choice, the most common response for consequences to themselves was to mention positive emotions, such as feeling happy, in love, transformed, and responsible (ten out of 33 comments) but they just as frequently mentioned negative emotional consequences (13 out of 33 comments) such as feeling exhausted, worried, confused, angry, bored, guilty, and tied down. Only three out of 17 responses mentioned childbirth having a negative effect on their careers. The perceived consequences for their husbands included mentioning mostly positive emotions (seven out of 17 comments). Only one mentioned a husband’s negative emotion and most reported no consequences to their spouse’s career (ten out of 17 comments). When you look at the complete life histories from college to mid-career the consistency that runs through all of their lives is their commitment to full-time labor force participation in spite of their own job losses, layoffs, relocations, and family stresses. Parental and spousal support seem to be the primary enabling factors coupled with flexible supervisors and employer policies. In most cases the commitment to a full-time employment career was voluntary and guided by a collegiate self-concept as a career woman who valued accomplishment and independence as well as valuing family well being. A smaller proportion of women in this chapter started out believing they would be more likely to stay home or work part-time after childbirth. These women changed their minds most often because they had financial obligations to be a wage earner, they never became a mother for social or biological reasons, or they learned more about their personal preferences for spending time as they moved into a series of more attractive career opportunities that they were not aware of as college students. If a woman is married or in a long-term committed relationship, her partners’ career often influences her life by triggering relocations, job changes, and occupational changes. In some cases a divorce or decision not to marry lays the primary wage-earner responsibility on the woman herself. A husband’s illness causes not only heavy caretaking responsibilities but also assumption of a major wage-earner role. The illness of a child, a parent, or other family member results in heavy caretaking family responsibilities as well as financial burdens, but in spite of these challenges, many women who were previously committed to their careers or who have substantial financial need, are able to stay in the labor force with the assistance of family, friends, and professionals. Those who have no children of their own often also have employment and family responsibilities to balance when they become caretakers of stepfamilies, husbands, partners, foster children, parents, nieces, and nephews.


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The stories in this chapter reveal that it is possible to balance both employment and family careers through choice or necessity while still feeling close to a husband and children. This lifestyle also creates a mixture of both positive and negative emotions and can be achieved more smoothly with flexibility and support from family, friends, and employers.

4. Part-time careers Women have careers that contain part-time employment for two primary reasons: some women see part-time employment as a way to continue their ongoing commitment to the labor force; other women, who value their primary role as homemakers but who need additional income, choose part-time employment in occupations that provide some flexibility to adjust schedules to fit childrearing demands. Of the 72 women interviewed in Phase IV, about 55 percent did not have full-time continuous careers following childbirth. The 15 women who stayed completely out of the labor force for three or more years are reported in Chapter 5 on homemakers and those who combined part-time careers with self-employment or starting their own business are reported in Chapter 6. The 11 women included in this chapter spent less than three years entirely out of the labor force but spent three or more years in part-time employment. This chapter includes four women or about 3 percent who expected to have continuous careers when they were in college but actually followed a part-time career pattern, in every case due to unexpected family circumstances. Out of these four women three of them returned to full-time work after spending some child caretaking years in part-time employment. Their careers have some things in common with those women with continuous full-time careers in the previous chapter and some things in common with the women with longer part-time careers whom we also discuss in this chapter. An additional seven women or about 9 percent of the women interviewed who were uncertain or who believed when they were in college that they would not remain in the labor force after childbirth, in fact had part-time employment careers for extensive periods of their lives following childbirth. For many women, the employment choice of part-time work did not always occur immediately after the birth of their first child. Sometimes it took the birth of her second or third child, or the illness of another family member to influence a woman to leave the full-time workforce. The following life stories will emphasize the reasons why women chose a part-time work alternative, when this choice was made in their life course, and how it has affected their employment and home lives. Two obvious patterns appeared among women who chose a part-time career as part of their life course. In the first career pattern, participants 72

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remained in the same occupation they had before childbirth but changed to part-time hours, sometimes also changing employers to obtain a part-time position. In the second career pattern identified, among women who chose to combine mothering with part-time employment, respondents changed occupations as well as reducing their hours. In each case, one longer, more detailed history is related first followed by shorter histories each containing specific quotes that illustrate choices and diversity in this life pattern.

CAREERIST WITH AN UNEXPECTED PART-TIME CAREER IN THE SAME OCCUPATION – CARLA’S STORY Carla and her older sister grew up while her mother worked as a speech pathologist and her father worked as a full-time librarian. In college she was determined to work following childbirth: My mom worked part-time then full-time by the time I was five. I’m healthy, well adjusted, happy, and I love my parents. Mom worked it out, so can I without bitching and moaning. …Working and raising kids is nothing new. People like my mother have been doing it for years. My parents had very little money when they first got married. Poor people have had two incomes and raised kids for decades.

Carla graduated from college and spent nine years working full-time as an editor and writer, gaining several promotions and increasing responsibilities. At the end of her first decade out of college, but still not a mother, she said ‘If we can handle it financially I will stay home for a while, returning to work when my child is two or three. Good solid bonds most likely will exist between a child and mother by then’. After extensive fertility treatments and in vitro fertilization, Carla and her husband had twins about four years later. In her interview she described this time in her life: I always wanted to be a mother and I was shocked and depressed when I couldn’t have kids. It [getting pregnant] turned into a full-time job. I felt out of control. I had a supportive boss, supportive family, and a good insurance company so we paid $5 for $2000 [worth of] fertility drugs. This [becoming a mother] was the greatest accomplishment of my life. The twins didn’t sleep well for the first year of their life and we were exhausted. I said ‘people have survived the holocaust, we can survive this’.

After childbirth Carla switched to part-time work at the same firm. It was four years later that she found a new part-time job that she continues to hold. She commented: Twin parenting (or any multiple parenting) can be much more difficult than singleton parenting in the early years and it has a strong influence on work decisions. I

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Women’s employment and homemaking careers went from a full-time position as a director of publications at a state university to part-time employment as an editor/writer after the birth of my sons. I still work parttime – they are seven and I couldn’t imagine working full-time. [When I got my new job] I was nervous that I wouldn’t be good enough but my new boss believed in my competence and she fought the bureaucracy to get me hired. I went into a job-sharing arrangement, which was highly unusual; this is why my boss had to fight for it. I shared the job with another woman with two small children who had gone from full-time to part-time because of her children. It was a dream job with a great boss who took me to another level. I had the same good nanny until they were six and in kindergarten. I helped her find another job. When they entered first grade it was close and I could pop home or pop into see them, it was great.

Another Careerist with an Unexpected Part-time Career in the Same Occupation Annie was clear in college about her devotion to her employment career. I believe that work is a necessary discipline and reward system in my life. Without it, I feel bored and unproductive and I am likely to take my discontent out on my husband and child[ren]. [If I worked part-time I would have] slower promotions, better childcare [but it might put] a financial strain on my husband.

A decade later, Annie had worked as a financial analyst for a year then as an accountant for five and a half years and had been a full-time student for another year and a half while she obtained her MBA. Although she was still not a mother, Annie could see the wisdom of staying home for a while after childbirth but she was still devoted to her own career. She continued to work in accounting full-time for the next decade holding ever-increasing positions of responsibility. Annie married when she was 35, and had one child when she was 37 and another child when she was 39. She returned to her former firm full-time for one year and then changed firms to work for a different firm closer to her home. She worked for the new firm between her first child and second child and then she stopped working full-time for two years after her second child, doing part-time work for two years. I thought I wanted children [but] when I met my husband later [on in my life], I was so happy to able to become pregnant. My company had an alleged work–life balance plan that wasn’t true. I changed my job to reduce my commute and to fit with my day care hours. It was quite a shock to have my first baby. I was a mother who was ill, [I had my own] postpartum depression and I had just gotten a promotion. I reached out to my husband more and asked him to rise to the occasion. He took on managing the family finances and he’s handy so he started doing things around the house and fixing the yard to save money. With baby number two I was more in the groove, I was getting less sleep deprived

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and getting the daycare down pat, but it was still a financial drain. Taking time off after my second child helped us manage more as a team and I hired as many third party helpers as possible. I used a working mom’s network to find daycare. I wanted a little time at home to see what it was like and to understand the school system.

Annie had significant responsibilities in caring for her parents and other family members during this time off. She returned to a part-time accounting job in 2003, working three days a week. In 2005 her husband got laid off and Annie returned to permanent full-time employment in 2006 continuing to work full-time up to the time of her interview in 2007. Annie commented ‘Working part-time was the best of both worlds. Now I have a well balanced well paying job. If my husband got laid off again I’d be OK.’ At the time of the interview Annie was trying to stay current with emerging business concepts and saving money for retirement and her children’s college. She still sees daycare as a significant challenge and is torn between forgoing salary to spend more time with her kids versus earning more for their college.

PART-TIME CAREERISTS WHO CHANGED OCCUPATIONS – CORINNE’S STORY When in college Corinne said: I plan to work when my child is about one year old (possibly older) hoping to structure a plan that incorporates programs outside the home as well as meaningful time together. My mother worked when I was about 3–4 years old. I feel this is normal having been raised in this situation, but she had to because of divorce and she had her mother to take care of me. A family seems to be getting more important to me as I get older, yet I think I would have to work to satisfy my own needs. I feel pressure within myself to have both, but I have fears as to whether it is really possible.

After graduating from college, Corinne went to law school for a while, quit and became a legislative assistant and worked her way up in the state government. She married in 1988 and had a child in 1989 and returned to work fulltime for the next year: I have live-in help and I was comfortable leaving my son at three months. He had a relationship with my sitter that satisfied me. Being independent and maintaining my earning potential are important to me because I saw my mother struggle after her divorce. I would like to handle all of my work on a part-time basis. My boss would not consider this option.

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Shortly after returning from maternity leave, she quit her top-level government job in the state governor’s office as the governor’s position changed political parties. After the birth of her second child in 1991, Corinne tried to open a children’s clothing store with a friend, but when the other woman quit, Corinne underwent a major career change and joined her husband’s family’s beer distribution business. She worked part-time for many years in the family business within a very patriarchal culture and gradually worked up to become a full-time employee. My old profession was too time consuming, and not fair to my baby son. I wanted to be an equal partner and have something to talk about with my husband. I needed a place to put my mental energy. I started to answer the phones and do the grunt jobs [two days a week] to fully understand the company and its challenges. I also thought it would be better for my marriage since he is always consumed with work matters. I thought it would be better for both of us and the kids too since my hours would be somewhat flexible. At home daycare was the only solution for us and we could afford it. At this moment [in 2007] I feel that I should have pursued my own interests and kept up my contacts. My wonderful children [15 and 18] are independent; they are good students and have nice friends. I have learned that no matter how hard you work, you are always the boss’s wife, and even he can be ambivalent. I am trying to work through it.

Corinne now works about 35 hours a week and does marketing, a newsletter, human resources, and public relations for her husband’s family business. She also produces a small magazine for his business which is published five times a year. Corinne has given up her dreams of finishing law school and resuming her political career but she says she may do some PR and lobbying for a beer wholesaling organization in the future. As of 2009, her eldest child is in college and Corinne is studying for the Graduate Record Examination. She wants to get a Master’s degree in nursing as either a nurse practitioner or nurse anesthetist. Another Part-time Careerist who Changed Occupations Charlotte believed in college that she would work full-time after childbirth. ‘Since I was a small child my mother has worked, first as a part-time substitute teacher and then as a full-time teacher’. Charlotte married and became pregnant while she was a college junior, had her child, and returned to graduate the following year. She was a part-time accompanist for four years after college. Charlotte did not enjoy her work and after her second childbirth in 1984 she returned to school for paralegal certification and worked about 15–20 hours per week as a paralegal for the next five years. After she divorced in 1991, Charlotte worked her way up in the court system, working 35 hours

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per week. She has never remarried but she did have another child with her long-term partner in 1994, returned to graduate school while working full-time in 1998, and received her Master’s degree. In thinking about her career and employment choices after childbirth Charlotte said in 2007: It was important to know that I would be available for my child as needed, during illness, special events, and activities. I chose my employment and school specifically with this in mind. I fell into a job which provided the stimulation I was looking for, enabled me to begin training in my desired career, and afforded me the schedule I needed – during school hours three days a week. If I hadn’t been able to find this arrangement, along with adequate childcare, I would not have gone back to work. My later choices were influenced by my being a single parent. In the beginning I was scared, but now it is totally my own choice. I worked hard to get my financial independence and no one can take that away from me. I want to leave that to my sons and daughter, no one else. I also have continued working for my own stimulation and because of the benefits that come with my job, which are very conducive to being a single parent.

These four women all believed in college that they wanted continuous careers, but chose part-time positions after childbirth to accommodate a variety of family circumstances, one after her first child was born and the others after their second baby was born. One woman had twins and remains in parttime employment, the other three women have returned to work more than 35 hours per week, but all have made adjustments, changing firms to find a work arrangement that aids them in combining employment and family roles. The two women who changed occupations did so for very different reasons, one because she found her first career choice unsatisfying, and the second for domestic and external political reasons. The husbands of these women also seemed to have a significant influence on all three who returned to full-time work, one because her husband was laid off, one because her husband was unreliable and another because her husband seemed to be very involved in his family firm. The women we will now look at in the remainder of this chapter were less certain in college that they would remain in the labor force after childbirth. These women were somewhat less likely to return to the full-time labor force after childbirth.

PART-TIME HOMEMAKER WITH A CONTINUOUS OCCUPATION – PATRICIA’S STORY Patricia grew up in a Jewish home in a small town with her younger brother, a chemist father and a stay-at-home mother. When Patricia was 13, her mother

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returned to the labor force as a part-time secretary. In college, Patricia believed she would have her first child about age 26, stay at home for about three years after the birth of each of the two children she planned to have and then work part-time, gradually increasing her employment as her children grew. She said then: ‘If I work part-time there would be more variety and fun in my life and the child would still receive a lot of attention. My husband probably wouldn’t need two jobs [and] I wouldn’t feel tied down or bored’. Patricia started with clerical jobs while she was in college and was promoted to increasing levels of responsibility in the insurance industry for the first decade after her college graduation, working 40–50 hours a week in New York City doing training and marketing. She married an attorney in 1985. In 1991, when she thought about what she would do when she had her first child, she said: Economically I won’t need to go back to work. Given that fortunate circumstance, I want to raise my child. [My child should be] about four or five before I return to work full-time because when children are young and they are forming their values, I think parents should be spending time and giving guidance. When children are older, their values are more established. Also if they are in school all day it is easier to work. I’d rather be able to devote my time and energy to child raising – it’s too time consuming [to return to work], a career, commuting, and so on.

Patricia had her first child in 1993 and her second in 1998, considerably later than she had planned in college. She said in her 2007 interview: I didn’t realize how all encompassing [it would be to become a mother]. I loved it, enjoyed it, met different people, a culture of people who didn’t work and strolled downtown. I changed from full-time [approximately 45 hours per week] to parttime work [20 hours] when the baby was born and I have continued this way until now. My only breaks were maternity leaves [total of 7 and a half months for each leave]. If my mother-in-law hadn’t generously offered to watch my child while I worked part-time, I wouldn’t have continued working. I would only have left my child in that situation, so she really influenced my decision [about working parttime]. … My children always had their grandmother care for them in my home ten hours per week.

Patricia’s office moved from Connecticut to Chicago after her second child was born and her boss, an older gentleman who was a vice president, offered her a part-time position with a groundbreaking telecommuting option. [I thought] everything was going well, why not try it, I could always quit. I decided to give up upward mobility. I didn’t care at that time. It was really a lateral move only my hours were halved, not a promotion but [there would be] no real career advantage in the future with part-time status. I telecommute and only go to the office one day a week, mostly for meetings. It brought in some money and kept my hand in the work world so I wouldn’t lose my identity and social contacts. It gave

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me an outlet and boosted my self-confidence to get feedback on doing a great job separate from my mom life. My husband thought it was great. He had extra time with the baby and it gave me something to talk about that he connected with too. [I cope because] I don’t clean that much, it’s not that important to me.

Looking back on her decision about switching to part-time work after childbirth, Patricia said ‘Now I still have my work. If I had given it up, I would be sorry now [2007]’. Her job responsibilities have changed through the years and she is doing less training and writing and more editing, but she is still with the same firm. Her job has some options to learn on-line and to possibly increase her hours in the future. Now Patricia says it is harder to realize she is not needed as a full-time mom since her children have their own interests. In the future she is looking for something to provide her with the opportunity to grow, rather than provide the security her part-time job has provided. She looks forward to more volunteer work and more family time. Other Homemakers with Post-childbirth Part-time Careers in the Same Occupation Two other women had a work-family life balance similar to Patricia in choosing to switch to part-time work hours while maintaining work in the same occupation. Portia planned a part-time career and continued in the same occupation before and after her child was born, but this was not the first occupation she had. Portia worked as an airline hostess after college. Two years later, she was laid off from that job and went back to school to learn computer programming. Portia obtained a job as a programmer and after another two years she became a software engineer. At this time she was married and thinking she would stay home with a child, although she had not yet become a mother. If we have enough income to cover expenses, I would like to stay home with our first child. My mother worked when I was a child and I feel that was a negative experience for us both. I don’t believe in the first few years of a child’s life anyone would be able to give a child all of the nurturing it deserves and needs as well as a mother could. [Before a mother returns to work full-time I believe a child should be] seven to 12 years old. It depends on the child. There are many factors to consider, the child’s maturity, the care provided in the mother’s absence during summer and after school, and the stress level of the mother’s job. I would do it if I could work from home.

Portia had her first child in 1992 and her second child in 1995 and stayed home about six months after each childbirth. She planned on staying home after her first childbirth, but her boss offered her a flexible option of 16 hours

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per week in evening hours. Her husband was supportive and even tempered and although she had some postpartum depression and a colicky baby, Portia says, ‘I was lucky my boss offered me this option – I would have lost my mind if I stayed home full-time’. As her children grew she decided to keep the parttime schedule and she also worked as a volunteer in her church. In the future, she is thinking about becoming a minister, but she has no active plans for that career change right now (2007). Portia looks forward to some travel and enjoying her family as her children grow. Doris went to graduate school to become a speech pathologist after her undergraduate days. At that time she believed that she would stay home for the first six years of her child’s life. She worked full-time in a hospital setting for about a year and a half until her first child was born in 1987. Doris then began working part-time (three days per week) four months after her first child was born. Her second child was born in 1992, and she returned to work six months after her second childbirth, working in the same hospital two days a week. It was three years after her second child was born that she quit her job as a hospital speech pathologist to work two days per week as a speech pathologist in a school in order to better accommodate her family care demands. Doris increased her work to three days per week the following year in 1996. She took one year off when her youngest child entered kindergarten and then returned to work part-time as she continued taking courses to complete her ten year certification. These three women who thought they would become homemakers when they were in college instead became part-time employees after their children were born and have remained in the same occupation with less hours, in each case because their employers had some part-time accommodation that suited their family needs. The second factor that seemed to keep them from becoming full-time homemakers was the support or even urging of a spouse that encouraged them to re-enter the labor force after childbirth.

HOMEMAKER AND PART-TIME CAREER CHANGER – BEATRICE’S STORY Beatrice had two younger brothers, her father was in the Army, then had several different jobs, and her mother stayed at home until she was a teenager. In college, Beatrice was uncertain whether or not she would work following childbirth but she thought she might like to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Beatrice worked as a personnel officer in a bank for nine years and by that time she believed she would work at least part-time following childbirth, although she had not yet had any children. Beatrice married in 1989 and had her first child in 1991, briefly returning

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to work full-time after her six-month maternity leave and while she was pregnant with her second child. After the birth of her second child in 1992, she stopped working as an employment officer and obtained special training to become an auto-computer aided design (auto-CAD) drafter and designer. She said of her career decision: When I became pregnant [for the second time] my boss was unhappy that I was leaving on maternity leave and I didn’t want to work long, hard hours. Then the bank merged, I got laid off so I got unemployment [insurance payments] and the state paid for 100 percent of my tuition and books for my training as long as I maintained my grades. I was no longer interested in banking and wanted something more flexible and with less hours so I decided to pursue drafting. My father was in construction and I was spatially-oriented and it took too much time to learn architecture. I wanted to be creative (I was an art minor in college) and designing was a good combination of drawing and business. When we lost my income we had to cut back on spending, we stopped the newspaper and cable TV, drove a used car and simplified our lives. I felt guilty about not bringing in money for the family so I worked part-time and sent the children to daycare. My husband and friends were supportive and my father was thrilled. My biggest problem was balancing my class schedule, arranging childcare and working in the co-op program. I had to depend on my husband, my family, my sister-in-law and some professional daycare.

By 1994 Beatrice had completed her training and since then has worked at the same firm as a part-time designer, starting at 25 hours per week and shifting in 2001 to 35 hours per week. I am satisfied now [2007] because all is going smoothly. I haven’t had a career up the corporate ladder, so my income only increases if I increase my hours, but I have flexibility to make my own schedule, to make carpools and doctor’s appointments. I work close to home too. I can go on my husband’s business trips and trade off satisfaction and a happy family life with moving up the career ladder.

In the future, Beatrice believes she will stay in the same field, with perhaps a different employer or clients, or perhaps go into interior design. She looks forward to having time to be creative and to spend more time with her friends as her children finish and graduate from college. Other Homemakers who Changed Careers and Worked Part-time Bonnie maintained her original career before and after her first two children were born but changed occupations after the birth of her third child. She believed she wanted to work part-time after childbirth when she was in college. Upon college graduation Bonnie worked full-time as a dietitian, first in the healthcare industry and later as a corporate nutritionist. She married in

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1986, obtained a Master’s degree 1989 and also had her first child in that year. Bonnie stayed home for ten months after his birth and returned to work in a hospital as a clinical dietitian for 24 hours per week. In Phase II she thought: I knew I would not go back to work at all prior to my child being six months old. Money was a factor. I went to work when my child was ten months old part-time. Finding an excellent sitter was a very important factor, also my child’s acceptance of the situation. My career is very important to me but my child is more important to me. I didn’t want to stay out of my field too long and we couldn’t afford for me to as well. It is very hard to work full-time and then come home and have energy for ‘quality time’ with your child. My husband wanted me to return to work as soon as possible and I wanted to stay out as long as possible. I chose a situation based on the basis of the best schedule, not the best career move. I shared a job but for the first month I worked full-time and it was too stressful, I had severe anxiety.

Bonnie had a second child in 1992, and the family moved to Pennsylvania soon after so she had to acclimate to a new community. She returned to work again about a year after her second childbirth to a higher position as director of nutrition services, working 20 hours per week, while leaving her children with a neighbor who also had young children. In 1997, Bonnie divorced, she remarried in 1998, and had a third child in 1999. When her family moved again, this time to Chicago, Bonnie stopped working as a nutritionist to become a homemaker for around a year and then changed careers to become a part-time substitute teacher. Her decision to leave the nutrition field was not really an active decision. ‘After a while I was afraid my skills were not up to date and it became harder and harder to go back’. In the future Bonnie is thinking about doing something else part-time, perhaps not in nutrition, however she has kept up her certification and mandatory accreditation credits. The next woman who worked part-time in a different career because of childrearing was Ruth. Ruth was an only child of a mechanical engineer and a full-time homemaker in a Catholic family living in a large city. In college, Ruth believed she would stay home with her children unless her family did not have enough income. She said she would work part-time as a better option than full-time if she had to because of financial need. Before she went to college, Ruth worked full-time in the sales division of a major car manufacturing company. She married when she began college and was pregnant with her first child when she graduated in 1980. She continued her education, obtaining a degree in business administration in 1983; she also had her second child in this year. Ruth had expected she would have a full-time management job when she graduated, but she changed her mind: After my second child, I went to school for a real estate license so my time at work

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would be flexible. This way childcare could be done by my husband, mother, or friend. I do not have to be at work any particular set hours. I am an independent contractor and I am only paid when I sell a property. I had a friend who was a single parent [who was] doing real estate. She was making good money for not too many hours spent working. She was available for her children so I thought it might be a good job for me to bring in income because we wanted a good quality of life for our family, that is a house of our own, vacations, and so on, and we needed the money.

Ruth worked about 15 hours per week while her children were young ‘At first I was really nervous, it upset my stomach juggling everything, when my daughters were one and four, to leave them I became pressured and torn’. In 1994, Ruth moved to Colorado to follow her husband’s new job and she changed careers and also took care of her diabetic, widowed mother. Ruth obtained a teaching certificate to teach math. The real estate market was different and the kids were in school. I didn’t want to work nights and weekends anymore. I was good at it, I got good grades and this increased my confidence. I was too busy to get depressed or worry about it balancing caring for my mother and my kids.

Ruth kept teaching for the next four years. She then moved again to California in 1998 and after working as a high school teacher for a year she became a full-time college lecturer. The third woman to change careers and work part-time when she became a mother also returned to her original career after her children were older. Martha graduated from college in 1980 and began working in the pharmaceutical industry. She married in 1983 and had the first of her four children in 1989, the second in 1991, the third in 1995, and the fourth in 1997. After her first childbirth she took a part-time job as a fitness instructor working about 10–15 hours per week. She kept that job for about three or four years. I didn’t feel sad about not working full-time. I felt like I did have a loss of freedom, however, always taking someone along. When I changed to a part-time aerobics instructor I had a nice time, I got to do what I liked to do. I wanted to always be with my children plus also work to keep my brain stimulated.

After the birth of her second child in 1991, Martha had an opportunity to return to the pharmaceutical industry and she took it: We needed extra money – the aerobics job just wasn’t cutting it. I didn’t want to work full-time then this job just fell into my lap. Somebody I used to work with had a consulting group and asked me to join it. It was such a good opportunity I didn’t really want to pass it up. I had good childcare; I took the children to a friend’s two days a week that was good for them too. I was nervous going back and meeting new people, but it all worked out fine. I didn’t have as much time to do domestic things

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Women’s employment and homemaking careers and I never liked to leave the kids, but they were not really affected to see me go and they got to play with their friends. I never wanted to climb the corporate ladder, I worked to keep my mind healthy and for the extra money.

During the pregnancy of her third child, when Martha was confined to bed for an extended period of time, her life changed again. Family and friends pitched in to help and her husband ‘turned into a mother and a father’. After the birth of her third child, Martha changed her consulting schedule to one day per week from two days per week and continued with her part-time job for about two years. After she had her fourth child in 1997, Martha continued to work part-time from her home. She eventually went back to working outside the home as a pharmaceutical consultant. She felt lucky that she was able to work some days in the office and one day at home. Martha said she was able to have the best of both worlds: she was able to work in the field she trained in, work part-time and still be there for her children. Martha commented, ‘I wouldn’t change a thing’. For the three women who when in college believed that they would not work full-time after childbirth and who changed careers as well as changing the number of hours they worked, financial considerations seemed a primary motivator, as well as trying to find a situation that gave them flexibility of hours when their children were young – teaching, consulting, and real estate – occupations that have some flexibility and that can fit in with children’s schedules.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The women who had significant part-time careers believe that they have had the best of both worlds. They have the opportunity to remain in the workforce to contribute to their family income, to maintain an interesting work life, and have the opportunity to meet their children’s needs with a flexible schedule. When they were in college, slightly more part-time employed mothers were likely to believe that they would stay home for three years after the birth of their first child, than would return to employment immediately (four out of 11 responses) and they had the shortest time horizon for their future career plans and their future childrearing plans. Their beliefs that they would have enough time for their children if working following childbirth were more like the fulltime careerists and differed from the homemakers, as were their perceptions that their husbands would approve of such a career (but the number of significant differences in this survey is so small it could have happened by chance). There were three significant differences between this group and other groups in their Phase II questionnaires and all had to do with time, a logical finding. Part-time career women were more likely than homemakers, and in

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some cases less likely than full-time careerists to believe that they would have enough time for their children if they worked (see Appendix B for data). In Phase III, the part-time career women were more likely than homemakers and less likely than full-time career women to believe that if they worked following childbirth they could: feel closer to their child; train their children themselves; have enough time for their child, themselves, and their husband; and have enough time to give their children attention when they needed it (see Appendix B for significant means).1 The sample of part-time women is small and the beliefs of this group appear to rest partway between the homemakers and the career women and these two factors probably contribute to finding only a small number of statistically significant differences between part-time career women and others in beliefs about the consequences of working or not working after childbirth. The family history of the part-time career women was almost the ideal of their era – 91 percent remain married to their first husband, the two who divorced remarried, and most (70 percent) had two children. None of these women had fewer than two children, unlike 40 percent of the full-time careerists. On average, the part-time career women worked 38 hours per week in the jobs they held before they had their first child, and after an average maternity leave of 11 months, these women worked 22.22 hours per week in the jobs they held after their first childbirth. They have worked an average of nine years as part-time employees. In their Phase IV interviews, eight out of the 11 women chose childbirth and moving to a part-time job as one out of three significant events in their lives so far. Also four out of the 11 women chose changing to a new job as a second significant event. In discussing their childbirth event, and consistent with their lack of long-term planning as college students, only 36 percent of these women believed that their first childbirth and subsequent career changes were voluntary and under their control. All but one woman used their husband as their chief confidant in making their decisions and the factors they took into consideration were the company policies or requirements of their job (mentioned in seven out of 17 responses) and the availability of good daycare (four out of 17 responses). There were two who mentioned that infertility problems and monetary concerns played a part in their decision-making. This group reported few obstacles: health, money, time demands, husband’s approval, and daycare, each received one mention. But these women were much more willing to mention the ways they coped with becoming a new mother and deciding to become a part-time employee. Out of 20 responses, four women mentioned changing their positions, four mentioned gaining family support, three mentioned help from their husbands, two got help from professionals, and two mentioned receiving help from supportive supervisors. When the part-time career women discussed the consequences of their

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choices, almost all comments about the consequences for themselves were about emotions, although negative emotions such as anxiety, loneliness, and exhaustion outweighed positive emotions like love and happiness (four out of 18 mentioned positive emotions and ten out of 18 mentioned negative emotions). The consequences to their careers were less negative, two women stated it harmed their careers whereas four out of eight mentioned that they changed from part-time to full-time without a negative comment. Part-time career women believed that their husbands had no career consequences (five out of seven responses) but three out of seven reported their husbands had some negative emotional responses while only one woman reported her husband had a positive emotional response as a consequences of having a new baby and a wife with a part-time job. In conclusion, the careerists who ended up working part-time for a substantial part of their lives after childbirth did it because of an unexpected family circumstances – infertility and twins, a patriarchal husband and family business, and an unreliable husband who eventually precipitated a divorce. In every case, however, these women have returned to an employment career rather than staying out of the labor force permanently. For the women who thought they would not be careerists in college, financial need and a need for mental stimulation were major influences for the women to return to part-time work after childbirth. Spouses were also a significant influence either because they had a spouse who favored their return to employment or because they chose to follow their husbands when his work required relocation. There were two women who changed occupations because of their personal interests, and the others seemed to select an occupation more to find a flexible job that fit their family needs rather than for a particular affinity to the occupations themselves. Those who made the choice because of flexibility were more likely to return to their original occupation or to think they might change in the future to regain some of the aspects of their original occupations that entranced them in the first place. In every case the women in this chapter made some statement that suggested that part-time work was an alternative that allowed these women to preserve their children’s welfare while also engaging in a mentally stimulating work environment that would help their family earn sufficient income. Most of the women in this group remain very satisfied with their family and their employment lives even as they acknowledge that they made significant trade offs in career advancement in order to enhance their family lives.

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NOTE 1.

Although each of these one-way ANOVA (analysis of variance) analyses for group differences was significant, not every one of these means was statistically significantly different.

5. Homemaking careers Out of the women who started this study in college (Phase I) 59 percent believed they were likely to leave the full-time labor force for more than three years after the birth of their first child. Of the 72 women interviewed in Phase IV, 55 percent actually did not work full-time outside their home for more than three years after their children were born, However, many of these women were not from the group who thought in college that they were certain to become homemakers after childbirth and also many did not leave full-time employment after their first child was born. The women who worked part-time rather than full-time but never totally left the labor force for three or more years are reported in the part-time workers’ chapter, Chapter 4. Others who chose entrepreneurial or self-employed careers, some of whom ran a daycare service in their homes and who might also be considered homemakers, are presented in Chapter 6. The 15 women who became full-time homemakers without any employment for three or more years are included in this chapter. In this homemaker group are several different patterns of withdrawal from the labor force. The first and smallest group is the most stereotypical traditional homemaking career pattern where a woman engaged in the labor market after college graduation, remained at home continuously throughout her childrearing years, and never entered the paid labor force again. This study had only two women who had a homemaking career as their primary life’s work after childbirth, both of whom became unemployed before they had children. Most surprising is that both members of this group predicted during college (probability of four out of a scale from one to five) that they would return to the labor force within three years after having their first child. The five women in the second group of homemakers had a more common pattern. They were employed full-time or part-time after their first child was born, but after their first child was born they realized they were having difficulty balancing their first child’s care and employment and, sometimes after bearing additional children, they left the labor force and have not returned. The five women interviewed who fit this pattern all rated the probability that they would work after the birth of their first child as three or four out of five. A third group of four homemakers left the full-time labor force for three to ten years during childbearing and then returned to full-time or part-time 88

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employment outside the home. The members of this group were mixed in their opinions in college but most believed that they were moderately likely to work or not work following childbirth. The final group of four women mixed homemaking and part-time employment as a way of combining work and family responsibilities. For each group, one woman’s story will be told in more detail first then the stories of others women will follow, each containing quotes that highlight their motivation to stay home and other variations in their life stories.

FULL-TIME HOMEMAKER – HANNAH’S STORY Hannah grew up with a younger brother and a younger sister in a small East Coast town. Her father owned a shoe store and her mother, born in Czechoslovakia, was a full-time homemaker. When she was in college, Hannah believed she would stay in the labor force following childbirth. I will most likely work because I have no intention of getting married or having children until I can afford childcare. After I graduate I’d like to go to graduate school, marry when I am about 25 and have children at about 30. [When I have children] I’ll raise them myself at least one year, not more than two, then find adequate childcare. I want to be loving, secure, supportive, I want them to be independent. I will not give up my whole life for my children the way my mother has.

After college, Hannah obtained a Master’s degree and worked as a psychiatric social worker in a clinic and hospital and then as a manager in a hospital and nursing home. She married a computer and software sales agent in 1989 and talked over her plans with her husband. The combination of her social work experience and her discussions with her husband seem to have changed her mind about employment after childbirth. A decade after college she said ‘I don’t want someone else to raise my children during the crucial formative years. I would prefer to sacrifice monetary concerns to raise them myself.’ Hannah had been laid off from her administrator’s job and took a demotion to return to social work from 1989 until the time her first child was born in 1991 and she had her second child in 1997. Hannah indicated that she wanted more time with her child and the conflict she felt between work and family as factors which influenced her to stay home. She also indicated that the status, opportunity to learn new skills, and leadership in her job had not lived up to her earlier expectations. Speaking about the time right after her first childbirth she said: I felt very strongly about being home with the baby. I had waited long enough (we had one miscarriage), I had been married long enough, we had a good financial situation, and we could afford it. It was a little tough to be home with the baby by

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Women’s employment and homemaking careers myself. I was lonely and bored at first but I tried to get out of the house. I joined La Leche and got a playgroup going and some friends visited. I felt my joy had increased but so had my responsibility. Our goal was to raise our child the best we could. Everything shifted and we were totally focused on her, making sure she was well and happy.

When she looks to the future, Hannah thinks she might do more volunteer work including working to help those in poverty. She looks forward to her children’s college graduation and finds her biggest source of satisfaction in her family and friends. Another Full-time Homemaker One other woman also believed in college that she would be employed following childbirth but instead decided to become a full-time homemaker when she had children. When Hattie was in college, she wanted to work following childbirth but she also said ‘I do not know who I might marry. Questions concerning … working after childbirth … are difficult to answer because I am sure my husband will influence these choices’. After college Hattie was a technician for less than two years, and then she returned to school and got a Master’s degree and became an accountant because she was allergic to the materials used in her former laboratory. She worked as an accountant until 1991 when she was laid off and obtained a temporary position as an accountant with another firm for another year. As Hattie was completing this part of her career as an accountant, she said that her salary had not lived up to her expectations and that lack of challenge, pay inequity, and long hours on the job might be reasons that a woman might not want to return to the labor force following childbirth. Hattie moved to another state to get married in 1992 and has not been employed since her marriage. She was troubled by migraine headaches, with double vision, pain, nausea and light sensitivity, which made it difficult to do accounting. She took medication but it was incompatible with pregnancy so she came off her medication and changed to a chiropractor to cope with the headaches. After some fertility treatments to correct a gynecological condition, her first child, a daughter, was born in 1996, and then she had fraternal twins in 2004. In her 2007 interview Hattie commented: Once I became a parent I felt sleep deprived. To have someone depend on you 24/7 is definitely a life changing event and created so much work you didn’t have before. We moved into a bigger home when our first child was one year old and we wanted another child. I just stopped my work. It was too difficult while trying to get pregnant. My daughter has ADHD and the twins are demanding. I have an MBA in Finance and got my CPA in 1990, maybe in the future one or the other of us will have to stay employed to have health benefits. After my car acci-

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dent, I don’t sit down too well so it won’t be in accounting, maybe I’ll do something more active like teaching in four or five years.

These two women, Hannah and Hattie, have followed the most traditional pattern of full-time homemakers who have not returned to the labor force after marriage and bearing children, they had careers that were stalled at the time of their first childbirth and additional factors, such as having twins and health problems, influenced their choices. The option of becoming a mother seemed an attractive alternative but neither woman has completely given up the idea of returning to the labor force some day. This is quite different from the women in the next group who believed they could combine employment and homemaking but after trying to do both simultaneously, these women left the labor force to become full-time homemakers for three or more years.

A HOMEMAKING CAREER AFTER INITIALLY RETURNING TO WORK – LETTIE’S STORY When she was in college, Lettie thought it was moderately unlikely that she would work during the first three years after her first childbirth. Like the other women in this group, she did work after her first childbirth but decided to stay at home with her children after later childbirths. Lettie grew up in a small town as the youngest of six sisters in a Catholic family. Her father managed a liquor store and her mother was a housewife until Lettie was a teenager. In college, Lettie commented about her mother’s life ‘my mother started to work when I was in the sixth grade. It did wonders for her general attitude and I think even her self-esteem. I realized the importance of having more in a woman’s life than childrearing’. At that time, Lettie thought that she would start having children when she was about 28, have two or three children spaced about three years apart, and that she would return to the labor force when her youngest child was about five. After college, Lettie worked first as an accountant, then a financial analyst and later as an auditor in the insurance industry. Lettie married a human resources executive in 1985 and postponed childbearing as she had planned, but she had strengthened her opinion about working following childbirth by Phase II. About a decade after college graduation she said: Career advancement and financial obligations are key factors influencing my plans for having children. If my career proceeds as planned, I will find it very difficult to put on hold as long as two or three years. In addition financially I would not be willing to forgo my salary as I feel that it is important for a child to have a certain standard of living. I have witnessed the experience of friends who have struggled to raise a family on one income. In most cases the mother has returned to work anyway

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Women’s employment and homemaking careers – out of financial need – but to a very menial position. I am anticipating going right back to the same position rather than trying to get by for a year or two and then returning to anything.

Lettie found her employment exceeded her expectations in challenge, variety, and good working conditions but was less satisfied with her hours and stress, reporting that her work was sometimes seasonal and in the busy times required long hours. Lettie had her first child in 1996 and returned to her work as an underwriter, rather than an underwriting manager, her previous job, so that she could switch to part-time for about a year after this childbirth. She had a second child in 1998 and she did not return to her job following the birth of her second child. She said: After working full-time through 1996 then part-time for approximately a year after the birth of my first child and then staying home after the birth of my second child, I feel I have had a taste of different work–family combinations. It is a difficult, difficult balancing act as a mother and full-time or part-time worker. I always felt as if I was neglecting something when I worked part-time – either my work responsibilities or my child. Now as a full-time mother, I miss the stimulation of working outside the home but feel it would be best, for now, for my kids. Fortunately we are able to afford this arrangement.

Others who Became Homemakers Later, After Initially Returning to Work There were four other women who worked before childbirth and for some time after the birth of their first child, but who are now full-time homemakers. Each woman’s story gives another perspective on how women decide when to become homemakers. After she graduated from college Faith worked in sales, human resources, and marketing. Before she got married and had a child, she said she would not make a decision until she became a mother but she would consider ‘how satisfied and fulfilled I will feel simply being a mother and not working and how much income I will be giving up at the time I become a mother. Availability of childcare will also contribute’. Faith married in 1992 and had her first child in 1994. She took a 12-week maternity leave and her mother moved in temporarily to help her with her colicky baby. Faith put her child into a home daycare situation for one month but Faith was unhappy with this situation and so she shifted to part-time consulting work. Faith quit in December of 1995, 17 months after her child was born. She had a second child in 1996 and a third child in 1998. Faith spoke of this time during her interview: It was the first time in my adult life that I was not earning money and it was scary.

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I was happy, a little bored at times but I had friends who were not working. I was pregnant with my second child and I didn’t want to miss any moments with them. At first I didn’t think we would have enough money. Now [2007] I haven’t worried about that for the past decade. Ten years ago maybe I would have gone back into something more flexible like teaching, but now it’s hard to go back [to work]; there aren’t many options. I kind of burned my bridges when I didn’t look for more consulting. You can’t pop in and out so I ended it. I would lose a lot of ground to return. Now I don’t look forward to the kids leaving but I do look forward to them going off to college. Right now we are focused on them and their success.

Another woman, Lucy, grew up with three older brothers, a father who was a commercial artist, and a mother who was a housewife until Lucy was about 12, at which time Lucy’s mother returned to work full-time. In college, Lucy was undecided about what she would do about employment after childbirth. My mother returned to work for financial reasons when her youngest child was nine. It was a difficult transition for her. I have watched as she ultimately gained self-confidence, skills, an optimistic attitude, and self-fulfillment, but at the same time, she has suffered from fatigue and severe guilt over any family problems. I admired her and believed she should not have to feel guilty. I vowed at a young age to achieve and maintain personal financial security. [Participating in this study] has really made me think about how I weigh my values and see that although I want to have everything at once, in reality, some things will have to be sacrificed for others. Women face some crucial decisions in these times but it is well worth having the opportunity to choose (to some extent) our own lifestyles.

After college, Lucy worked in the insurance industry and trained to be an actuary. In 1988 she married, and when she finally achieved her professional designation, she was already pregnant with her first child. Her child was born in 1991 and she took an eight-month leave after childbirth and returned to work full-time. Lucy commented: I had just finished my certification. In my opinion, it would have been looked upon as weak and lack of commitment to do anything less than return full-time. ‘Lose the weight, get back into a suit, and get back to the office’. That’s the way I thought then. Returning to work was scary and exhausting. It was hard to leave my baby in daycare. Regrettably, I didn’t really accept help available to me, especially from my in-laws. I thought I should do it all myself. In the next few years I had two miscarriages to add to my stress, and I knew I had to change something, as I was burning the candle at both ends. I was afraid I would make a huge mistake either at home or at work. I didn’t want to quit and I didn’t want to be a homemaker either. I worked out a part-time arrangement that worked for a while, but it was considered temporary. My career stagnated but didn’t die.

Lucy worked part-time from 1993 to 1996. She took five and a half months maternity leave after giving birth to her second child in 1995, and not long

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after this she gave up her employment career. Lucy had her third child in 1998. She says when she thinks about her future (taken from her interview in 2007) she is having a mid-life awakening and wants to move forward, not back in her career. She thinks about returning to work ‘in something new, fulfilling that does something for me. To work part-time; I don’t care about the pay but I am scared. What can I do? I have been out of the labor force for years’. Lucy looks forward to watching her children grow up and learn from her and to having grandchildren some day. Mathilda worked outside the home while she was having children but stopped working for others after her second child was in school, did art work and jewelry and then began a career as a full-time homemaker and volunteer. She grew up with three older brothers, a full-time homemaker mother and a telephone managerial father. In college, she thought she would return to work after having her children. After college, she worked as an assistant broker and then a sales representative for a short time before going back to school to get a master’s degree. She married in 1986, divorced in 1989, and remarried in 1990. Her first child was born in 1993 and her second child in 1995, and after each childbirth she took a little over one year in maternity leave from her finance job in communications as she moved up the managerial ranks in the same firm, ‘I stayed home just long enough to see their first big milestones, then I could go back to work in peace. I took maternity leave then an extended leave. The only effect was that I got a smaller raise than normal. I did get promotions after that’. In 2003, she accepted a buy-out package from her employer who was downsizing and has not returned to the labor force in the past four years between 2004 and 2007. Mathilda says: Because he [her husband] earns a good living, I do not have to return. I had become dissatisfied with working there and I thought ‘why am I doing this, only for the money?’ The kids were going into junior high and had lots of activities. They tried to stop me, the head of the group called me and asked me to stay but my husband encouraged me. I went to classes for career transitions, but I want to enjoy not having to work right now. Now I am doing volunteer work in a food pantry. It helps the children realize how other people live. I have done other things I could put on my resume, so I could do speech pathology [her college major] or teaching, or go back to communications tomorrow if I wanted to.

Mathilda now (2007) does artwork, painting ceramics and jewelry, and sewing and looks forward to finding something she really loves to do. She also looks forward to having more time to be with her husband, watching her children grow and go to college, and occasionally thinks about finding a part-time flexible job. Another woman, Paula, grew up in a small town with one older brother. Her father was a company foreman and her mother was a secretary. When she graduated from college Paula planned on having two children with about two

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years between them. She also felt that it was very likely that she would not work during the first three years after childbirth. Her reasoning for this was that: I feel that the earlier years of a child’s life are his or hers most formative, significant in a sense (being under influence of elders, learning to cope with environment, and so on) and maybe even demanding, and therefore I definitely want to be around to try to have a positive influence on the child and not leave him or her in some else’s hands.

In college, Paula’s strategy towards balancing her career and family was: To continue widening my knowledge in my subject area through independent research, reading, and experiences, hopefully work full-time teaching until I have a child, then to cease to work until the child is of an independent age. My goal is mainly to be available to the child whenever he or she needs me, to always keep him or her as a top priority in my life, never to force my beliefs on the child, but expose him or her to a sort of ‘smorgasbord’ of religious beliefs, arts, sports, and so on and let the child choose for himself [or herself] what he or she wants, and then I would support him or her in the choice.

Paula had her first child in 1984 and her second in 1988. Paula began work six months after her first child was born then stopped again after her second child was born and has not taught or worked since then (1988). The factors that she considered when deciding to stay at home were that: I was a private piano teacher prior to the birth of my first child. I stopped teaching until the baby was 6 months old, so I could spend lots of time with the baby. Also I was too tired from childcare all day to want to work at teaching. Mainly, I found the experience of being with the baby to be even more fulfilling and joyful than I had expected. Also my husband is very financially secure, so it was good to not need to work. … At first I dreaded being ‘cooped up’ with the baby (I had been teaching outside the home), but decided to sort of stop the job and stay at home on a trial basis for six months. I found that the baby became the top priority in my life, so really didn’t regret stopping teaching. There were phases of feeling ‘Oh no, I’m becoming Mrs Cleaver, this wasn’t supposed to happen’. … I feel a child should have a parent home until he or she’s in kindergarten, age five, because those are the crucial years for security, feeling loved, and being cared for to develop.

By 2007, Paula was still a full-time homemaker. She felt that a child should be five or six before their mother should start working full-time again because: At this age they’re in school regularly, so they don’t require as much attention, though I would have only wanted part-time work so I could be there when they returned from school. There isn’t anything that would make me more likely to return to work following childbirth because as I’ve learned, children grow amazing fast, I chose to have them and I feel being a parent or mother is the most important job I’ve ever done or will ever do.

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Paula looks forward to seeing her children get married and to having grandchildren. All five women in this group had several things in common. First, they did not seem to be forced by finances to return to the labor force after they had children, although all of them were employed at least part-time after their first childbirth. Second, when they compared the stress of combining both roles to their satisfaction of giving their child or children what they believed they needed, homemaking seemed a superior alternative. Although they often expressed some negative feelings of possible boredom, anxiety or fear, when staying home, they had also experienced dissatisfaction in the external workplace that was not balanced by positive emotions abut working in the same way they experienced positive emotions as a full-time mother, relieved of conflicting roles.

RETURNED TO WORK AFTER FULL-TIME HOMEMAKING – ANN’S STORY Ann was born in 1959 and grew up in the country; her mother had stayed at home after her birth and later worked as a bookkeeper. Her father was a mechanic until she was around 13 when he got a job as a truck driver. Ann worked as a babysitter and did other teenage odd-jobs such as cashier, waitress, and clerk before she went to college. Ann said about her mother’s choice to stay home after childbirth, ‘It has made me resentful toward mothers who put children second to a job or social involvement’. Once in college Ann’s career goal was to work as a television director. At age 20, Ann wasn’t sure whether she wanted to have children or not. Emotionally fulfilling work and motherhood are mutually exclusive. I feel that the career I want would make having kids impossible. I really don’t know if I will have children, it is dependent on many factors which I have no control over. Not having children is attractive to me, but one can never know. I feel that my love of children could be fulfilled through working with young children, perhaps setting up and working in daycare centers that facilitate children’s natural growth in a healthy manner.

In spite of her initial reservations, Ann married in 1985 and five years later, at age 30, she had her first child. Then, in Phase II, she said it was unlikely that she would work during the first three years after childbirth: I considered my attachment to my career versus bonding with [my] baby; the fact that [my] husband gets transferred periodically and the toll it has already taken on the progression of my career and the attainment of higher level degrees. I have observed and listened to many women – some who have remained at home and

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others who have returned to work after childbirth. The sense of loss expressed by those who chose work was greater and more final over the long run than the fulltime mothers.

Ann was a full-time mother during the decade of the 1990s, but by 2000, ten years after her first childbirth, Ann had three children and was back in the workforce. Ann said she was very satisfied with her job and her motherhood, ‘I returned to work when my oldest was a freshman in high school. My husband’s job included frequent transfers thus we moved right before I became pregnant for the first time and I didn’t have a job to go back to’. Ann felt that a child should be at least ten years old before the mother should return to work in her town because ‘In my town [the] bus service to school begins with high school [aged children] and transportation to and from school until then [high school age] is a problem [for younger children, especially] in [bad] weather.’ In 2005, Ann returned to school to obtain her teaching certificate. She has taught second and third grade Spanish, but is currently (2007) a part-time children’s librarian. Other Homemakers who Returned to Employment Like Ann, women in this group stayed home three or more years as a full-time homemaker and then returned to work for a different employer than the one they worked for before they began childbearing, sometimes in a different occupation. At age 21, Beth decided that staying at home with the child would be best. Beth said: ‘Through watching my mother, I have realized that work and children are both possible if the husband is willing to do his share of the “homework”. Unfortunately, mothering cannot be put on a schedule as work can. Therefore, depending on the specific child, many “milestones” may be missed if one works’. In college, Beth commented on her work–family plan: One should make plans so she is aware of what she is thinking or feeling on a subject. Some plans will be specific, others general. The important thing is to realize what you want and be able to change the tentative plans as changes in life occur. I would just like to note that the health of a child would be a major influence on when I would return to work after childbirth.

By Phase II, Beth was pregnant. She had worked for a pharmaceutical industry as an analyst manager for five years. She was now pretty sure that she would have to work during the first three years after childbirth for income reasons. Beth felt then that a mother should go back to work once the child is:

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Women’s employment and homemaking careers three years old – prior to this [the] child grows and changes so fast I would not want to miss this! Also social needs increase at this age. [The] child is aware that parent will return. [She] can express herself and relay feelings and thoughts. [A child also] has a built up an immune system and is more independent. Prior to this I think parttime is ideal.

Beth had two children, one in 1990 and one in 1993. She did not return to work when her child was three, rather she was a full-time mother for nine years. In 2005, Beth became a teacher and is now working 50 hours per week. Beth plans on returning to graduate school to obtain her Master’s degree in education in the future Another woman, Kim, also returned to employment later in life. Kim grew up in a family of five children, with an older brother and sister and a younger brother and sister. Her father worked as a contractor and a bulldozer operator, until he became disabled when Kim was 12. Kim’s mother had been a homemaker until her father’s accident; she then became a substitute teacher. Growing up with her mother as a homemaker, when Kim was in college she believed that mothers should work while their children are young ‘Work while the children are still young (five and up) they can understand why you’re working. I don’t want to be discontent with my life when I’m 50.’ Kim graduated from college with a degree in economics, but planned to return to graduate school around the age of 29 to train as a social psychologist. She did not know if she would work during the first three years after childbirth. She said that factors that would cause her to return to work after childbirth were: ‘[If] my husband became ill, [if] we need extra income, and [if] I become bored – if I’m unhappy being at home I feel this would be conveyed to my child and affect him/her …. If you have a responsible person watching the child, then go to work’. Kim worked for a year after college as an office manager for a dental office then as an assistant buyer for a restaurant equipment firm. Kim married a man who owned his own business and had three children, one in 1983, another in 1987, and her last in 1988. Kim became a full-time homemaker. She chose homemaking because her husband made enough money for their lifestyle. By 1990, she had changed her ideas about raising her own children: Children grow and change so much in the first five years of life I didn’t want to miss my chance to help shape them into the kind of people I want them to be. Issues of self-esteem and basic trust are too important to leave to daycare workers. … When all my children are in at least middle school I will probably go back to work. By then having a mother available between 8:00 and 3:00 isn’t so crucial. I will decide after consulting my husband and children (the people to be most affected by the change).

In 2000, Kim had re-entered the work force doing part-time office work,

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and by 2004 she was working full-time as an office manager. Other people influenced her decision to return to work, ‘My in-laws never wanted me to work outside the home. When my children reached high school age I reentered the part-time workforce. After my in-laws passing, I now work fulltime. … I would not have missed ages zero to five years of my children’s lives for any job’. Kim now (in 2007) believes that a child’s mother should start working fulltime again when the child is age 12, ‘Adolescents are mature enough to understand why the mother works, less resentment on both sides – the child is more able to take care of itself, will be involved in school/after-school activities’. In the future Kim is considering starting her own business of alpaca farming, ‘I know the amount of work, long hours, and personal sacrifice it takes to be selfemployed. I never saw “corporate” business as a work authority figure. I didn’t feel the need to be a part of a corporation, to be someone “important” in the workplace’. Diana was the oldest of three children and grew up in a small city with her father an NCR serviceman (originally National Cash Register Corporation) and her mother who returned to work as a secretary later in Diana’s life, ‘I respect my mom for the way she combined work with children. She didn’t work until we were all in school but was always home when we were. She only worked part-time’. In college, Diana thought she would probably stay home after childbirth and believed she would have two children two years apart, starting when she was about 25 years old. After college, she worked fulltime as a programmer and systems analyst in telecommunications. Diana married and had her first child in 1989, returning to a new job as financial analyst five months later and then, after struggling to balance her career and her childcare, she left her position. She commented: The primary factors causing me to return to work were: (1) maintaining my career which I had put so much effort into; and (2) additional financial security with both me and my husband working. After spending one and a half years part-time working on my MBA and advancing my career very rapidly in a male-dominated organization, I did not feel ready to ‘throw it away’ or ‘put it on a shelf’. However, after four months of 60 plus hour weeks, two nannies, one totaled automobile (by a nanny), extreme levels of stress and guilt, I decided my son was more important and I left my job.

Diana was a homemaker from 1990 to 2002 and had another child in 1991. She moved to follow her husband’s job changes, first to Virginia and later to Kentucky. While the moves made her feel isolated and separated from her friends in the previous locations, she said her main job was to make the transition as seamless for her children as possible, a task that she believes she accomplished. In 2002, a part-time job ‘just fell into my lap’. Diana’s husband’s job was ‘shaky’ and in order to make some money with a flexible

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schedule, she started a job as an interior design assistant for a one-woman interior decorating business. Diana’s husband traveled extensively in his job so she needed flexibility to maintain her childcare responsibilities and do her work. She reports getting tired of juggling a lot and has less personal time, but she is learning a lot and her self-esteem has definitely gone up, ‘I feel I can do anything if I put my mind to it’. Her children have to be more independent and plan around her schedule rather than her planning around theirs as it was before. In the future, Diana looks forward to seeing her children become independent and perhaps doing more tutoring and mentoring as a volunteer. The four women who spent about a decade out of the labor force and then returned, either had husbands who traveled or were transferred that made it difficult for them to stay in a continuous career in the same organization or had an occupation that was very demanding and believed that they and their children were better off if they stayed home. Like their mothers before them, these women found their return to the workforce occurred as their childcare responsibilities were decreasing and because they were able to find a position that they believed fitted well with their more independent and older children’s schedules, in occupations such as teaching, interior design, and flexible office work.

HOMEMAKER AND PART-TIME MIXED CAREER – URSULA’S STORY With four older brothers and no sisters, Ursula was the youngest child of a Christian college professor and his wife. According to her Phase I responses, Ursula was influenced by observing her mother when she was young. Her mother was a homemaker at first, then worked as a part-time librarian when Ursula was in school. Ursula believed her mother regretted not having gone to college to develop better career opportunities, but she also learned that a mother can make an enjoyable career of childrearing. Ursula thought that since her mother had worked part-time she would consider that alternative, although Ursula clearly preferred not to work full-time for the first three years after the birth of her first child: I might be a foreign missionary; [my] husband would be in the field and I would want to be with him and participate in the work even if I had a small child. However, the child could still be with me. I feel that my children need their mother more than the money I might bring in and I would rather be with them than work. Only dire consequences would force me to work. I plan to attend nursing school. This way I would be free to work part-time, or even at my child’s school, should the need arise. I also have another college degree and I could, if necessary, obtain a job in this field.

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Ursula entered a graduate registered nursing program after college and married soon after her nursing program graduation in 1984. She had her first child in 1986 and after the birth of this child Ursula changed her working hours at the hospital to a 12 hours per week weekend schedule so that they could buy a house and still have parental childcare. Ursula had her second child in 1987 and was unemployed for four years between her two children and after the birth of her second child. Ursula said: I believe a pre-school child needs the close contact of a full-time mother to be secure, loved, and disciplined. I did not want to leave the discipline and training of my child to others. My religious values are important to me and I wanted to be sure to instill them in my child. I did work part-time on the weekends when the need for income was great; I planned this so that my husband, who shares my values, would be the caregiver. My husband and I made the decision. We planned our budget and purchased a home based on the plan of having one income. (We could have purchased a more expensive home, but then I would have had to keep working after childbirth.) Actually we never really made this decision – it was assumed by both of us that I would become a full-time homemaker, probably because of the religious values we share. I am a registered nurse, one reason I chose this profession is because I can work anytime I wish, for example, one day a year or every day in the year. … I believe a child should be 18 before their mother should return to full-time work because I believe all children need a mother with emotional energy and time available to help them with various developmental tasks. I will work part-time but not full-time until my kids leave home.

Her third child was born in 1993 and Ursula was unemployed for one year after that birth, returning to a part-time 12 hours per week nursing instructor position for four years and a 30 hours per week school nurse position from 1998 to 2002. This was followed by another one year break in employment in 2002 when the couple adopted a fourth child. From 2003 until the present (2007) she has been working part-time as a registered nurse for ten hours per week. Others with Mixed Homemaking and Part-time Careers Melissa grew up with one younger sister, her father was a contractor and her mother was a nurse. When Melissa graduated from college she believed it was somewhat likely that she would work the first three years after having children. Factors that Melissa said could influence her decision were, ‘If my husband had to take a second job for us to support ourselves. If we couldn’t find adequate childcare and if I would have to sacrifice time with my child’. After college she worked in a bank and when Melissa had her first child in 1987 she returned to part-time work in banking at night. Between 1985 and 1989 she also went back to graduate school to complete her MBA. Melissa considered several things when making her decision to return to work part-time:

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I wanted to be home during at least the first year so I could get to know my child. In addition it seemed that my child was always getting sick and I did not have any relatives nearby who could stay with my child in the event of an illness. I did not want to take a position only to call in sick half the time. … I tried to find a position when my daughter was about one and a half. I could not find a position close to my home within 15 minutes or one that didn’t require training or overtime. This was a problem since most caretakers wanted the children picked up by 5:00 or 5:30pm.

Melissa had her second child in 1990 and stopped working for five years and then became a tax assistant for a private certified public accountant (CPA) firm part-time. In 1996, she began working for customer services at a bank, again part-time. In 2007 Melissa said: I am currently working four days a week from 10:00am to 3:00pm and have Wednesdays off. I have three to four weeks of vacation [per year]. I’m not making a fortune but my benefits and hours, and company are something I can’t give up. My present employer is very family-oriented. We have family days where the kids can come as well as take your child to work day. They are great with flexitime and have been accommodating. There are many part-timers who have been very loyal and been with the company for over ten years. I feel lucky to be working while the kids are in school and still have time for them.

Melissa looks forward to getting to work in Manhattan after her children are in college. Noelle grew up in a small town with a younger brother and a younger sister. Her father was an engineer and a technician, her mother was a nurse. In 1981, when she graduated from college Noelle did not know whether or not she wanted to work after childbirth. Some of the factors that could affect her decision were: The man I plan to marry will be in the service. His stability would probably affect my decision. A change in location, a new baby, and the return to work might be too much of a strain on the family all at once. If the family income was simply not enough I would return to work. If my child needed special care or attention I would also return to work. Other things I will consider will be how secure my child is in terms of feeling loved and having my attention when he needs it most. Also, [I will work] if I can realistically spread myself and my time across a job and growing family, how much I feel that I need to work and does the family need the extra income.

Noelle married in 1981 and worked part-time then full-time in retail until 1984 when she had her first child. She returned to part-time secretarial work in 1986 then had a second child in 1987, and a third in 1988. After the birth of her second child she became a homemaker for the next 11 years. Noelle decided to do this because:

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My husband’s income was more than adequate. I did not need to work. He was also in the military, and since we were considered temporary residents it was hard to find a career-type job. I also had a belief that children should be raised by their parents. As a Christian, I believe mothers should stay home with their children if it is at all possible. … This decision was a mutual understanding between myself and my husband. Also most of the young women and mothers I knew also stayed at home after having children. I felt no pressure or had no burning desire to return to work. … I feel a child should be 12 or 13 before their mother should return to full-time [work] because they are in school most of the day at this age and are old enough to take care of themselves alone after school until a parent comes home.

From 1998 to 2001, Noelle worked part-time as a design assistant and then she became a part-time project administrator. Nicole grew up in a small town with two older brothers, an older sister, a younger brother and a younger sister. Her father was a financial executive and her mother was a full-time homemaker. Her mother’s choices in childrearing influenced her own childrearing choices. In college she said ‘I won’t have six children; I want to keep my creativity, will, and interests intact’. Nicole also felt that it was somewhat likely she would work during the first three years after childbirth. Nicole planned to obtain a PhD and raise two children, she said: ‘I’m not inflexible. If resources are good, and husband and child are not harmed excessively, I will definitely work’. By Phase II, Nicole had not had any children, but was planning on having one within the next two years. She was attending graduate school in social work because she had a desire to do something clinical with direct contact with people. She still felt that it was somewhat likely that she would work during the first three years after childbirth. I cannot predict the degree of satisfaction I might feel from having a child; if I get restless and tired of routine, I’ll probably find the best caregiver and hurry back to work. If I find myself engrossed in the motherhood scene, I may want to stay at home, particularly if daily life between home and work gets extremely hectic and I’m constantly tired. … My husband’s opinion will be very valuable, finances, the temperament of the child, and where I’m at in my career will all have a bearing on the decision.

Nicole married in 1990 and worked off and on doing clinical social work from 1992 to 2002. At one point in her career Nicole opened up her own business doing clinical social work but found drawbacks such as having no benefits for sick time, vacation, retirement, or health insurance. She had her first child in 1994 then separated from her husband ten months later: My husband and I had a contentious situation that revolved around his desire for me to go back to work six weeks post-childbirth, and my desire to not work for the first year. Against his wishes (I did not value the ‘extra’ income when caring for the baby), I did not go back to work and we separated at ten months post-childbirth.

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Nicole felt that a child should be at least two to two and a half years old before its mother should return to full-time work because, ‘They will have started the separation and individuation phase, and have the trust and bonding solidified’. In 2002 Nicole left her job due to family reasons. In 2004, Nicole remarried and gained three older stepchildren. In the future, Nicole is looking forward to seeing her daughter grow up and traveling a lot. The final group of four women moved between homemaking and part-time employment as a way to balance home and employed career opportunities. A primary consideration seemed to be making sure that children’s needs were cared for while permitting an ongoing contact with a flexible job in the labor force.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The 15 women in this group were equally likely to believe in college that they would have continuous careers or would not return to work following childbirth, but only five women could be characterized as being committed to homemaking as a career early in their lives. As a group the homemakers had the largest percent of women with Master’s degrees, although the career women had more participants with PhDs, LLDs, and other advanced terminal degrees. The women who became homemakers for three or more years created larger families earlier in their lives than those women who had full-time or part-time employment careers. On average, compared to those who had continuous full-time careers, homemakers married about two years earlier, and if they divorced, were more likely to get remarried. They had their first child two years earlier than full-time career women and were more likely to have had more than two children (54 percent compared to 15 percent for full-time career women and 20 percent for those with part-time careers, p > 0.05). The homemakers took an average of ten years out of the labor force, and as a group they have worked an average of four years in part-time jobs, mostly after childbirth. The mothers and husbands of homemakers were less likely to believe that women should work following childbirth in Phase II and their husbands were more likely to have the highest average income of all groups in both Phase II and Phase III. In Phase III, the commitment of the homemakers to child welfare and their belief that their children would suffer if they worked was evident in their written survey responses. They were less likely than those who had full-time and part-time careers to believe if they worked they would feel close to their children, have the opportunity to train their children themselves, have enough time

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for their children, themselves, and their husbands and give their children attention when needed (see Appendix B for the supporting data). In the Phase IV interviews, homemakers were likely to report that quitting their job was one of the three most important life events followed closely by the illness of a spouse or death of parent. When their interview responses to the event of having a child and deciding to stay home were coded, the majority (61 percent) said that they felt this event and decision was voluntary, under their own control, and they were most likely to talk about their decision to their husbands (58 percent), however, more members of this group said they talked to no one about this decision (17 percent compared to 0 percent in all other groups). Consistent with their survey responses, when asked what factors influenced their decision to stay at home homemakers most often mentioned child welfare or child daycare (eight out of 21 responses) followed distantly by organizational policies (three out of 21 responses) and infertility (three out of 21 responses). The greatest obstacles they faced were non-supportive parents and other family members (three out of eight responses), lack of support from their husband (two out of eight responses) and health issues (two out of eight responses). To overcome these obstacles they received support from friends (three out of 15 responses), professionals (two out of 15 responses), a husband (one out of 15 responses), or managed their time (one out of 15 responses) or their jobs in a different way (one out of 15 responses). When telling about the consequences of their choice in Phase IV interviews, the most common response of consequences to themselves was one of negative emotions like boredom, loneliness, and worry (ten out of 27 responses), with fewer responses of positive emotions like happiness (four out of 27 responses), and a few single responses of changing how they spent their time, or their money, or learning new things. The majority of women also reported a negative effect on their own employment careers (seven out of eight responses). Homemakers also reported more negative than positive emotional responses as effects on their husbands (four out of ten negative responses and two out of ten positive responses) and one other primary consequence for husbands, to create a larger financial burden for them to support their family (three out of ten responses). Half of the women reported no consequence to their husband’s career (four out of eight responses). Those homemakers who have not returned to the labor force after their careers as homemakers either did not have satisfying employment careers before they had their children and had felt some level of role conflict if they tried to work with children at home, or had husbands who earned enough income to support the family, and/or disapproved of mothers working outside of the home. As wives and mothers, they were more concerned about their family welfare, poor childcare, or their child’s health than any opportunities to

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pursue a non-homemaking career. More recently (in 2007) several expressed concern that after being out of the workforce for so long, they might find it difficult to return to employment, and if the family did not need the income, they were satisfied to pursue non-paid community activities. The full-time homemakers who had invested heavily in their careers and education were more likely to return to employment after their first childbirth and to become homemakers after deciding that the balancing of these two roles was too stressful. The women who waited to become homemakers until after childbirth or who have returned to employed careers after more than three years as homemakers either had higher education and professional careers that they valued and wanted to resume if they could find a flexible workplace, or were able to change to or resume careers in teaching, small business, nursing, or other flexible occupations that suited their family schedules and allowed them to spend time with their children. These women combined their family and employment roles either by taking one or more days off work, ending their work day early, or finding jobs providing flexibility that allowed them to leave work when family obligations were important. Spouse careers and values were also influential among this group of homemakers. In some cases having a husband who traveled or who changed job locations triggered a woman’s decision to leave the paid labor force. In other instances, husbands or their families believed strongly that they wanted their wives to become homemakers or in a few cases believed strongly that they needed their wife to return to the labor force, but were overruled eventually by the women who felt strongly that they wanted to stay home with their children. In summary, although only about one-third of the homemakers knew in college that they wanted to stay home with their children, many homemakers found dissatisfying or demanding and inflexible jobs and supervisors after college, and held beliefs that their children needed full-time maternal attention to thrive, that led all to conclude that they should spend significant parts of their lives at home. These women were assisted by their husbands who made good incomes and in most cases who wanted them to stay home. Most of the women in this group had a larger number of children earlier than the other groups of women and found their first childbirth and homemaking experience one of anxiety, boredom, and loneliness mixed with happiness, but most are now quite satisfied with their family lives and their choices. After their children matured, about half have returned to the labor force in more flexible fulltime or part-time positions that reduced the conflict between their home and employee roles.

6. Entrepreneurial and self-employed careers Of the women interviewed for this study 16 out of 72 created their own jobs and combined this with family responsibilities at some point in their lives. Some women became entrepreneurs as a career choice, others started daycare services in their own homes in order to perpetuate a homemaker lifestyle while bringing in some income. Thus we have some women in this chapter who are mostly like career women and others who are more similar to homemakers. Their stories are arranged approximately according to the extent their entrepreneurial enterprises served as a means of family support and vehicles for continuous careers for the women. The first group of four women became self-employed entrepreneurs as a career strategy and used self-employment as well as some employee jobs to support themselves when they had no other family income. There are two members of this group who have not had children but all the women supported themselves and their families for extensive periods of their lives. The next four women formed family businesses with their husbands, two while remaining in the labor force continuously and two after spending several years as homemakers. These husband and wife businesses formed the sole support of their families. The next three entrepreneurs did not use their business as a sole form of family support but rather as an individual career–family strategy. We found two women who had husbands to provide some family support but also had individual continuous careers, moving into and out of the paid labor force as employees and self-employed consultants according to their family caretaking needs and their own career interests. A third woman has had a career as a selfemployed musician adjusting her hours to meet her family responsibilities. The next group of three women chose to quit the jobs they had at some point in their childbearing years and open child daycare centers in their homes so that they could be closer to their own children and still contribute to the family income. All of these women eventually returned to the labor force as employees either part-time or full-time. The final two women began their careers as employees and then each started an entrepreneurial business. Each of these women then gave up her business to become a full-time homemaker. 107

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SELF-EMPLOYED FAMILY SUPPORTER – PATTI’S STORY Patti grew up with two older brothers, and an older and younger sister. Her father was in trucking, moving from driver to manager, and her mother was an artist and housewife in Patti’s early years and later became a full-time employee, first as a fabric store manager and later working for educational testing service. In college, Patti’s plans for the future were to have a continuous career with two children two or three years apart, and her plans were influenced by her mother and her sister. She claimed her mother was restrained from entering the labor force for the first years of her marriage and resented it, ‘She needed a job, a sense of herself as a person not just a mother and wife. She eventually got a job and she did a wonderful job with us’. Also Patti’s sister had two children and never had a job, ‘I know she is often bored tired and lonely. She feels that being a mother is the only thing she can do well, perhaps because she has never tried anything else. I’m often temped to pluck her out of her house and stick her in some interesting class or a good job where she could feel better about herself and have some fun’. After college, Patti obtained a job as a newspaper photographer and stayed at that job for about a year. She wanted to become a war correspondent overseas and became a freelance photographer but she got pregnant accidently and it changed her life. She married a freelance photographer and had her first and only child, a son, in 1985. After spending one year at home she obtained another fulltime news photographer position and also did additional freelance work until 1994. Patti stayed home with her son full-time from 1994 to 1997, returning to freelance photography again from 1997 to 2002. She was divorced in 2003 and since then has had her own photography business, doing some weddings, corporate photography, and some photography for news organizations. In Phase II (1990–91), she said about combining employment and motherhood: I would like to have stayed home longer. I could have freelanced longer but my clients did not pay on time. My husband and I were both freelancing and income was too undependable. My husband and I decided one of us had to have a steady job in order to live a comfortable life. I got a steady job with good pay first so I resumed full-time work first.

Talking about that time of her life during her interview in 2007 Patti said: Having a baby limited my working to local jobs. Also when working for a newspaper, I could only work certain shifts. Later I decided to quit my newspaper job and do freelance again. I really felt I was missing out on things my son wanted to do like baseball and scouts. They [the newspaper] wanted to lay off folks and I wanted to stop work so it all worked out. We moved to a cheaper place, my job paid less than

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my husband’s that year, so I was happy to spend lots of time with my son. When I stopped working it hurt my freelance portfolio, it got out of date. My husband loved it. It was like he had a free maid and he didn’t have to worry about being late to pick up our son at daycare. Later he didn’t like the pressure of making all the money. It was good for his career but he thought about his job all the time.

In the future Patti wants to go back to her original career plan and do documentary photography overseas, maybe start a business with her son or meet a new partner. Other Self-supporting Entrepreneurs There were three other women who became self-employed entrepreneurs and sole providers of their family income. A physician, Dottie, who planned a continuous career in college, had three children while she followed a career in internal medicine but her husband experienced serious arthritis. He had spinal fusion surgery, received medical disability payments, and became their primary child caretaker in 1997, when her youngest child was five years old. The family moved to Florida and Dottie opened a nutritional clinic at the end of the 1990s. This career specialty provided ample income and stable hours that worked well with her family responsibilities. Another interviewee, Esther, has never had children and married later in her life. She has had a continuous career as a violinist and violin teacher. After graduate school, it took time to build up her student clientele but she has had steady work performing and teaching since then. Esther’s mother became ill and died in 2001 and then her father died a few months later so she cut back and did not accept any new students for a time while she settled both of their estates. She also had a semi-break in her career during a career-threatening bout with tendonitis from 1997 to 1998. She recovered using holistic medicine, yoga, and massage therapy and some of her advanced students helped her to continue teaching by demonstrating during her lessons. Esther met her husband, a children’s book illustrator, in 2004 and they married in 2006. She stated that she grew up after these life experiences and she was ready and did not want to be alone. Esther said: ‘He balances me out … I do not plan to have children. It is too late for me. I see other people’s children as my family’. Tiffany started working as a computer programmer in 1983 before she graduated from college in 1984. She got married in 1988 but has not yet had children. In 1992 she augmented her career as a computer programmer to become an independent computer consultant, joining with her husband in his consulting firm. She and her husband separated in 1997. In 1998, Tiffany stopped working until 2000 when she became self-employed as an independent computer consultant again. Two years later in 2002 Tiffany and her husband reconciled.

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In 2004, she began work as an employee of an insurance company and then in 2007 moved her employment to a professional institute. Both positions were in computer technology. As of the end of 2008, Tiffany was made redundant from her job due to economic problems. Tiffany looks forward to having children in her life and working on improving her home. Since becoming unemployed Tiffany is considering training to enhance her computer skills. The women in this group became self-employed entrepreneurs primarily when they had no husbands to support them. They also chose occupations where self-employment was a common career option – doctor, music teacher, and photographer. The one individual who joined her husband in a business as a computer consultant could also have been included in the next group but was included here because she continued her independent consultancy career after she separated from her husband.

HUSBAND AND WIFE FAMILY-BUSINESS OWNERS – DOROTHY’S STORY Dorothy grew up in a small town with one older brother. Dorothy’s father was an artist and her mother did not work until Dorothy was six years old when she became a school teacher. When Dorothy was in college she planned on having one child at around the age of 27 to 30 and she was undecided about whether or not she would work following childbirth. By Phase II, Dorothy was married and had returned to graduate school to obtain her Master’s degree. She had worked as a banker before going back to graduate school and became a financial manager after obtaining her Master’s degree. She had not had a child yet but a decade after college she believed that the big factors when it came to deciding about staying at home or working after childbirth were: [Having the] ability to afford my current lifestyle, [I] will return quickly to work if a second income is necessary. [Another big factor is] the availability of good healthcare, for example a sitter or another mother. My current opinion is that I would like to continue a career shortly after having a baby; but depending on the type of care we can find this opinion may change. The final decision will be made by myself [sic] and my husband. I expect the decision to be somewhat spontaneous rather than pragmatic.

Dorothy felt that a child should be age five before their mother should go back to work because, ‘At this age a child is old enough to communicate feelings and make decisions to protect him or herself’. Dorothy had her first child in 1995 and became a stay-at-home mother. By 2001, her ideas on how old a child should be before the mother returns to work had changed.


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[They should be] 15 to 16 years old; I believe middle school children are naturally moving towards independence, more responsibility and ownership of their actions. I [also] believe that if a woman is going to have a child she should assume the responsibility of raising that child, barring of course, death or unforeseen illness of an income earning partner.

By Phase III, Dorothy and her husband were self-employed in her husband’s management consulting business. She had been wanting to be selfemployed and wanted to start a business that: [would provide] a service that would not require significant initial capital outlay or carry inventories. My spouse beat me to it! We decided that one family business was enough since we wanted to maintain flexibility dedicated to raising our daughter and the quality of our relationship. Both of our fathers were self-employed.

In the future Dorothy looks forward to her daughter finishing college, her own and her husband’s retirement and increased leisure with her husband. Other Husband and Wife Family Business Owners We found three more women who developed joint businesses with their spouses that enabled them to have continuous careers. In the third instance, the woman spent several years as a homemaker and later started a business with her husband as a way of him returning to the labor force after he was made redundant. After college, Edith was a microbiology laboratory manager for ten years, marrying a printer in 1985. In 1991, her husband decided to return to his family business and entered a mortuary college. In 1992, Edith moved to California for a better job as general manager of an analytical laboratory and eight months later her husband joined her after finishing his training in mortuary science. Edith had a child in 1995 and returned to her laboratory work after maternity leave. In 1996 Edith quit her job and with her husband they started a business and bought their first funeral home. The business is growing and they have since expanded to two other locations and have bought a crematorium. A psychiatric social worker, Sonya was a self-employed therapist in a joint practice with her husband. After her first child was born in 1997 Sonya took six weeks off and then returned to work. When Sonya’s first child was a toddler and she was six months pregnant with her second child, her husband experienced a life-threatening medical emergency. In 2000, she took four weeks off after her second childbirth and returned to work. Her husband recovered and rejoined the practice but Sonya was greatly affected by this traumatic experience. Like the other women with husbands who have serious medical problems, she remains concerned about his health and her own health

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and she has decided to stay in the labor force permanently. She wanted to be able to afford her own health insurance. Another woman started out as a careerist in college but later became a homemaker and an entrepreneur involved in a family business. Lauren grew up in the countryside with two older sisters, one older brother and one younger brother. Her father was an auditor and her mother was a nurse. Her mother worked while raising all five of her children and Lauren believed she could and would do the same, although her actual rating of whether or not she would return to work following childbirth was ‘uncertain’. Lauren worked in the textile industry as a manager after college graduation and then became a full-time mother after the birth of her first child. In 1990, Lauren had her second child, then her third child in 1993. By then she felt that a child should be four to five years old before the mother should go back to working full-time because ‘Before this the mom needs to be fully available at the close of the school day’. In 2005, Lauren’s husband, a former executive, got laid off and they chose to open their own catering and design business. Once they had started the business she felt ‘This business is his passion and not my choice, so I’m not as happy with it as he is. I would rather have my own food business’. In the future, Lauren looks forward in the short term to making their business a success and in the long term to her ‘launching three wonderful citizens into the world’. The women who joined their husbands in starting a new business all saw this as a family venture at least as much as an individual career choice. In one instance inspired by a father and in other instances by a husband, these career choices had male inspiration and as the last participant suggested, some might have chosen another business if they had made their own individual choices. In all cases the business became the sole source of the family income and source of a future career, even for those who took time out to raise a family before starting the business.

EMPLOYEE, HOMEMAKER, AND SELF-EMPLOYED CONSULTANT – SUSAN’S STORY Susan became an accountant and then a financial analyst for the first nine years after college graduation. She got married in 1985. By Phase II, Susan had not had any children but planned on having one within a year. She felt that it was very unlikely that she would work during the first three years after the birth of her child: The main factor that will influence my decision to stay at home after the birth of my first child is not wanting to bundle a sleeping child up early in the morning and cart


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him or her off to a strange house or institution. Also, my current career requires me to work long hours. I wouldn’t want to be away from my baby that long. … The first process my husband and I used was a cash flow forecast to make sure we could live on one salary. We saved our money, bought a house within our means and saved enough money to subsidize our basic expenses in the case of an emergency. We both came from homes of ‘stay-at-home’ mothers and feel that it is the best alternative.

By Phase II Susan had also started to change her career path. I am in the process of changing careers from a financial analyst–accountant to a high school English teacher. I did some soul searching to find my true calling in life. I thought about what I liked to do as a child. I looked at my college transcript and realized I had Bs and Cs in accounting and As in English. I feel this career will better fit into my family plans. I can be home fairly early and have the same holidays off (including summers) as my school age children.

Susan had her first child in 1992 and stayed out of the labor force for one and a half years after childbirth. Later she talked about her life after having her child this way: I had worked enough and had enough money to be able to stay home. I didn’t expect what a big change it would be for me. Before in my professional life, if it didn’t work out, I could change my job, I was footloose, but now with a child, I had a sense of responsibility I could not change, I felt trapped, but not in a bad way, it just startled me. I felt overwhelmed and had some postpartum depression for about a year until I started back to work part-time.

When Susan returned to the labor force she worked for several local companies as a part-time corporate trainer, computer software instructor, and technical writer between 1995 and 2004 and also promoted herself as a selfemployed computer consultant. She felt the benefits of working for herself were many: The flexible schedule, earning potential and working from home were great, but proved to be too demanding. Although earning potential was unlimited, it felt like there was always work hanging over my head. I prefer to work for a company and let them handle administrational functions, plus companies have regular schedules and get me out of the house. … My husband thought it was fine. He was pleased with the earning potential, although, he wasn’t always willing to share my time at home and pressured me a bit to take on more work than I was comfortable with.

Susan settled in a part-time training position working the same hours as her now school-aged child. The job was ‘well paying, but boring’. In 2002, she was laid off, and rather than jump into another part-time job, she resumed a process of self-reflection which led to her completing the teaching certificate she had begun in 1989. Finally, in 2004 Susan began her new career, working as a full-time English teacher. She told of her occupational change this way:

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In the 1970s it was the feminist environment in college and women weren’t encouraged to go for teaching, it was more to conquer the corporate environment so I didn’t even think about teaching then. My husband was supportive and I found a program for mid-career people to go into teaching. I had to really push to get my old file and reactivate it after ten years but I thought ‘I’m going to do this’. I took more courses and exams and obtained my certification. I also worked as a substitute teacher before I finally got a permanent teaching job. Now I feel a total sense of relief. I have no upward mobility and less money but total satisfaction. I truly love teaching!

In her 2007 interview, Susan still believed that a child should be in school full-time before the mother should return to full-time work because ‘With demands on children always increasing it’s great if they can come home after school and get much needed downtime’. In the future Susan expects to stay right where she is, teaching 11th grade English in a suburban high school. She looks forward to seeing her son graduate from college and to her husband’s retirement. Other Self-employed Homemakers There was one other married woman who first worked for others then developed a consulting career while raising children. Another woman had a career as a musician. Daren thought that she would be employed about two years after childbirth when she was in college, but in fact she worked part-time owning her own business, first as an exporter and later as a consultant. In watching her mother she said: Watching my mother has discouraged me from having children. She has a great ability for taking care of children … but she works so hard. I don’t think I could do that much work. I watched her babysit and I realized children are a lot of work. She babysat young children and it never hurt them, in fact it helped a few kids, so I decided if I have children I can keep on working.

While at college Daren was engaged to a civil engineer and they married after college graduation. Daren held a job as a secretary until she decided upon a career direction change and then became a full-time database administrator. After her first childbirth in 1988, Daren returned to work part-time for one year then started her own business. She said in Phase II: When I considered becoming a mother, I firmly felt that I would return to work in the months following childbirth. I would stay home as long as possible, knowing I could only extend my six week leave a short time. I wanted to return to the position I held. I did not want to stay home because: (1) I took a long time to decide and establish a career path which I did not want to relinquish quickly; and (2) raising a child requires more energy and discipline than I have. It has many boring hours


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between the exciting moments. I have a hard time enjoying the excitement after an hour of being bored. After the birth of my child, my resolve was shaken, primarily because my mother felt I should stay home and my husband wished it. I returned to work with the approach that I would see how things worked out, allowing myself the option of working part-time. I started my own business as an alternative to finding another job. I have been working for myself for the past year [1991]. The business is primarily an export business. I expect that I will begin to look for another job in the near future to provide better income. I have not yet decided if I will return to my old career or take temporary jobs. I decided to start this business as a way to stay at home with my child, but I have not found that working from home provided any benefits. In fact I have found it to be undesirable. I still take my child to a babysitter (my mother) three days a week so I can work.

After closing that business Daren worked for another start-up computer service firm for about a year. She then began a new career as a self-employed part-time consulting systems administrator which she ran for about ten years, during which time her second child was born. Between 2000 and 2003 Daren stopped working due to multiple family needs. Daren became ill and it took several years to get an accurate diagnosis and proper treatment. In addition, one of her daughters was dyslexic and needed special help, and in 2006 her father had a stroke and also needed care. Since 2003, Daren has worked sporadically as a self-employed computer consultant, usually about 10–20 hours per week. She hopes to increase this consulting work to pay for her children’s college in the future. The last woman in this group has had a career as a part-time self-employed musician. Selma had two younger sisters and one older brother, her father was a chemical engineer and her mother was a homemaker and later a piano teacher. Selma’s aspirations in college were to become a string player, perhaps a teacher and composer, to have two children later in her life, perhaps when she was in her thirties, and to work part-time after childbirth. In 1984, she married a Frenchman and lived in France for ten years before returning to the US. In France, she went to performing classes and taught about ten students herself. Selma had her first child in 1986, a second child in 1989, and her third child in 1991. In 1990, after her first two children were born she wrote: I did not need to work to earn money. I work at home and have been throughout the past five years but only 5–10 hours per week so childcare arrangements have been fairly easy to make. Also my hours are extremely flexible and I’ve sometimes worked when the children have been sleeping. My work is more like a hobby that I get paid for and enjoy but I do plan to increase my time working as the children get older. I have also spent this time studying to develop my career skills. No matter how many hours I work, the money would be nothing in comparison to my husband’s salary. Since my husband’s work [tax accountant] only allows him to be

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with the children on weekends, there would be precious little time for family bonding if I worked full-time and to me this would be a great sacrifice.

Selma stopped teaching between 1991 and 1996 to care for her children at home. She then returned to teaching private students 20–30 hours per week, also supplementing her income by doing some music teaching in the public schools system from 1998–2002. Now (2007) Selma has students 2–3 hours per day, judges music competitions two or three times a year, and performs for pay or as a donation several times a year. Selma’s husband took early retirement, he had a difficult fall that hindered his ability to walk, and he now volunteers and helps with teenage childcare as she teaches. Selma has a dream to open a music school in a beautiful location and to watch her children grow and to have grandchildren some day.

CHILDCARE ENTREPRENEUR – HELEN’S STORY Helen grew up in a small town with one younger brother and one younger sister. Both of her parents had obtained Master’s degrees. Her father was a steelmill worker, then later became a manager and finally opened up his own business. Helen’s mother was a teacher and worked from the time Helen was born until Helen’s father opened his business. Helen said: ‘My mother worked while all her kids were one to three years old (at least) and I didn’t find it “harmful” to me in any way – yet I would prefer to be with my children until they are in school’. In college, Helen’s future plans to stay at home after having her children were uncertain because she suffered from a debilitating chronic disease. Also her plans would change if her husband no longer supported her financially, if he were dead or they divorced, or ‘if I couldn’t stand my kid – God forbid!’ Helen was planning on having three children, one born to her and two adopted. Helen got married to a letter carrier in 1981. In 1988 she had her first child and had her second child in 1989. She was employed after her children’s birth but quit in 1991 to spend time with them. Helen also set up a home daycare center for her friends at this time. Three factors influenced her choice: One, cutting our income in half was a major concern. We had saved money while I worked so we could have something to dip into if I quit my job, but I felt very uncomfortable about just barely being able to cover monthly expenses, not to mention the added expense of a child’s needs. Two, losing the security of my job worried me. Three, most importantly, I really wanted to be a mother, to be there day in and day out. I wanted to be the one to nurture them, feed them, and change them, to teach them about the world and watch with amazement at how they learn things and interpret the world around them.


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Helen said that in the process of making this decision: I talked to my husband a lot. I read every magazine, article, and book I could get my hands on about childcare effects on kids. I talked with mothers that stayed at home and others that worked while their children were small. I decided to stay home by following my heart, I figured I can always get a job later, but I’ll never get another chance to watch my children grow up.

Helen believed that a child should be ten years old before the mother should start working again because, ‘When the child enters school full-time, I feel the mother can work part-time but I feel she (or the father) should be with the child before and immediately after school’. In 1996, Helen’s brother committed suicide. This added a great deal of pressure to her life, she felt that she had to keep the family together and do more with her parents. She found it difficult to run a daycare center and deal with her family pressures so she decided to stop her daycare service. Shortly after this Helen got a job at a nursery and later became the manager; she has been working as a daycare manager in another location since then. In the future, Helen is looking forward to fewer family responsibilities as her children grow up; she is also looking forward to seeing them succeed in the world. Lastly she is looking forward to continuing her work. Other Childcare Entrepreneurs Like Helen, the other two women in this group were employees before they had children, opened daycare centers in their homes during their childrearing years and then returned to employment. Amber grew up in the country with two older sisters and a younger brother. Her father was a lawyer and her mother was a homemaker. She planned on having four children with two years between them. Amber also felt that it was very unlikely that she would work during the first three years after childbirth. The same year she graduated from college, Amber also got married. By Phase II, Amber had three children: one born in 1982, one in 1986, and another in 1988. After having her first three children she also adopted her nephew, after her sister and her husband died. Amber had been working as a school teacher but soon quit to take care of her children and become a full-time homemaker, believing she should stay home until her youngest child was at least six years old. I didn’t want someone else to raise my child at the most important and influential stage in her life. I wanted to be the one to stimulate and develop her attitudes towards the world she was going to live in. We chose to go without the material extras that another income would provide in order to have her in an atmosphere of

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our home, secure with a positive attitude towards family. … It was a process of taking stock in myself, dealing with my own self-image. After much anxiety I realized I was being selfish being so worried about my accomplishments. I decided to put my skills towards the raising of my child. My husband was very supportive, his ideas of family and home life being the same as mine. I then felt proud in choosing, at this stage in life, to put my time and energy into raising this little person. There is time for me in the future.

After she left her teaching job, Amber started a home business that ‘provided services such as childcare, typing, sewing, or making something at home’. Amber had another child in 1995 and continued to run her homeservice business from 1988 until she started working part-time as a home inspector and substitute teacher in 1999. She continued these part-time positions until 2003. In 2007 Amber felt that children should be 11 or 12 before their mother should return to full-time work because ‘I think children need a mother available to them at all times up through elementary school. They need to feel that they are number one in importance, not something that’s scheduled in around your job hours. Amber is looking forward to more free time with her husband and focusing on their relationship in the future. She is also looking forward to watching her children grow up and seeing what the future holds for them. Amber is also considering furthering her career to become a full-time teacher. Phoebe grew up in a small town with a younger brother and two younger sisters. Her father was a chemical engineer and her mother, who emigrated from Europe, never worked after Phoebe’s birth. As a college junior, Phoebe was uncertain whether she would work or not during the first three years after childbirth. Phoebe was already engaged to an electrician and she planned on going into medicine. In her college plans after obtaining her MD, her specific strategy for combining employment and childrearing was as follows: [My fiancé] will help support me until I finish school. [I will] establish a career or partnership then take the first year following childbirth off or do minimal work, this depends on how flexible [my fiancé’s] work is. Not getting my MD [could prevent me from carrying out my plans]. Going into the pharmaceutical industry or biochemistry are alternative plans, then children will be less of a problem.

In Phase II, Phoebe reported that her career plans changed markedly after her junior year in college: I was a park ranger waiting to attend chiropractic school, my marriage collapsed and I suffered a depression. In the aftermath and healing of that I decided I should start my family and my career will have to wait. I am now [in 1990] considering becoming a high school biology teacher.


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Phoebe married in 1980 and had two children, one in 1986 and the other in 1987. In 1990 she said: I thought I would go back to work but after [my child] was born I couldn’t bear to let some else raise [them]. I couldn’t afford not to work so I have been babysitting to make ends meet. … It was a gut reaction, the bond was so powerful, and all I had read regarding child development supported it. A child should be four years old before her mother should start working full-time. My oldest is now four and I think [they] would handle it ok.

In 1989, Phoebe became a school bus driver while continuing to run an inhome baby-sitting business. In her 2007 interview she said: The seven years I did childcare in my home and drove a school bus, while I do not regret them for my children’s sake, they have hurt me terribly financially. I am now divorced and received no consideration towards retirement. I will never be able to make it up. This is my only regret about not working while my children were little; they were the best years of my life!

She started teaching science in 1993 and continues to hold that job. In the future Phoebe plans on moving into an eco-village. She also hopes to further her education and possibly obtain a PhD in biology. Phoebe found out that she has an inherited disease that probably afflicted her mother and grandmother as well and will probably be passed on to her children. This disease is little known but affects the bones, joints, and other connective tissue and probably was responsible for many previous health problems because it is often misdiagnosed. Phoebe has undergone multiple operations to correct problems related to this disease and is now considering what opportunities she might pursue that would suit her health limitations and her interests.

ENTREPRENEUR WHO BECAME A HOMEMAKER – LAURA’S STORY Laura thought she could combine employment and childrearing at first when she had her child but later decided it was too much. She believed very strongly when she was in college that she would definitely want to work after childbirth. Laura’s plan for combining childrearing and employment was to ‘work three to five years, have one child, go back to work immediately for one year, have another child, go back to work’. Laura watched her mom, who had a college degree, stay home and said ‘she says she likes her life but I think differently. I think she is very unfulfilled. My dad wanted her to stay home while my brother and I were young. He would like her to work now [when Laura was in college] though’.

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Laura worked in management after college graduation, was unemployed for a year then found a job in a different industry using her same skill set as a production planner, a job she considered a demotion. She married in 1994 and a year later she opened a home-based business with a partner and worked in that business for about 20 hours per week for five years. Her child was born in 1999. In her Phase IV interview, Laura spoke of her home-based business and giving it up to stay home with her child. We both wanted kids and we both wanted careers and this seemed the way to do it. The business grew larger and larger. Having kids changed my point of view. We needed to decide to grow the business or be with the kids. The business grew too large to do at home. We ended up needing childcare when the whole point of having a home-based business was to avoid having childcare. We would have to have someone to keep the kids while we supervised and it was just too much. I stopped when my daughter was about one and a half years old. At first when I stopped, I missed work and didn’t have a lot to think about. Then we moved and that kept me busy, then I became a volunteer building a community social structure for us, and there are many stay-at-home moms in the community now. I am glad I was an entrepreneur. It was helpful to do everything in a business and good experience for my resume. I could go back to management now [2007] without skipping a beat, but I don’t want to go back. When I say I might go back, my daughter says ‘no mommy, don’t go back to work’. Maybe in ten more years I might do some part-time work just to do something on my own. Now I’m doing lots of volunteer work. I tend to take on too much; helping out in my children’s activities six hours a week and helping out in community organizations 30 hours a week. I hope for a balance in the future.

Another Entrepreneur who Became a Homemaker Marless grew up with one younger sister. Her mother worked some times as a secretary and later worked with her father in a family jewelry business and Marless believed her mother was frustrated so wanted to develop her own career skills. In college, Marless did not have a definite opinion about whether or not she would work following childbirth. After college she took a job as a writer for a year then worked as a financial analyst for a year before returning to graduate school. In 1988, Marless got her MBA, a job in marketing and got married. She reported in Phase II: I expect that my feelings and priorities will change dramatically once we decide to start our family. The major factors will be whether both of us feel I should stay home just because it seems like the right thing to do, whether we can both live on one income, and whether we are near family and relatives, that is, grandparents who can act as a supportive childcare network.

In 1992, Marless had her first child, taking 12 weeks of maternity leave before leaving her child in family daycare. The family moved in 1994 and she had her second child in 1995.


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Marless stopped full-time work in 1994, and set herself up as a selfemployed part-time marketing consultant. She had her third child in 1999. She then closed her consulting business in 2001 when the family moved again and since then Marless has became a full-time homemaker. At the time of our first child, we decided we didn’t want two childcare providers, one for day and the other for the night so we decided he [my husband] would be the major wage earner and I would be the primary childcare taker. Later we used an au pair. As for my career, I did not want to learn any new skills. I worked as long as I could trade off time for money part-time as a consultant then I stopped. At the time of our third child, we were older, he was traveling a lot, we decided to have a last child. It became clear it was just too much. We were moving to the Midwest, not near any major metropolitan area. I could not prospect new customers, and [my husband] made enough money so I didn’t have to work. I lost my skills, my contacts, and my future possibilities. Now I think I might like some sort of a flexible job in the future, franchising or consulting or perhaps catalog work. The schedule must match my family’s needs.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION Those who chose to try entrepreneurship as a part of their career included some women who used it as a way to be continuously employed in an occupation they were committed to, but more often, it was an alternative that fit in with their husbands, their children, and other family concerns. Because the women in this chapter include both those strongly committed to their work and those strongly committed to their family lives, the group was not significantly different from other groups in most areas and all of the following differences may have occurred by chance, but many factors are different from other groups in ways that fit other information about this group and so are reported here (see Appendix B for data). When they were in college, unlike the part-time career women, this group created future plans for their careers and their childrearing that looked farther into the future (M = 4.5 compared to M > 3.5 on a scale of 1–5, p > 0.5) In Phase II, members of this group were average (M = 3.30 in a 1–5 scale) in their preferences for working following childbirth but not significantly different from any other group. This group was significantly less likely than others to believe that if it worked the members would make extra income and differed from the career women in their estimation that they would have enough time for their children if they were employed following childbirth. Unlike the homemakers, however, and similar to full-time and part-time career women, they were more likely to believe that their mothers and their husbands would approve of employed mothers. Like the homemakers, many in this group of women obtained a Master’s

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degree (40 percent). Women in the entrepreneurship group worked an average of 44 hours per week in the jobs they held before the birth of their first child and worked an average of 31 hours per week in the positions they held after this childbirth. Like the career women, many of these women (50 percent) had one or no children. They took an average of one year maternity leave after their first child and, if they had a second child, took an average maternity leave of two years after their second child, a pattern similar to those with part-time careers. In the Phase III mailed surveys, the entrepreneurs’ responses of the probability if they worked following childbirth of having enough time for their husbands, like the homemakers, was lower than the full-time and part-time career women and their responses about having enough time for themselves were intermediate between estimates of career women and homemakers. Similar to part-time career women, the entrepreneurs averaged 7.27 years of full-time work between college and Phase IV, three years more than homemakers but ten years less than full-time career women. Their personal income at the time of the Phase IV interviews was significantly lower than that of the career women and the income of their spouses was less than the spousal income of the homemakers, but not of other groups. The average number of hours worked in their current jobs by members of the entrepreneur group in 2007 was 33 hours per week but 21 percent were following a career as a homemaker at this time. In sum, there seem to be different patterns to the career and homemaking choices of the self-employed women in this chapter. One group of entrepreneurs saw their occupation as having a career where they could be selfemployed, whether as an artist, physician, social worker, or consultant. In each of these cases, the women had significant obstacles in their personal lives but persisted as self-employed professional women. A slightly different plan was adopted by the second group of women who joined their husbands to form a family-run business, often when one of the partners became unemployed or disabled. For these women, like those in the first group, their business provided substantial family income but in this case, was more often a business choice strongly influenced by the preferences of their spouse. Another group used self-employment as one alternative to combine employment and homemaking when they had their husband’s income to supplement their own. This group seemed to value having time for childcare, but also wanted or needed to work for income and self-fulfillment. They could rely to some extent on a spouse’s income while they moved from one sphere to another as career opportunities and childcare responsibilities changed. The fourth group started a home business in childcare specifically to be able to create an income while caring for their own and other people’s children. For these women, their business provided the best of both worlds – an


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income and childcare at the same time. These women were similar to the last group of two women who wanted to be homemakers, started a business that was not successful and returned to their homemaking careers as their first choice. In most cases, entrepreneurship was seen as a possible flexible alternative to being an employee outside the home. This expectation of more flexibility and more time with children did not seem to work well for the majority of women, however, because unless their business was itself childcare, they ended up needing to find other childcare arrangements in order to take care of their business, just as they would have if they had worked for another employer. The entrepreneurs were concerned about losing the security of a full-time job as well as the stability of health insurance and retirement savings plans. Those who remained in self-employment or entrepreneurship careers after their children were young were members of a family business or professional women who chose their occupation as their business rather than choosing entrepreneurship as a primary way to combine childcare with employment. Those women who used it as a work–life balancing mechanism returned to employment or homemaker status depending upon financial need and personal preference.

PART III

Conclusions and lessons

7. What lessons have we learned? If we look at the experiences of one group of graduates from two Northeastern US state universities reported between their final days in college in the early 1980s and the middle of their lives in 2006–07, we can begin to answer some of the questions posed in the introduction about how women in the last quarter of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century navigated their lives between college and middle-age. In this study the women answered written questionnaires for Phase I when they were college students in the early 1980s. They responded again to written questionnaires for Phase II in 1990–91 and for Phase III in 2000–01, and then participated in personal or telephone interviews for Phase IV in 2006–07 that looked back over the whole time period.

SUMMARIES OF EACH GROUP The women were divided into four groups based on different life patterns: fulltime career women who had never left the labor force for three years or more, part-time career women who had worked in a part-time capacity for three years or more, homemakers who had left the labor force completely for three or more years, and entrepreneurs and self-employed business women who had pursued these options for three or more years. The individual chapters in Part II used open-ended questions from all three written questionnaires as well as the women’s responses to the Phase IV interviews to present representative life stories of a variety of career and family situations. At the end of each of these chapters a summary identifies common experiences of each particular group of women and highlights significant differences between the four groups of women studied. The statistical mean difference data used for these summaries are located in Appendix B. There are only a few statistically significant differences, in part because the Phase IV groups are small. The direction of mean differences with significant ANOVAs (Analysis of Variance) for group differences are identified in each chapter even if the mean difference is not large enough to be statistically significant. This chapter will not repeat the summaries of the statistical and qualitative data found at the end of each chapter but will focus on general descriptions of each group. For more specific group differences, see the individual chapters and Appendix B. 127

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Career Women The most common path chosen by the women in this study (30 women out of 72, and more than twice as many as any other choice), was to be employed full-time, taking less than a total of three years of employment leave for homemaking responsibilities. This group of women includes those who had to support themselves because they never married or were divorced as well as those who were married and remained in the labor force continuously. The women who chose this path faced many challenges including finding good childcare and finding interesting positions with enough flexibility to enable them to fulfill both employment and family roles in ways that satisfied them. According to the group average ratings, they also remain confident that they have been able to create professional lives that provided income for their families as well as provided attention to their children when needed. The career women have received support from spouses, bosses, parents, and other relatives, as well as paid help, that made all this possible but they also have reduced their family size, married later, and had their children later. In some cases career plans influenced these delays, but in other cases, more time was spent in an employed career because some participants did not meet the right partner till later in their lives or did not have children until later in their lives because of fertility problems. Some career women faced obstacles of unsupportive bosses and family, or infertility problems but they used emotional support, financial resources, and their own problem-solving skills to overcome these barriers and they achieved higher status and greater personal income than women in the other groups. For those who had no children of their own, substantial caretaking responsibilities for stepchildren, foster children, debilitated parents, and other ill family members meant that all members of this group had family role demands as well as employer role demands that both conflicted and enriched their lives. Part-time Employed Women The group of 11 women who chose part-time employment careers for three or more years of their lives as a middle way between a life course as a full-time career woman and a life course as a full-time homemaker were in the middle in most of the other aspects of their responses as well. There were other women who were homemakers or entrepreneurs for longer parts of their lives and also may have held part-time jobs for short periods of time but the women reported in this chapter chose part-time careers as their major strategy for combining family and employment roles. These women had one special characteristic that points to one of the advantages of this life choice: they were more likely than other participants to believe that they would have enough

What lessons have we learned?

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time for everyone in their lives, including themselves. They also believed that this choice provided a balance of income, mental stimulation, and opportunities for time with their families. Like some women in each of the other groups, about half of this group chose to change occupations, some because they wanted childcare flexibility, but others because they believed that their first career option did not fit them as well as an alternative. The women who believed they would have full-time careers when they were in college who became part-time employees sometime during their childrearing years all returned to full-time employment as their children grew older. Most of the other women remained in part-time positions. Homemakers The 15 women who became homemakers for three or more years in their lives had larger families earlier than all others, even if when in college, many of these women thought they were going to have continuous employed careers. Many homemaking women were supported in their choices by their mothers and husbands who believed that women should stay at home after childbirth and, in contrast to women in other groups, participants who chose this alternative often were committed to beliefs that children’s lives were enhanced by maternal caretaking or that children possibly might be harmed if they were not taken care of by a mother who did not work outside the home or that they themselves could not effectively balance both employment and caretaking roles. The homemakers did believe their husbands faced additional pressures due to becoming the sole family wage earner when the women did not return to work after childbirth, and the husbands did earn larger incomes in this group compared to other groups. The causality seemed to go in different directions for different couples. Some women said that because their husbands made a good income they could afford to stay home and other women reported that because they stayed home their husbands were forced to think more about wage-earning responsibilities. The women who had been out of the labor force for long periods of time sometimes expressed an interest in returning to paid work that was balanced by an anxiety that their skills were so rusty they did not think this was a rational possibility. Other women did find jobs, mostly part-time, that enabled them to re-enter the labor force after their children grew older. Self-employed and Entrepreneurial Women The 16 women who were self-employed or entrepreneurs in this study could have been divided into the full-time or part-time career women and homemaker

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chapters, but so many contemporary women think about escaping the demands of large, inflexible employers to create a work environment that would be family friendly, that it seemed important to highlight the real experiences of women who actually tried this alternative. There were only a few significant differences between this group and the other groups and they did not fall into a consistent pattern. Only about half of these women actually were able to make significant contributions to family income by becoming self-employed or entrepreneurs and some of these women had entered a business with their husbands, often not a business of their own choice. The entrepreneurs also discovered that they needed to find childcare in order to do their business just as they would have to if they were working for others. The women gained some flexibility, but this alternative did not result in freedom from childcare worries and in fact added new worries about how to pay for health insurance and retirement savings. For the group of entrepreneurs who started childcare businesses in their homes, being close to their children was a goal of equal importance to that of contributing to the family income. In describing the different groups of women, one might notice that some women were and some women were not consistent in their behavior compared to their college plans when it came to actual life choices about staying home or returning to the workplace following childbirth. Next, we describe how these women’s beliefs and norms about working following childbirth changed across the first 20 years of the study. The discussion that follows looks at how many women changed their behavior after college plans and what factors they reported as influential in their decisions about how to combine employment and childrearing.

CHANGING BELIEFS AND NORMS: PHASE I TO PHASE III One of the most important questions posed in Chapter 1 was how women’s opinions about employment following childbirth would change as they gained work experience and as they became mothers. The change in reported beliefs and norms across the time period might be caused by real change in the person, by change in the surrounding culture, by change in the measurement process, or by artifacts of sample attrition. In Chapter 1 we introduced relevant cultural changes and described what kind of sample attrition has occurred across the phases of the study that might be related to perceived changes. In particular we have fewer women who believed in college that they were going to become homemakers after childbirth who responded to later questionnaires and we have fewer African-American women who responded to later phases. These factors must be taken into account as we summarize changes in


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responses to a core set of questions where the content and process of questioning did not change from Phase I to Phase III. In Phase I we asked many questions about plans, in Phase II we asked many questions about employers and childcare, and in Phase III we asked new questions about entrepreneurship, but all three phases asked one set of structured questions about beliefs of the consequences of staying at home or going to work outside of the house after childbirth and about the impact of significant others’ norms on their own decisions. This set of questions was based on a particular theoretical model that proposed that attitudes, norms, and experience would influence the respondents’ intentions and actions.1 Questionnaires for Phase I and Phase II were published in the appendix of the previous book reporting some results from Phase I and Phase II of this study.2 The exact questions and responses used for comparison of all three phases are stated in the Phase III questionnaire in Appendix A of this book. The statistical comparisons between Phases I, II, and III are in Table B.1 through Table B 6. The first set of tables (B.1, B.2, and B.3) includes every respondent available in Phases I, II, and III. The second set of tables (B.4, B.5, and B.6) include the responses for all three phases of only those who responded to Phase IV, a smaller sample so fewer differences are statistically significant, but the actual longitudinal group. The third set of tables (B.7, B.8, and B.9), identify mean differences between groups for each phase from those who responded in Phase IV. In this last group of tables, only statistically significantly different means are given for Phase I and Phase II and all means are given for Phase III to indicate items and direction of differences that were and were not statistically significant. Data for non-statistically significant means from Phase I and Phase II are available from the author. The following information is a summary of the findings of how the beliefs and norms changed across the years of this study when women were asked the same questions in the same way but the responses must be interpreted with caution given the limitations of the sample attrition. First, the women were asked their beliefs about what would happen if they were employed within three years after the birth of their first child. The most striking changes in beliefs occurred when the women were college students compared to their beliefs once they entered the workforce and began having family responsibilities. Thus, the comparisons between different phases will use Phase I college responses as the baseline. Changes in beliefs between one and two decades after college were less striking but are clearly labeled in Appendix B and mentioned here when appropriate. • Phase I college women and Phase II young professionals and homemakers believed they would advance their careers if they remained in the labor force but this belief declined somewhat by Phase III when the women were approaching their forties.

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• In Phase I, college women were more likely to believe their children might suffer if they worked than they believed after college in Phase II. • In Phase I, college women were more likely to believe they would have enough time for their families and themselves if they worked, than they believed in Phase II and Phase III. • In Phase I, college women believed they were less likely to feel guilty, resentful, and tired if they worked than they believed in Phase II and Phase III after most had been employed. • In Phase I, college women were more likely to believe their husbands would help them if they worked than they believed in Phase II and Phase III when the majority had experienced real life with husbands. Second, the women were asked about what would happen if they stayed at home for the first three years after the birth of their first child. • In Phase I, college women were more likely to believe their children would benefit if they stayed home than they believed in both Phase II and Phase III. • In Phase I, college women were less likely to believe they would feel guilty, resentful, tired or bored if they stayed home than after they had more experience with housework and childcare in Phase II and Phase III. • In Phase I, college women believed they were more likely to be able to maintain an adequate income and good career skills, and have enough time if they did not work than they believed later in both Phase II and Phase III. • Perhaps as a result of more children or of downsizing in the workplace, they believed they would have even less time for themselves whether working or not in Phase III than they believed in Phase II. Third, the women were asked who would approve of them returning to paid employment within three years following the birth of their first child: • In Phase I, college women were less likely to believe that their parents would approve of working following childbirth than they believed in Phase II and Phase III. • In Phase I, college women were more likely to believe that their bosses would approve of their employment than they did in Phase III after real experiences confronting bosses. • Estimates of approval of spouses, friends, and co-workers were relatively stable.


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In part these changes are due to the different experiences that women have had in the work place and at home that have changed their beliefs about the consequences of being a homemaker or an employed mother. For example, economists suggest that as the wage gender gap decreases and the cost of childcare relative to wages also decreases, more women will enter the labor force and this change in women’s experiences may change their perception of the consequences of remaining in the labor force following childbirth.3 The changes in perceptions of the beliefs of parents and supervisors may be due to changes in opinions of the significant other or change in perceptions of the women themselves. Stewart and Healy (1989) have suggested that different cohorts may respond to social change in different ways depending upon their age at the time of the social change events.4 Adolescents may incorporate the social changes into their newly forming sense of identity, whereas adults might be less open to major changes in the ways they see themselves. Both the women in this study and their parents have lived through the change in gender role norms and behavior of the 1970s and 1980s, the women as late adolescents and their parents as adults. One possible explanation for the relationship between social changes that occurred during Phase I and Phase II and the larger number of women who shifted from their intention to become homemakers to the behavior of remaining in the labor force after childbirth is the effect of the change in external norms on their sense of self. The next section identifies the changes between college beliefs and later behavior.

CONSISTENCY AND CHANGE IN LIFE CHOICES BETWEEN COLLEGE AND MID-LIFE The one question that was raised in this study was ‘how would women’s behavior match or differ from their college plans and intentions?’ We now have an answer to this question from the women we followed through all four phases of the study, always remembering that those who dropped out of the study might have made different choices. When the women were in college we asked them how likely they were to be employed outside the home for ten or more hours per week during the first three years after the birth of their first child. In Table 7.1, Part A, we use the same Phase I definition to divide women into four groups based on them working or not working more than ten hours per week during the first three years after the birth of their first child. We found 31 women out of 69 (almost 45 percent) who were careerists in both their college beliefs and their later working lives following childbirth, four women (5.8 percent) who said they would be homemakers in college and were homemakers in behavior, 16 women (23.2 percent) were found to be breadwinners, who believed they would be homemakers in college but returned to

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work for more than ten hours per week within three years after their first child was born, and four women were nesters, who believed they would work in college and did not after the birth of their first child. Of the 14 women who were undecided in college (selected three in a scale from one to five), ten were employed (14.5 percent of the total) and four were not employed during the first three years following the birth of their first child. The Chi-square test of significant differences did not reveal a significant relationship between college plans and later actions, but the relationship is not random; more women in this study followed the social trend that began in the 1990s, that is of working following childbirth rather than staying at home. The changing economic forces and social norms clearly worked to favor employment over homemaking, but the sample in Phase IV lost more women who said in college that they wanted to be homemakers than women who said they wanted to be career women, so the sample attrition also affects how we can interpret these data. Table 7.1 Part B displays the same Phase I college intentions data compared to behavior of the groups used in Phase IV analysis as represented by the different chapters in this book. In this case part-time workers and entrepreneurs were separated from full-time employees and the entire timespan since college was included in calculating whether or not they stayed out of the labor force for three or more years, rather than looking at just the first three years following the birth of the first child. Of the 35 women who thought in college that they would have continuous careers, 18 women (about one sixth) were employed full-time, seven women became entrepreneurs, four women were employed part-time, and six women (about one sixth) became homemakers. Of the 20 women who believed in college that they would become homemakers, eight became full-time career women, four became part-time career women, four women became homemakers, and four women became entrepreneurs, although most would want to categorize these entrepreneurs as homemakers to join the four women who maintained their beliefs since these entrepreneurs opened some form of day care in their homes. The same caveat about sample attrition applies to this interpretation as the one above referring to Table 7.1 Part A, the Phase IV sample under-represents those who believed in college that they would become homemakers. If we look more broadly at what the women themselves say about what happened as time changed we can get a clearer sense of the change processes. When we look at the interview data of Phase IV we know that these accounts are influenced by the subjective experience and memory shifts that come with remembering past experience and attempting to confirm one’s present reality. However, in this case, we also have qualitative data collected at intermediate time points that may help to clarify what happened and what women’s opinions were close to the time of their first childbirth.5


Table 7.1

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Comparison of Phase I intentions and later behavior

Part A Phase I belief Careerist

Phase IV behavior* Homemaker

Total

Unlikely to work after childbirth count row % column % % of total

16.00 80.00 28.00 23.20

4.00 20.00 33.30 5.80

20.00 100.00 29.00 29.00

Uncertain count row % column % % of total

10.00 71.40 17.50 14.50

4.00 28.60 33.30 5.80

14.00 100.00 20.30 20.30

Likely to work after childbirth count row % column % % of total

31.00 88.60 54.40 44.90

4.00 11.40 33.30 5.80

35.00 100.00 50.70 50.70

57.00 82.60 100.00 82.60

12.00 17.40 100.00 17.40

69.00 100.00 100.00 100.00

df 2.00

Sig. 0.34

N = 69

Total count row % column % % of total Pearson chi-square 2.17 Note:

* as defined in Phase I.

When we asked the women what influenced their decisions about working following childbirth, their answers supported the previous literature: their individual values, developed by watching how their mother’s lives had turned out had a persistent impact, some mothers influencing their daughters to follow in

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Table 7.1

Comparison of Phase I intentions and later behavior

Part B Phase I belief

Phase IV behavior** FT career PT career Homemaker Entrepreneur Total

Unlikely to work after childbirth count row % column % % of total

8.00 40.00 26.70 11.60

4.00 20.00 40.00 5.80

4.00 20.00 26.70 5.80

4.00 20.00 28.60 5.80

20.00 100.00 29.00 29.00

Uncertain count row % column % % of total

4.00 28.60 13.30 5.80

2.00 14.30 20.00 2.90

5.00 35.70 33.30 7.20

3.00 21.40 21.40 4.30

14.00 100.00 20.30 20.30

Likely to work after childbirth count row % column % % of total

18.00 51.40 60.00 26.10

4.00 11.40 40.00 5.80

6.00 17.10 40.00 8.70

7.00 20.00 50.00 10.10

35.00 100.00 50.70 50.70

30.00 43.50 100.00 43.50

10.00 14.50 100.00 14.50

15.00 21.70 100.00 21.70

14.00 20.30 100.00 20.30

69.00 100.00 100.00 100.00

df 6.00

sig. 0.74

Total count row % column % % of total Pearson chi-square Note:

3.56

N=69

* as used in Phase IV.

their footsteps, others influencing their daughters to try another alternative. The choice of whether or not to follow their mothers’ example seemed to be based on the daughters’ interpretation of their own experiences as children as well as the effects their mothers’ choices had on their mothers’ welfare. The support


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of the women’s spouses, the desirability of employment options available to them, and their beliefs about what would be best for their children also were key factors that most women took into consideration. These common factors did not influence every choice equally, however. Beliefs that children would be harmed by daycare was a very strong deciding factor for women who chose to stay home for long periods of their adulthood. Unsupportive bosses, spouse preferences, and flexible or inflexible organizational policies, were more likely to provide a push away from college intentions of continuous careers toward behavioral choices of a parttime career or entrepreneurship; and for those who chose entrepreneurship they also mentioned financial concerns as a reason for this choice. Supportive bosses and spouses, challenging, fun jobs, as well as unexpected income needs, were the most influential factors for women whose college intentions were to become homemakers but who ended up working full-time or part-time after childbirth. Individual preferences for a career outside the home and the need to financially support oneself or one’s family were key factors of pushing women towards a choice of a continuous career. However, concerns related to husbands’ careers, health, or job loss, the welfare of their children, and positive characteristics of their jobs, were also important considerations, and were mentioned about equally when women were discussing their choice to remain in the labor force continuously. The qualitative stories did support the quantitative data that the perceived consequences of each alternative did influence the women’s choices, as predicted by the various subjective expected utility models of rational decision-making. However, the overriding importance of some consequences over others, as well as the qualitative stories, indicated that women clearly focused on only one or two important decision factors rather than all possible consequences of each choice. This form of decision-making supported a decision rule perspective influenced by gender norms and common social beliefs about appropriate roles for mothers and appropriate caretaking for children.6 The role of supportive or unsupportive supervisors and organizations was a particularly strong force among those women who changed their minds between college and childbearing. Women who stayed in the labor force, when not believing they would initially, found their jobs to be better than they ever expected. A few women also changed their minds because they never married or never had children. Those women who left the labor force after childbirth, even though they thought they wanted full-time careers, often did so because they experienced more difficult and inflexible work settings with fewer financial and personal rewards than they had expected, and a less common reason given for why the women left the labor force was because they had families that demanded their full-time attention.

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FUTURE PLANS One of the questions posed in Chapter 1 was how these mid-life women see their future as their children leave their homes and they face the challenges and joys of middle age. When we asked the women about their future plans for family, work, and other aspects of life, during the next decade after the Phase IV interviews, by far the most common response was to watch their children grow or to see their children through college (65 out of 174 total comments from 72 women about their future). This was an equally popular response from every group. The next most common aspiration for 22 out of 72 women was to get a new job or to change jobs, and this was especially true for homemakers (ten out of 42 homemaker comments). The third most popular future dream for 15 out of 72 women was to do more travel and this was more commonly mentioned by full-time and part-time career women (seven out of 70 and four out of 29 comments respectively). There were five full-time career women, three part-time career women and four entrepreneurs who are looking forward to ending their employment careers or retiring within the next decade, and about the same number want to spend more time with and get closer to their husbands or children and continue on with their current positions. By contrast some women are just getting started: four women look forward to having a child, one wants to get married, and seven want to get more education. Nine women mentioned doing more volunteer and service work particularly homemakers (four out of 42 total homemaker comments). The remaining comments are distributed across multiple activities: enjoy vacations or leisure (nine comments) stay healthy (eight comments), remodel the house (four comments), relocate (three comments), and save money for retirement and their children’s college (three comments). In comparing the answers across the groups, it appears that those who have been working are more interested in leisure and family activities whereas those who have been at home are thinking more about re-entering the labor force or community service activities outside the home.

IMPLICATIONS FOR WOMEN Lessons for College Women When we compare the answers that the women gave in Phase I when they were in college, to the experiences of their lives in Phases II, III, and IV, probably the most obvious lesson for college women to learn is to plan for life to be changeable. One of the most pervasive of human decision-making fallacies is the biased optimistic belief that ‘bad things will be more likely to happen to


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other people and good things will be more likely to happen to me’. There are good self-preservation reasons to ignore painful facts until forced to pay attention. In the face of the good and bad experiences of the study participants, preparing to be flexible in hopes and aspirations, and preparing for more than one alternative future, might be a realistic and helpful thing to do. In particular, preparing to be able to contribute paid income to support yourself and possibly your family really is the good insurance that many parents try to tell their teenage daughters. In thinking about future plans, there were some systematically incorrect beliefs young women might want to take into account when thinking about the future. Of course today’s college students might be more sophisticated than the students of 25 or 30 years ago, however, the common biases of ignoring negative information and information that contradicts one’s own beliefs might suggest that these beliefs have not entirely disappeared from today’s college student minds. When comparing their beliefs about what life would be like if they were employed or were not employed following childbirth to women who have had these experiences, college women: • Under estimate their ability to maintain career skills, maintain an adequate family income, have enough time, especially for themselves, and meet their child’s needs if they plan to stay home after childbirth. • Under estimate their ability to get their spouse to help them and their ability to stay close to their child if they plan to work after childbirth. • Over estimate their ability to stay close to their spouse, to advance in their careers and to have enough time, especially for themselves, if they plan to work following childbirth. If there is any opportunity to get college students to incorporate new information into their future plans, these biases might be a good place to start. Lessons for Counselors and Advisors of College Women Faculty, counselors, and parents who work with college women when they are trying to prepare for their future would do well to encourage students to make back-up plans as well as to take common student biases into account. It appears that neither alternative is as rosy in reality as college students who value that alternative expect it to be and the other choice is also not as filled with bad consequences as they expected. Since many women end up living lives they never expected, those working with college women might want to discourage dogmatism in seeing any of the many alternatives as all good or all bad. Encouraging and supporting college women to gain self-esteem and selfrespect also seems particularly important. Many mid-life women are spending

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time on the needs of everyone but themselves, which suggests that we need to encourage more young women to believe that they are as important as other people in their family and work settings. Support early in their lives that leads to less self-sacrifice could very well lay the groundwork for future positive mental and physical health, as well as time management that includes time to meet their own needs.7 Lessons for Women in Post-college Years We can use the experiences the women reported in Phase II and Phase III to clarify some of the benefits and costs of each option these women chose. The findings that provide some lessons can be summarized in work and family domains. In the workplace: • There was a wide variation among women in the extent to which they found flexible organizational policies and supportive supervisors who made combining employment and family responsibilities easier or more difficult. • It was rare to find conflict reducing and positive opportunities for job sharing, or a part-time position with upward mobility, or telecommuting options for working from home. • If upward mobility and increased pay were not primary goals for remaining in the workplace, some women found part-time positions that provided mental stimulation, challenge, and variety in their lives that they valued highly as long-term career alternatives. • Many women changed occupations to education, nursing, and other traditional female jobs as post-childbirth career choices, because these occupations presented flexible schedules that the older women valued more than they did during college when they were thinking about careers more in terms of pay and prestige. • Many women found career advancement to be harder than they anticipated and slower as time passed as they got higher up in organizations. • Entrepreneurial careers for women seemed to occur more often in response to spousal, childcare or financial needs rather than from a particular motivation to innovate as a career choice. The primary lesson adult women might learn from these findings is that if a woman wants an employee career, she needs to be very proactive to locate an employment situation that suits her personal values and multiple role needs, because challenging jobs with flexibility and supportive supervisors are not common. In many cases women were disappointed in their first attempt at


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seeking work–family trade-offs and had to make more than one job change to find a position that fitted in with their needs. While some women clearly stated that they ‘fell into’ a job opportunity or accidentally got pregnant, the women who said they were satisfied with their lives were able to transform these unexpected occurrences into an individual family and employment situation that fitted their needs in ways that they and others did not anticipate. Some women in the study were able to go to the top of their profession and others were able to carve out part-time professional jobs or stay at home and create paid work in childcare, but in each case, it took assertive individual problem-solving to locate and/or create the desired alternative. Other women expressed long-term regret for giving up salary, prestige, and advancement possibilities when they believed they needed to change jobs or leave the labor force due to work–family role conflict. One lesson for women might be to pay attention to this regret and persist in searching for a position that fits their family and professional lives even if that search may be long and filled with roadblocks. Another possible lesson is that the role of consulting may be a difficult but possible entrepreneurial alternative to employers who lack flexibility. The present gender-neutral post-childbirth alternative for women with professional skills who want a flexible schedule as well as the prestige and income due them, seems to be entrepreneurship, especially in consulting.8 This alternative does not offer freedom from finding someone else to care for children and does require specific entrepreneurial skills, financial resources, and acumen in addition to professional service skills in order to sustain the option of entrepreneurship as a viable, income-producing alternative. This route is perilous, since more women gave up this alternative than persisted in it as a long-term career option. A final workplace lesson for women is to consider seriously the trade offs between the costs and the benefits of part-time employment. The benefits are increased flexibility and time with family as well as the potential to maintain career skills and contacts if a return to full-time work is needed or desired when children are more mature or in the event of financial need. The costs of this alternative are reduced income and greatly reduced chances for future advancement and pay increases. The women who chose this option reported great satisfaction with family and work aspects of their lives in Phase IV, however, they also reported more negative than positive emotions at the time when they were actually faced with a new baby and a part-time job. This seems to be a very desirable option for those who value a balanced life, but might be a disappointing choice for women who strongly value career advancement or income. In the family domain here are some findings that also provoke thought for adult women:

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• Becoming a mother is exciting and happy as well as scary, exhausting, and lonely. • Husbands have a very strong influence on women’s work–family choices and opportunities, often involuntarily because of their own health and job transfer or travel constraints, sometimes voluntarily because of conflicting gender-role normative beliefs. • In spite of many dispersed nuclear families today, mothers, fathers, and in-laws provide more support than any other people when women have multiple roles to fulfill or when women do not want to leave their children in commercial daycare. • Single women and women who are not mothers have significant family responsibilities to care for parents, siblings, and other people’s children as stepmothers, foster mothers, and aunts. • A strong belief still exists for some women that deprivation of maternal care will harm children, especially when they are young; other women believe just the opposite. When we see the many reports of positive as well as negative emotional responses to becoming a mother, a clear lesson emerges about a new mother’s need for adult companionship, someone to talk to and someone to provide emotional support. The US society is full of images and stories of the joys of motherhood, and the news contains occasional reports of dramatic reactions to postpartum depression, but there is little public acknowledgment of the common middle-ground experience of both strong positive and strong negative emotion accompanying motherhood that was felt by members of every group in this study. While there is some empirical evidence that negative aspects of well-being are common when women have very young children at home, these scientific findings are not well known among the general population. The good news is that emotions seem to become more positive among women with older children, but this is also not widely known.9 Even in the face of mixed positive and negative emotions surrounding the first year of motherhood, one important lesson for some women is that a very satisfying career can be created as a homemaker if a supportive partner makes sufficient income and if this life choice fits the values of both partners. In today’s common normative expectation that both mothers and fathers are employed, it may be a difficult choice for women to decide to select this option in the face of common social norms to work and in the face of scary economic times that puts pressure on most family incomes. The one caution to this lifestyle choice is that women who choose a full-time homemaker career must accept the possibility that later in their lives they may need to return to the workforce if unexpected illness or death of their spouse occurs and their ability to earn money will have decreased relative to the length of time they have


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stayed out of the labor force.10 Another caution to emphasize is that the simple presence or absence of a mother is not a key deciding factor in child welfare. Women who might feel guilty about choosing to stay at home or not stay at home because they believe it will be better for their children, might need to learn about the wide variety of factors that seem to moderate any relationship between child welfare and maternal employment.11 One other important lesson of family dynamics that we can learn from these data is the need to think carefully, not only about how compatible a husband and wife might be personally, but also to take into consideration how compatible their two careers are as well. Most women seem to underestimate how large an impact their partner’s job relocations and job losses will have on their own choices for staying in or leaving the labor force. Thinking of a spouse not only as willing or unwilling to provide career support, but also as a potential source of difficult career relocations, is a conversation that may benefit many couples. An important intergenerational lesson to learn from these data is that mothers and mothers-in-law as well as some fathers and fathers-in-law can be important sources of emotional as well as practical childcare support in adult women’s lives. Not all family relationships are so cozy, not all women have living parents that they know, and today’s modern grandmothers are known for continuing their own careers and active lives, but parents were a surprisingly available source of support and childcare for women in this study. An important lesson here may be for young women to not burn their bridges completely as they surge into adult independence since the very parents women seek to separate themselves from as young adults may provide a strong source of practical help in resolving childcare problems later on. There seems to be another lesson that there are many different routes to create satisfying family and work lives for women who limit the number of their own children, by choice or due to medical or social deterrents. A few women have decided that their careers were too demanding and fulfilling to be able to combine childrearing and full-time employment and chose not to have any children. Many decided that a small family fit their personal preferences and career options best. Others are caring for foster children, stepchildren, adopted children, or children of their siblings who needed care. Some women have been able to have their own children through difficult fertility treatments and then given up promising employment careers to take care of multiple births that can arise from this option. The lesson seems to rest in the variety of options that women find viable, rather than a lesson that one way is better or more satisfying than another. A final lesson for homemakers as well as career women is the need to manage time in ways that leave time for themselves. By Phase III all women reported that they believed they would not have enough time for themselves,

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even if they were not employed. Women need to learn that they probably do not take enough time for themselves in their rush to be good caretakers of their spouses, their children, and their fellow employees. The gender norms do not seem to have relaxed for those socialized by multiple messages from multiple sources that women should be caretakers. It is an important lesson to learn that women need to take care of themselves as well as others.

IMPLICATIONS FOR HUSBANDS The primary finding about husbands from this study, and not a surprising one, is that spouses were the primary confidant of most women in this study and spouses had a large, but not the largest, impact on whether a woman decided to return to work or stay at home after childbirth. The largest impact seemed to come from the woman’s own beliefs and values about what was best for herself and her child. Examples both of spouses who wanted the participant to stay at home and of spouses who wanted the participant to go back to work against their wives’ opinions occurred in this study. If spouses disagreed on what should be done, some women took action and filed for divorce, others did as their partners wanted them to do, but a certain disappointment or regret was often evident even 20 years later among women who acted against their own post-childbirth wishes. Perhaps an important lesson to be learned here is for husbands not to underestimate the long-term costs of asking their spouses to make a life choice that they would really not prefer to make. A second lesson for husbands is that partners value very highly both practical help around the house and emotional support for the stresses that come with complicated dual family and employee roles. A universal finding across all groups, except those already married, was that college women expected more help around the house than they actually received. Men who give practical household support can earn unanticipated kudos and admiration from their wives that have at least a possibility of benefits later in life. The homemakers in the study expressed sympathy and emotional support for their husbands who faced the income earner role alone. These women were very sensitive to added stress that the loss of their income placed on their partners. Support from both partners for the other in either choice was an important factor in women reporting a satisfying family life.

IMPLICATIONS FOR EMPLOYERS The most important lesson that employers could learn from the women in this study is the enormous amount of influence employers have to keep good


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employees if they provide them with supportive supervisors and flexible policies that acknowledge their family needs. More women decided to maintain full-time careers than expected to when they were in college, but many women changed employers multiple times in order to find one who was supportive of their complex lives. Of course the individual values of the women, their husbands, and families predisposed some women to prefer paid employment outside the home and other women to prefer homemaking as a career. However, the balance of social trends and social norms as well as economic forces have tipped the scales in favor of continuous labor force participation for women. Employers who adopt a modern approach that assumes that both men and women have employee and family lives to integrate with the workplace system seem the most likely to benefit, if the women in this study are a fair example. Scholars agree with the career women in the study that offering flexibility is the way to keep valued employees as we move into the twentyfirst century.12 The predisposition of women to be employed does not mean that every employer is seen as equally desirable for those who balance childcare and employment. Some women in this study, contrary to stereotypes, were able to successfully balance travel, long hours, and highly demanding professional positions as long as they were able to count on the support of their bosses and spouses that made their complex lives possible. Other women left positions that had flexibility and good hours but were boring and offered no advancement potential for jobs with more responsibility even if the schedule or location of their new job was not as family-friendly as their old job. These women illustrate one important lesson – a very attractive job with challenge, status, and advancement potential will keep some women with personal career values on the job and they can and will find the means necessary to care for personal or family responsibilities. Another lesson that appears again and again in the interviews is that of the invaluable contribution supportive supervisors play in retaining valued employees who become parents. Even in instances where company policies did not provide alternatives that suited the family needs of some participants, there are repeated stories of supervisors suggesting innovative options that the women themselves had not envisioned or answering women’s requests with flexible responses that kept valued women in their jobs after childbirth. The contrary was also true – many women left their jobs when they became mothers precisely because they perceived their supervisors to be unsupportive of employed mothers and many found positions in other firms with more family friendly ways. It might be money well spent to include in the leadership training that most firms conduct, some attention to how to become effective leaders of parents of both genders. Another lesson for employers is an opportunity for organizations to make

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maximum use of the potential contribution of part-time employees. Some managers look at part-time employees as a cheap way to cut benefit costs; but a few others have been clever enough to realize the potential of having permanent part-time employees with the potential for growth and upward mobility, as the part-time employees increase in skill and responsibility they may want to return to full-time work. Over 20 percent of the women in this study had substantial part-time careers but most said that they had few opportunities for promotions or significant raises. The majority of these women did not leave to become full-time homemakers but a substantial proportion did leave their parttime job employers to find full-time positions in other firms when their children grew or their financial circumstances changed. An opportunity exists for firms to reduce turnover and information loss costs if they are willing to treat part-time workers more like full-time workers in terms of opportunities for advancement, then that might convince more women to remain with the firms that first offer them a part-time job with potential. The findings of this study, as well as other studies, suggest that women and men of different family stages might need different things from employers. Many young women craved challenge and advancement, and wanted to avoid boredom. When they marry, women may be concerned about good childcare for young children as well as maintaining a continued interest in advancement; mid-career women with families have more experience and financial resources and are more concerned in the family domain with attending school affairs and want to build an enriched life that balances career stability and advancement with flexible hours. Single men and women who may head a household with children may have even more concerns similar to those of married women and they are a significant percent of the work force today.13 While some organizations have tried to respond to the need for flexibility and childcare concerns, other organizations have been slow to institute structured career advancement and networking programs for women at both early and mid-career stages that have been successful in elevating women to the top levels and salaries of corporate America. Employers may need to attend to the family and employee balance issues of men and women through different demands according to the different ages of children and different family structures. Even in the face of difficult global competition, policies that allow flexitime, permit job sharing, support daycare, create a culture where women are valued, and honor and celebrate the family obligations of both fathers and mothers, can pay for themselves in the quality of retained, satisfied employees.

IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL SCIENTISTS There are different implications for social scientists based on different schools


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of thought. Looking at this study of women’s lives, we found that life stages were governed more by the entrance of partners and children into their lives, and movements into and out of the labor force rather than a straightforward progression of periods of stability and instability, such as those suggested by Levinson. Some women entered partnerships and motherhood the first year of Phase I of the study and some were just marrying and looking forward to having children at the time of the interviews in Phase IV, so a simple relationship between chronological age and life course was not influenced as much by physiology as by changes in workplace and family situations. Similar to the findings of mid-career women in other studies, while transitions were present, decades of women’s lives seem to follow a variety of patterns that did not fit one consistent model.14 Career stage and homemaker stage theories such as Super’s proposals of career phases of exploration, establishment, maintenance, and engagement, and Lopata’s family stages also did not well describe the process of the women’s lives as they moved among full-time, part-time, and homemaking choices of their lives at different times and among different women.15 The process theories seemed to be more applicable but each still had serious limitations. The proposals of Larwood and Gutek, that one must take into account the chronological age and market conditions, as well as the employment and family stages of a woman’s life, and Rapoport and Rapoport’s network helix model that attempts to describe the interaction of employment, family lives, and social change, seem much more promising than the theories that look at only one of these aspects of women’s adult lives. The strength of these proposals was the combination of social forces with individual development. The kaleidoscope theory, put forward by Mainiero and Sullivan, does seem to have particular relevance for those who value careers highly but the suggestions that women value different factors in different periods of their lives does not seem to apply well to the homemakers and entrepreneurs in this study. The influence of relationships proposed by the kaleidoscopic career process model was very evident in the stories of why women changed their plans but there was less clarity about whether or not the longitudinal shift across different phases of this study actually went from challenge to balance to authenticity as this model suggests.16 The career women were more likely to be focused on career challenges early in their lives and work–family balance in the middle of the study. In contrast, the homemakers, who valued their family relationships above a challenging career seemed to focus more on balance early in their lives and are just now seeking something more challenging to engage their middle years, in contrast to the kaleidoscope model suggestions. Some women were vocal about their search for authenticity in each phase of the study, but this attention did not seem to be confined to one particular phase or one particular group of women.

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The Han and Moen perspective seems to have the most promise among process theories for fitting the life stories of the women in this volume, in that it looks at the wife and husband and changes in work and family through time, but it does not seem to have been adopted for many studies in the last decade, perhaps because of its complexity. 17 Unfortunately, not enough husband data were collected for this model to be quantitatively applied to these data for a test of their propositions. The importance of including both members of a couple when trying to understand how family employment decisions are made seems consistent with the findings of this study. Boundaryless and protean career perspectives that emphasize individual choice and values as forces that guide employment careers and balance of employment and homemaking appear to be supported by some findings of this study.18 Those who valued homemaking and childcare made very different choices from those who valued personal achievement and monetary security as part of their definitions of career success. However, income needs and health of family members caused women to make choices that were not consistent with their core values and these career perspectives do not seem to give appropriate attention to the role of organizational policies and normative supportiveness, or criticism of individual supervisors, co-workers, and spouses, that also seemed to be very influential in the choices that these women made. The decision theories that identify the best overall positive consequences to women, their spouses, and their children as important factors which women actively consider in making life choices, did seem to provide useful directions for understanding the lives of women in this study. However, a process of maximizing utility as a way of describing the actual decision-making processes of the participants of this study did not fit the women’s thought patterns well. It was Fishbein and Ajzen’s rational expected utility model, or what they termed the theory of reasoned action, that was used when this work started. It formed a framework that served as useful for the whole course of the study, however, the subjective open-ended questions included in each written questionnaire and the final semi-structured interviews clearly revealed that all consequences were not attended to equally and this difference could not be captured simply by multiplying each consequence by its value. All normative referents were not equally important and the combining rules in decisionmaking were not additive. In other words, women used common sense in seeking what they believed was a set of consequences that was good for their families, but they were not ‘rational’ in the usual econometric sense. As gender-stereotypical and irrational as it might seem, women often justified their actions based on child welfare as they perceived it, even if to their own detriment. If any time was left over in their busy days, they would give it to


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their spouses, and most employed women and many housewives had insufficient time for themselves most days. This behavior can more easily be explained by social norms that value motherhood and female gender-identity norms that emphasize caring for others, than by any theory of rational decision-making, even one that tries to include normative influences and perceived long-term beneficial consequences to the self. Maximizing utility forms of decision-making make less sense as analytic tools in situations where there is a strong component of self-sacrifice when mothers think about child welfare.19 When we look at specific consequences that appear to influence women’s work–family choices and outcomes in past research and compare those findings to the empirical data and narratives in this study, we find much that is congruent and a few things that seem a bit different (see Chapter 2 for a review of past empirical findings). Careerists who advanced in their careers did have supportive supervisors, training and developmental opportunities, and individual motivation to succeed in the work sphere. In contrast to previous findings, women did not often directly mention mentors and informal networks as keys to their career success, but this could be as much because they were not asked directly about these factors rather than because they were not influential. Those who spent time out of the labor force either by working part-time or by taking extensive home leave did make less money and gain less advancement than women who had continuous careers. Although we did not measure actual time spent in specific activities in this study, based on reports of having or not having enough time for a spouse, a child, or housekeeping, women in this study did seem to support the idea that they were taking time away from their own leisure or homemaking tasks in order to be certain that their spouse and children received attention when they needed it. Those women employed part-time did experience the consequences often found in research – they had reduced opportunities for raises and promotions – but the women themselves did not always see a part-time position as a ‘dead end job’. For some women, these positions offered exactly what they wanted to achieve, a balanced work and family life. For others however, regrets about fewer opportunities to advance were expressed. This diversity of responses to the parttime work experience fits with the explorations of the differences between those who choose and those who are involuntarily thrust into part-time work.20 Women in this study did find barriers to advancement and pay as explored in the discrimination literature. Sometimes this discrimination occurred as a result of taking leave or part-time positions during childrearing, but in other instances gender discrimination on the job or policies that made employment strongly conflict with family responsibilities were responsible for lower levels of advancement and pay. As far as consequences for husbands, having an employed spouse did seem

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to be related to lower husband income, both because in some instances wives were working because their husbands were ill or unemployed. Also, some husbands of homemakers participated in the couple’s decision that he would be the primary income provider in the family and made career choices that would increase his own income to compensate for not having a second income in the family. There were not enough data about husbands compared to single men to identify whether or not being married and a father had an effect on husbands’ careers or income. Consequences for children as measured by perceptions and attitudes of employed and non-employed mothers in this study bore little relationship to empirical findings about actual consequences to children studied using empirical research.21 It was quite clear that congruence with individual career choices was a primary factor that was related to the women’s perceptions of positive or negative effects on children of maternal employment. The experience of women in this study was that their intentions did not well predict their future life course. Social changes and economic forces, as well as experiences at home and at work that did not match their college expectations, all served to divert these women from their youthful plans. It is true that most of the women’s plans were not specific, did not extend far into the future and contained few alternatives so it would be a mistake to conclude that plans are never related to behavior in any circumstances. Gender role expectations and changes in what was normatively expected of women as well as economic realities that increased needs for family income provided by two people were clear factors that diverted some women’s plans, particularly the plans of those who planned to stay home with their young children. The role theory perspective did fit the entire longitudinal data as well as if not better than adopting a decision-making perspective but it too had its limitations. For example, one outcome that might not have been expected given the social push in the 1970s and 1980s for women’s equality in the marketplace, is the significant number of women who stayed in the labor force by switching to occupations or positions that fitted the traditional gender role expectations for women and also offered flexible time schedules that fitted with the schedules of their children. This included the popularity of nursing and teaching in particular. Even some committed career women have selected to teach law and medicine rather than practice these professions as a way to be full-time professionals and be available to their families. There were multiple examples of role conflict and well as multiple examples of role enrichment in the lives of the study women, even though no particular question asked respondents to choose between these options. In the case of role conflict, most of the coping strategies reported in the literature were also used by the study women, with emphasis on sequential role enactment either day-by-day or year-by-year as well as coping by careful scheduling,


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giving up on perfection, and accepting help from all sources. The implication for scholars of evidence of both conflict and enrichment processes occurring may be that scientists must give up the dichotomous view of the world that fits statistical methods well, and look more carefully at the possibilities that both role conflict and role enrichment may be occurring simultaneously in most people’s lives as they balance work and family. It is up to scholars to identify complex analysis methods to fit this complex simultaneous process reality. Kossek and colleagues have synthesized many perspectives of role theory as they apply to integrating work and family roles. Their model includes most of the factors stated by respondents of this study. These authors propose a model that includes organizational antecedents such as formal work–family practices, and informal organizational work–family climate. This model also includes individual antecedents such as caregiving resources, living arrangements and caregiver demands; both of which lead to boundary management and role embracement as mechanisms for work–family role synthesis. The organizational antecedents and individual antecedents lead to fit between work–family strategy and organizational context, which predict work and family outcomes. The model outcomes include emotions and attitudes such as psychological distress and satisfaction at work and at home; quality of work, marital, leisure and family roles; organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Outcomes also include behaviors such as turnover, organizational citizenship, substance abuse, aggression or withdrawal.22 The factors that this model seems to omit include the role of social change in gender norms and supportiveness or lack of support of individual people at home and at work, that many of the women in this study said made their life choices possible. Theoretical work that focuses on understanding how people enact and balance multiple roles plus a focus on decision-making for specific events, such as the proposals of Powell and Greenhaus that integrate both of these mechanisms, may help scholars to understand the exact family decisionmaking dynamics in this domain more clearly than the subjective expected utility perspective of individual decision-making or more general role theories.23 Even so, this perspective omits the strong role of change in social norms about the acceptability of maternal employment that appears to be so influential in the lives of the women in this study.

FUTURE RESEARCH There are two types of future research that are apparent. First, it is possible to identify ideas for individual studies where obvious gaps in literature exist. Second, there is a need for serious integrative theory construction. Many studies mentioned in Chapter 2 have explored how adult family

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members spend their time and draw conclusions about how much practical help and emotional support spouses give to each other and how this support affects marital and life satisfaction and employment success. An additional area of study that might bear fruit is a more detailed examination of the role relocation of one or another spouse has, not just in the immediate disruption of the other spouse’s work life, but in its role in the broader context of life decisions about selecting a life pattern of part-time work, finding a new more flexible occupation, or selecting homemaking as an occupation that might otherwise not have been chosen. Another new area for research is to initiate a study of career success for work settings other than those of upward mobility professional settings. In particular, trying to identify how success is defined in the occupation of homemaker and among the many women who inhabit permanent part-time positions, might broaden that area of current research on career success. There seems room for much further academic exploration of the family lives and dual role demands of adult single or childless women. Some work has been done on dual career couples without children, and other research has looked at middle generation women who are caring for both children and parents while also filling employment roles, but scholars seem to have paid much less attention to the family roles of single women and women who have no children of their own and yet are caring for other people’s children. A final note for individual studies in the future is to recommend more studies that look at reciprocal causality and individual differences in direction of causality in the field of work and family research. There were several instances where causal directions seemed to go in different directions for different women. One example was the finding of the effect or cause of a woman becoming a homemaker as it related to her spouse’s income. For some couples the causal direction went one way, for other couples it went the other way. A similar situation seemed to occur between the number and timing of childbirths related to the amount of time women spent in the labor force. For some women they consciously limited the number of children and arranged the timing of their childbirths because of their commitment to full-time professional work, whereas for other women, the causal direction seemed to be reversed. An initial suggestion about what might moderate these relationships to the extent that it changes the direction of causality might include individual values or norms about maternal employment, but much more evidence will be needed to tease out exactly how this works. To move forward in explaining the life course of twenty-first century women, social scientists will have to break down the boundaries between disciplines. Some aspects of adult development, career theory, rational decision theory, role theory, and organizational theory each seemed to be relevant in trying to explain how the women in this study progressed through their


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lives. According to the narrative descriptions of the women in this study about the factors that influenced the longitudinal courses of their lives, an integrated theory would have to include at least each of the following: • individual value differences; • social norms of personal networks that change daily with new technology; • family dynamics that influence how couples make decisions and balance power and roles within the family; • work–family role conflict and role enrichment processes for all adults of a family; • organizational cultures and leaders with various degrees of supportive and flexible workplaces that facilitate integrated employment and family roles; • the range of national policies alternatives toward providing quality childcare; • social and economic trends that open and close occupational and job opportunities through time and geographic space; • epidemiological, genetic, and social forces that influence fertility, health, and death for all family members; and • the fickle finger of fate, luck, or random events that make all plans tentative at best. At present, it seems that each discipline mentioned in this list has some scholars who are looking at the ‘elephant’ in their own blind way, only partially aware of the findings of others in different disciplines even though a few have called upon integration of social context and individual life course for decades and others have used reviews to point out these very same gaps in existing research.24 A few intrepid scholars have ventured into this domain with proposals for alternate ways of looking at these issues, such as kaleidoscope careers, expansionist systems theory, and role synthesis models but although these efforts are integrative, they do not yet fully include all of the elements mentioned above.25 Until formal mechanisms exist to facilitate dialogue between different groups of scholars, the prospect of a unified theory of adult development for women seems an elusive goal. There remain many hints of areas for further study that seem to have been ignored in the general literature about how women combine these roles. One of the hopes of this study is that it will provide some guidance for the future to individual women, families, and organizations as well as scholars.

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NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

‘The theory of reasoned action’, in Fishbein, M. and I. Ajzen (1975), Belief, Attitude, Intention and Behavior, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley; Bentley, P.M. and G. Speckart (1979), ‘Models of attitude-behavior relations’, Psychological Review, 86 (50), 452–64. Granrose, C.S. and E.A. Kaplan (1996), Work-Family Role Choices for Women in Their 20s and 30s, Westport, CT: Praeger. Attanasio, O., H. Low, and V. Sanchez-Marcos (2008), ‘Explaining changes in female labor supply in a life cycle model’, American Economic Review, 98 (4), 1517–52. Stewart, A.J. and J.M. Healy (1989), ‘Linking individual development and social change’, American Psychologist, 44 (1), 30–42. Ryff, C.D. (1985), ‘The subjective experience of life-span transitions’, in A.S. Rossi (ed.) Gender and the Life Course, NY: Aldine, pp. 97–113; Ross, M. and M. Conway (1996), ‘Remembering one’s own past: the construction of personal histories’, in R.M. Sorrentino and E.T. Higgins (eds), Handbook of Motivation and Cognition: Foundations of Social Behavior, New York: Guilford, pp. 122–44. Ajzen, I. and M. Fishbein (1980), Understanding Attitudes and Predicting Social Behavior, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall; Eagly, A.H. (1987), Sex Differences in Social Behavior: A Social-role Interpretation, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Carr, D. (2002), ‘The psychological consequences of work-family trade-offs for three cohorts of men and women’, Social Psychology Quarterly, 65 (2), 103–24. MacRae, N. (2005), ‘Women and work: a ten year retrospective’, Work, 24 (4), 331–9. For example see Marks, N., L.L. Bumpass, and H.J. Jun (2004), ‘Family roles and well being during middle life course’, in O.G. Brim, C.D. Rykff, and R.C. Kessler (eds), How Healthy are We? A National Study of Wellbeing at Midlife, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 514–49. Gray, M. and B. Chapman (2001), ‘Foregone earnings from childrearing: changes between 1896 and 1997’, Family Matters, 58 (Autumn), 4–9; Hotchkiss, J.L. and M.M. Pitts (2005), ‘Female labor force intermittency and current earnings: switching regression model with unknown sample selection’, Applied Economics, 37 (5), 545–60; Taniguchi, H. (1999), ‘The timing of childbearing and women’s wages’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61 (4), 1008–19. Baum, C.I., II (2003), ‘Does early maternal employment harm child development? An analysis of the potential benefits of leave taking’, Journal of Labor Economics, 21 (2), 1–23; Gottfried, A.E., A.W. Gottfried, K. Bathurst, and C. Killian (1999), ‘Maternal and dual earner employment: family environment, adaptations, and the developmental impingement perspective’, in M.E. Lamb (ed.), Parenting and Child Development in Non-traditional Families, Mahweh, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 15–37; Gottfried, A.E. and A.W. Gottfried (2006), ‘A long term investigation of the role of maternal and dual earner employment in children’s development: the Fullerton longitudinal study’, American Behavioral Scientist, 10 (10), 1310–27; Hoffman, L.W. (1971), ‘Effects of maternal employment on the child – a review of the research’, Developmental Psychology, 10 (2), 204–28; Lerner, J.V. and N.I. Galambos (eds) (1991), Employed Mothers and their Children, New York: Garland; Bernal, R. (2008), ‘The effect of maternal employment and child care on children’s cognitive development’, International Economic Review, 49 (4), 1173–209. Barnett, R.C. (1999), ‘A new work-life model for the twenty-first century’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 562 (1), 143–58; Barnett, R.C. and J.S. Hyde (2001), ‘Women, men, work, and family: an expansionist theory’, The American Psychologist, 56 (10), 781–96. Gordon, J.R. and K.S. Whelan (1998), ‘Successful professional women in midlife: how organizations can more effectively understand and respond to the challenges’, Academy of Management Executive, 12 (1), 8–27. Levinson, D.J., C.N. Darrow, E.B. Kline, M. Levinson, and B. McKee (1978), The Seasons of a Man’s Life, New York: Knopf; Gersick, C.J.G. and K.E. Kram (2002), ‘High-achieving women at midlife: an exploratory study’, Journal of Management Inquiry, 11 (2), 104–30;


15. 16.

17.

18.

19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24.

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Mayrhofer, W., A. Iellatchitch, and M. Meyer (2004), ‘Going beyond the individual: some potential contributions from a career field and habitus perspective for global career research and practice’, Journal of Management Development, 23 (9), 870–84. Lopata, H.A. (1966), ‘The life cycle of the social role of the housewife’, Sociology and Social Research, 51 (1), 5–22; Super, D.E. (1957), The Psychology of Careers: An Introduction to Vocational Development, New York: Harper and Row. Larwood, L. and B.A. Gutek (1987), ‘Working towards a theory of women’s career development’, in L. Larwood and B.A. Gutek (eds), Women’s Career Development, Newbury Park, CA: Sage, pp. 170–183; Rapoport, R. and R.N. Rapoport (1980), ‘Balancing work, family and leisure: a triple helix model’, in C.B. Derr (ed.), Work, Family and Career, New York: Praeger, pp. 318–28; Mainiero, L.A. and S.E. Sullivan (2005), ‘Kaleidoscope careers: an alternate explanation for the “opt-out” revolution’, Academy of Management Executive, 19 (1), 106–23. Super, D.E. (1957), The Psychology of Careers: An Introduction to Vocational Development, New York: Harper and Row; Larwood, L. and B.A. Gutek (1987), ‘Working towards a theory of women’s career development’, in L. Larwood and B.A. Gutek (eds), Women’s Career Development, Newbury Park, CA: Sage, pp. 170–183. Rapoport, R. and R.N. Rapoport (1980), ‘Balancing work, family and leisure: a triple helix model’, in C.B. Derr (ed.), Work, Family and Career, New York: Praeger, pp. 318–28; Mainiero, L.A. and S.E. Sullivan (2005), ‘Kaleidoscope careers: an alternate explanation for the “opt-out” revolution’, Academy of Management Executive, 19 (1), 106–12; Han, S.K. and P. Moen (1999), ‘Work and family over time: a life course approach’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 562 (1), 98–110. Arthur, M.B. and D.M. Rousseau (1996), The Boundaryless Career: A New Employment Principle for a New Organizational Era, New York: Oxford University Press; Hall, D.T. (2002), ‘The protean career: a quarter-century journey’, Everett Hughes Distinguished Speakers Address, Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Denver, CO. Fishbein, M. and I. Ajzen (1975), Belief, Attitude, Intention and Behavior, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley; Bentley, P.M. and G. Speckart (1979), ‘Models of attitude-behavior relations’, Psychological Review, 86 (5), 452–64. Feldman, D. (1990),’Reconceptualizing the nature and consequences of part-time work’, Academy of Management Review, 15 (1), 103–12; Thorsteinson, T.J. (2003), ‘Job attitudes of part-time versus full-time workers: a meta-analytic review’, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 76 (2), 151–77; Thornthwaite, L. (2004), ‘Working time and work-family balance: a review of employee preferences’, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 42 (2), 166–84. Baum, C.I., II (2003), ‘Does early maternal employment harm child development? An analysis of the potential benefits of leave taking’, Journal of Labor Economics, 21 (2), 1–23; Gottfried, A.E., A.W. Gottfried, K. Bathurst, and C. Killian (1999), ‘Maternal and dual earner employment: family environment, adaptations, and the developmental impingement perspective’, in M.E. Lamb (ed.), Parenting and Child Development in Non-traditional Families, Mahweh, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 15–37; Gottfried, A.E. and A.W. Gottfried (2006), ‘A long term investigation of the role of maternal and dual earner employment in children’s development: the Fullerton longitudinal study’, American Behavioral Scientist, 10 (10), 1310–27; Hoffman, L.W. (1971), ‘Effects of maternal employment on the child – a review of the research’, Developmental Psychology, 10 (2), 204–28; J.V. Lerner and N.I. Galambos (eds) (1991), Employed Mothers and their Children, New York: Garland; Bernal, R. (2008), ‘The effect of maternal employment and child care on children’s cognitive development’, International Economic Review, 49 (4), 1173–209. Kossek, E.E., R.A. Noe, and B.J. DeMarr (1999), ‘Work-family role synthesis: individual and organizational determinants’, The International Journal of Conflict Management, 10 (2), 102–29. Powell, G.N. and J.H. Greenhaus (2006), ‘Managing incidents of work-family conflict: a decision-making perspective’, Human Relations, 59 (9), 1179–212. For example see Gutek, B.A., C.Y. Nakamura, and V.F. Nieva (1981), ‘The interdependence of work and family roles’, Journal of Occupational Behavior, 2 (1), 1–16; Voydanoff, P.

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(1988), ‘Work and family: a review and expanded conceptualization’, Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 3 (4), 1–22; Voydanoff, P. (2001), ‘Incorporating community into work and family research: a review of basic relationships’, Human Relations, 66, 1609–37; Hesse-Biber, S. and G.L. Carter (2000), Working Women in America: Split Dreams, New York: Oxford University Press; Eby, L.T., W.J. Casper, A. Lockwood, C. Bordeaux, and A. Brinley (2005), ‘Work and family research in IO/OB: content analysis and review of the literature (1980–2002)’, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 66 (1), 124–97. 25. Mainiero, L.A. and S.E. Sullivan (2005), ‘Kaleidoscope careers: an alternate explanation for the “opt-out” revolution’, Academy of Management Executive, 19 (1), 106–23; Barnett, R.C. and J.S. Hyde (2001), ‘Women, men, work, and family: an expansionist theory’, The American Psychologist, 56 (10), 781–96.

Appendix A Phase III Questionnaire: Employment Following Childbirth1 Many women have combined paid work and motherhood. There are different opinions about whether or not this is a good thing to do. We are interested in your personal opinion. Please follow the directions to answer or to skip questions carefully. If in doubt, look at the top right corner of each page. There are some questions for those who are working and others for those who are not. Whenever the term ‘work’ is used in this questionnaire it means paid employment of ten hours per week or more. Some questions refer to your partner. Your partner is defined as a person who is living with you and with whom you have an intimate relationship, whether or not you are married. Some questions ask you to talk about the time immediately before or after the birth of your first child. If you have not had a child, answer about your current situation. Please, circle the answers that best reflects your own beliefs. 1. Are you currently employed? (1) YES (2) NO If no, when was the last time you held a paid job? Month/Year __________________ 2. Have you ever had or adopted a child? (1) YES (2) NO (If yes, please go to Q3, if no please go to Q4) 3. If you have one or more children, what are the date(s) of birth of each of your children? (Answer, then please go to Q7) Day/Mo/Yr Day/Mo/Yr Day/Mo/Yr Day/Mo/Yr Day/Mo/Yr 4. If you have not yet had a child, do you ever intend to have or adopt one? (1) YES (2) NO (If no, return this questionnaire now.) If yes, about how many years from now would you like to become a mother YEARS

1 Phase I and Phase II questionnaires were previously published in Granrose, Cherlyn S. and E.A. Kaplan (1996), Work-Family Role Choices for Women in Their 20 and 30s, Westport. CT: Praeger. Pagination and spacing of this questionnaire has been changed to fit the book format.

157

158


5. How likely is it that you will work during the first three years after childbirth? 1 2 3 4 5 VERY UNLIKELY VERY LIKELY 6. How likely is it that you will not work during the first three years after childbirth? 1 2 3 4 5 VERY UNLIKELY VERY LIKELY

CONSEQUENCES OF WORKING

(ALL)

7. Please rate the likelihood that each of the items on this list might occur if you WORKED DURING THE FIRST THREE YEARS after the birth of your first child. (Circle one number per item. If you have no child or did not work, answer hypothetically.) VERY UNLIKELY HAVING FUN 1 A SENSE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT 1 FEELING GUILTY 1 FEELING TIRED 1 FEELING CLOSE TO MY PARTNER 1 FEELING CLOSE TO MY CHILD 1 RUNNING MY HOUSEHOLD SMOOTHLY 1 TRAINING MY CHILD MYSELF 1 MAINTAINING MY CAREER SKILLS 1 MAINTAINING MY JOB CONTACTS 1 ADVANCING MY CAREER 1 HAVING ENOUGH FAMILY INCOME 1 HAVING EXTRA INCOME 1 MAKING MORE $ THAN IT COSTS ME TO WORK 1 HAVING ENOUGH TIME FOR THE CHILD 1 HAVING ENOUGH TIME FOR MYSELF 1 HAVING ENOUGH TIME FOR MY PARTNER 1 PARTNER HELPING AROUND THE HOUSE 1 CHILD WILL BE INDEPENDENT 1 CHILD WILL BE SECURE 1 CHILD WILL BE WELL DISCIPLINED 1

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

VERY LIKELY 3 4 5 3 4 5 3 4 5 3 4 5 3 4 5 3 4 5 3 4 5 3 4 5 3 4 5 3 4 5 3 4 5 3 4 5 3 4 5

2 2 2

3 3 3

4 4 4

5 5 5

2

3

4

5

2 2 2 2

3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5

Appendix A

CHILD WILL GET ALONG EASILY WITH OTHERS CHILD WILL FEEL LOVED CHILD WILL HAVE ATTENTION WHEN NEEDED CHILD WILL BELIEVE WOMEN ARE COMPETENT

159

1 1

2 2

3 3

4 4

5 5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

INFLUENCE OF OTHERS

(ALL)

8. For many people, the opinions of their employers, parents, friends or partner may be important in making decisions. Indicate how likely these people are to approve of your working during the first three years after childbirth. Also indicate how likely you are to do as they wish. (Circle 2 numbers for each person.) IF YOU HAVE NO RELEVANT INDIVIDUAL TO ANSWER AN ITEM, SKIP THAT LINE OF THIS QUESTION.

a. b. c. d. e. f.

VERY LIKELY VERY LIKELY I AM LIKELY I AM UNTO DISAPPROVE APPROVE TO DO AS LIKELY TO THEY WISH DO AS THEY WISH Mother 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 Father 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 Partner 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 Friends 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 Supervisor 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 Coworkers 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5

FEELINGS ABOUT YOUR LIFE 9. For the following questions, circle the number which corresponds to how much you agree or disagree. Strongly Disagree 1

Disagree 2

Neither Agree nor Disagree 3

Agree 4

Strongly Agree 5

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STRONGLY DISAGREE 1 2

a. I am very satisfied with my job (SKIP IF NOT WORKING) b. I am very satisfied with motherhood (SKIP IF NOT A MOTHER) c. I am very satisfied with my career d. I am very satisfied with the intimate relationship in my life e. I feel that I’m a person of worth at least on an equal basis with others f. I am able to do things as well as most other people

STRONGLY AGREE 3 4 5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

CONSEQUENCES OF NOT WORKING

(ALL)

10. This is the last time you will be asked to rate the items on this list. How likely is it that each of these things might occur if you DID NOT WORK AT ALL DURING THE FIRST THREE YEARS after the birth of your first child. (Circle one number for each item. Answer hypothetically if you did work or have no child.)

CONSEQUENCES HAVING FUN A SENSE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT FEELING GUILTY FEELING RESENTFUL FEELING TIRED FEELING BORED FEELING CLOSE TO MY PARTNER FEELING CLOSE TO MY CHILD RUNNING MY HOUSEHOLD SMOOTHLY TRAINING MY CHILD MYSELF MAINTAINING MY CAREER SKILLS MAINTAINING MY JOB CONTACTS ADVANCING MY CAREER HAVING ENOUGH FAMILY INCOME HAVING EXTRA INCOME

EXTREMELY EXTREMELY UNLIKELY LIKELY 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

2 2 2 2 2 2 2

3 3 3 3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5 5 5 5

Appendix A

MAKING MORE $ THAN IT COSTS ME TO WORK HAVING ENOUGH TIME FOR THE CHILD HAVING ENOUGH TIME FOR MYSELF HAVING ENOUGH TIME FOR MY PARTNER PARTNER HELPING AROUND THE HOUSE CHILD WILL BE INDEPENDENT CHILD WILL BE SECURE CHILD WILL BE WELL DISCIPLINED CHILD WILL GET ALONG EASILY WITH OTHERS CHILD WILL FEEL LOVED CHILD WILL HAVE ATTENTION WHEN NEEDED CHILD WILL BELIEVE WOMEN ARE COMPETENT

FAMILY

161

1

2

3

4

5

1 1

2 2

3 3

4 4

5 5

1

2

3

4

5

1 1 1 1

2 2 2 2

3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5

1 1

2 2

3 3

4 4

5 5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

(ALL)

11.What is your current family status? (Please check all that apply.) __ a. NOT in a long-term relationship with a partner. __ b. In a long-term relationship or engaged. __ c. Married with a partner. __ d. Separated or divorced. __ e. Part of a blended family or a step parent. __ f. Other (please describe)_____________________________________

162


12. If you have a partner, for the following questions please indicate the number which corresponds to your current partner’s attitudes. (If you have no current partner, go to Q13 or If you have no previous partner and no children go to Q14.)

a. b.

c.

d.

c.

VERY NEGATIVE How favorable is your partner’s 1 attitude toward your career? How favorable are your partner’s feelings 1 about your level of commitment to your career? 1 How favorable are your partner’s feelings about your level of commitment to your family? 1 How favorable are your children feelings 1 about your level of commitment to your career? 1 How favorable are your children’s feelings about your level of commitment to your family? 1

2

VERY POSITIVE 3 4 5

2

3

4

5

2

3

4

5

2 2

3 3

4 4

5 5

2

3

4

5

2

3

4

5

13. If your work and family plans have been influenced by someone other than your current partner, such as a former partner, please describe this relationship and how has it influenced you? __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________

EMPLOYMENT

(ALL)

14. We would like you to describe your employment history during the last ten years. (PLEASE START WITH YOUR MOST RECENT JOB AND WORK BACKWARDS.) If you have ever been unemployed for more than 4 months since 1990 please indicate the reasons for the breaks in employment and the length of time you were unemployed. Do not record jobs held for less than four months. If there was a point when you held more than one job simultaneously please record both hours. (If you were not employed during the 1990’s, please indicate on the first line and go to Q16.)

Appendix A

163

In terms of career Year Year Your Occupation was change up, Start End or Unemployment down or lateral 1. __________ ______________ _____________ 2. __________ ______________ _____________ 3. __________ ______________ _____________ 4. __________ ______________ _____________ 5. __________ ______________ _____________ 6. __________ ______________ _____________ 7. __________ ______________ _____________ (If you need more space, please go to the last page.)

Hours worked per week ___________ ___________ ___________ ___________ ___________ ___________ ___________

15. Thinking of your current employer, please indicate the degree of your agreement or disagreement by circling one of the alternatives below for each question. (If you are not employed, please go to the next question.) STRONGLY DISAGREE a. I am willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond that normally expected in order to help this organization be successful. b. Often I find it difficult to agree with the organization’s values. c. I am proud to tell others that I am part of this organization. d. It would take very little change in my present circumstances to cause me to leave this organization e. I feel that there’s not too much to be gained by sticking with this organization.

STRONGLY AGREE

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

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4

5

1

2

3

4

5

1

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EMPLOYMENT

(ALL)

16. Next we are interested in learning about the reasons why women might want to leave the organization for which they are employed, following birth of a child. How much would each of the following influence you to leave your employer after childbirth?

Opportunity to progress Challenge of the job Wanted more time with my child Pressure from my spouse Wanted to start my own business Bored with routine Long hours on the job Amount of travel Sexual harassment Conflict between work and family Inflexible work hours Relationship with my immediate boss Childcare availability Disliked working in a male-dominated environment Pay inequity Incompatibility with coworkers Lack of career guidance or mentor Office politics Competent childcare % of female coworkers Gender discrimination Organizational restructuring Distrust of the organization Lack of integrity in the organization

NOT AT ALL DEFINITELY A FACTOR A FACTOR 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

Appendix A

165

17. Looking back over your jobs you held up to the birth of your child, or now if or you have not yet had a child, please indicate the extent to which your expectations in the areas listed below were (are) met. GREATLY EXCEEDED MY EXPECTATIONS Salary 5 Career Advancement 5 Stress 5 Hours required 5 Status 5 Ability to develop new skills 5 Good working conditions 5 Interesting work 5 Responsibility 5 Variety 5 Autonomy (independence) 5 Challenge 5 Leadership 5 Clarity about what I should do 5 Work Volume 5 Integrity and honesty 5

HAS NOT LIVED UP TO MY EXPECTATIONS 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1

(ALL MOTHERS) 18. To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements. Please circle the number which best corresponds to your views. (If you are not a mother, please go to Q 30.) STRONGLY STRONGLY DISAGREE AGREE a. More than any other adult, I can meet my children’s needs best 5 4 3 2 1 b. My children are happier with me than with babysitters or teachers 5 4 3 2 1 c. I am naturally better at keeping my children safe than any other person 5 4 3 2 1 d. It is not good for my children to be cared for by someone else because they may be exposed to values and attitudes with which I disagree 5 4 3 2 1 e. Only a mother just naturally knows how to comfort her distressed children 5 4 3 2 1

166


(ALL MOTHERS) At the job you held prior to becoming the mother of your last child: 19. To what extend did you consider looking for another job? 1 2 3 4 5 NEVER THOUGHT FREQUENTLY THOUGHT ABOUT IT ABOUT IT 20. How extensively did you look for another job? 1 2 3 4 NOT AT ALL

5 A GREAT DEAL

21. What did you think was the likelihood you could have found an acceptable alternative with another company? 1 2 3 4 5 VERY UNLIKELY VERY LIKELY 22. How likely were you to consider homemaking as an alternative to finding another job? 1 2 3 4 5 VERY UNLIKELY VERY LIKELY 23. How flexible was your work schedule? 1 2 3 VERY INFLEXIBLE

4

5 VERY FLEXIBLE

24. How much travel did your job require? 1 2 3 VERY LITTLE

4

5 VERY MUCH

25. We are aware the childcare system has continued to evolve within the last ten years. When people such as you think about childcare arrangements, they frequently have three concerns: availability, affordability, and quality. How much of a problem was each issue in our decision about suitable childcare arrangements?

1. Availability 2. Affordability 3. Quality

NOT AT ALL A PROBLEM 1 2 1 2 1 2

3 3 3

A MAJOR PROBLEM 4 5 4 5 4 5

Appendix A

167

(ALL MOTHERS) 26. Did your current or most recent employer provide any type of childcare benefits? Please check all that apply. _____ On or near site childcare _____ Information and referral services _____ Not employed

_____ Other _____ Financial assistance

27. Please indicate how many years you used each of the following childcare arrangements between the birth of your first child and the present. Answer for every alternative you used. YEARS _____ I did not ever return to work and am the primary caretaker of my child. (Go to Q28 on the next page) _____ My child was in a day care center _____ My child was cared for by a relative (other than partner) _____ My partner cared for our child _____ My child was in a group day care in someone’s home _____ I had a babysitter care for my child in our home _____ I had live-in help to care for my child _____ Other (please describe) (If you are employed please go to Q30 now)

(UNEMPLOYED MOTHERS) 28. Please circle one response for each item. STRONGLY DISAGREE 1. I am proud to tell others I am a homemaker. 2. It would take very little change in my present circumstances to get me to become an employed mother. 3. I am willing to give a great deal of effort to be a successful homemaker.

STRONGLY AGREE

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

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29. If you had adequate childcare arrangements how likely is it that you would have returned to work shortly after the birth of your child. VERY LIKELY 5

SOMEWHAT LIKELY 4

HAVE SOMEWHAT VERY NO EFFECT UNLIKELY UNLIKELY 3 2 1

(ALL) 30. Realistically, how old do you think your children should be for their mother to start working fulltime? Why this age? 31. Is there anything an organization could do that would make you MORE likely to return to work following childbirth? 32. Is there anything an organization would do that would make you LESS likely to return to work following childbirth? 33. How likely are you to consider starting your own business as an alternative to finding another job? VERY UNLIKELY 1 2

3

4

VERY LIKELY 5

34. What type of business would you start? (If you would never consider starting your own business, please go to Q40.)

(ENTREPRENEURS) 35. What were the reasons you considered for opening your own business? 36. Did you actually open the business? 37. If you did not, please explain why not. 38. How did your domestic partner feel about your opening a business? 39. Were either of your parents self-employed? If yes, how did this influence you?

1

NO

YES

2

Appendix A

169

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

(ALL)

40. What is the highest level of regular school that you have ever attained? ____ a. Did not graduate from college. ____ b. Graduated from a four-year college. ____ c. Some postgraduate work. ____ d. Obtained a Master’s degree. ____ e. Obtained a terminal degree (MD, LLD, PhD). 41. What is your own and your partner’s current gross annual income from all sources at this time? Make one X in each column opposite the approximate #.

Less than $20,000 $20,000–39,000 $40,000–59,000 $60,000–79,000 $80,000–99,000 $100,000–119,000 $120,000–139,000 $140,000–159,000 $160,000–179,000 $180,000–and up

Self _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____

Partner _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____

Thank you for taking the time to answer this questionnaire. If you have further comments on this topic, feel free to write them on the back cover. Please put the questionnaire in the envelope provided and return it to us via US Mail.

170


Phase IV Interview Questionnaire: Employment Following Childbirth ID Number of Person Interviewed

Date

Any unusual interview circumstances – telephone – in person Greeting and Thank you Introduction Many women have been combining paid employment and motherhood. There are different opinions about whether or not this is a good thing to do. I am interested in your personal opinion about how these two spheres of life interact. I want to get your impressions of the stream of important work and home decisions of your whole family from college to now and into the future – your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions, and those of your family and employers. I will be taking extensive notes but sometimes in an interview, I cannot get everything down on paper fast enough or I can’t read my notes. I would like to tape this interview to be sure to catch everything you say. Are you willing to let me tape it? If so, would you please sign this permission form? (Give them the permission form to sign and sign it myself.) Taped NO

YES

If yes, Tape number ____________

There are some questions for those who are employed and others for those who are not. Whenever the term ‘work’ is used I mean paid employment of ten hours per week or more. Questions that refer to your partner mean a person who is living with you and with whom you have an intimate relationship. 1. Could you first tell me who the members of your family are at the present time? Self / Date of birth Partner / Date of birth Sons / Date of birth Daughters/ Date of birth Others/ sex/ approximate age /relationship

Appendix A

171

In order to get a basic timeline of key family events, I would like you to take me through the series of major jobs you and your partner/s have had and when any children were born. (If the interview is done in person I will ask the person to fill out these job charts, if on the phone, I will fill it out according to what they tell me.) 2. First, I would like you to describe the most important events in your own work and childbirth history. (PLEASE START WITH YOUR MOST RECENT JOB AND WORK BACKWARD UNTIL COLLEGE GRADUATION.) If you have ever been unemployed for more than a few months please indicate the length of time you were unemployed and reason. Do not record jobs held for less than four months or if you worked for less than ten hours per week. Please indicate the job you held (or unemployment period) at the time of the birth of each of your children. If any children died or left your home, also indicate this on the table in the childbirth column. Size of Your firm occupation (approx. # or unIndustry employees employment 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Was Duration change up, Hours of work or down, or per unemploylateral week ment

Child birth date

3. (Skip this if never had a partner.) Next, if you have had a partner, or other members of your family who provided your family with significant income, I would like you to describe their work history/contribution. (PLEASE START WITH THE MOST RECENT SITUATION AND WORK BACKWARD.) If your partner has ever been unemployed for more than a few months please indicate the reasons for the breaks in employment and the length of time your partner was unemployed. Do not record jobs held for less than four months. If you have had more than one partner or income contributor, please indicate when there was an addition or a death, divorce or separation. Please indicate the periods of life when you were alone and when you began a new partnership (do not indicate relationships that lasted less than one year unless you were married/committed or unless it is a current relationship).

172


Size of firm (total # Industry employees

Partner’s occupation or unemployment

Date Was Duration and change up, Hours of work or reason down or per unemploy- change lateral week ment in partner

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Were there any other key life events that occurred that you could not record on these two charts? If so what were they and when did they occur? 4. Now I would like you to go back and pick the incidents that were really key incidents in your past life concerning the interaction of your job, (your partner’s job if you have a partner), and your family life. About three to five will do but if there are more or less, that’s OK too. (If first childbirth is not listed, ask if I may add it to the list – probe for major job changes or childbearing events.)

LIST OF KEY EVENTS Event#____ Page 1 Causes and Coping 5. Can you tell me what the (first) (repeat for each event) event was and why it was important? 6. Did you have any personal goals or preferences about this event and if so what were they? 7. What do you think were all of the causes of this event? (Probe for timing.) 8. To what extent do you feel that this was a voluntary event under your own control? If this was to some extent the result of your own decision, 8a. What were the factors that you thought about or considered when making this decision? 8b. What did you fail to think about that later you wished you had considered? 8c. Who did you talk to about this decision and what was their input? Is there anything else you can tell me about the causes of this event?

Appendix A

173

9. At the time of this event, what can you tell me about the significant barriers, obstacles, or problems that stood in your way and who were the significant people who hindered you or discouraged you? (Get gender and relationship of people and work or family nature of problems.) 10. What did you do to overcome these barriers or problems? 11. At the time of this event, what can you tell me about the significant things that encouraged you or enabled you and who were the people who helped you, encouraged you, or supported you? (Get gender and relationship of people; resources of information, $, time, flexibility, autonomy.) 12a. Is there anything else you can tell me about what you and your family did and how you all coped with this event? 12b.Is there anything you or your family failed to do that you now think you should have done? Event # ___ Page 2 Consequences Now I would like to know about the outcomes or after-effects of this event. 13. First what happened? 13b. What were the effects on your family life? (Probe for time and attention allocation.) self partner children others work life (Probe for turnover, absenteeism, attention.) own career own job performance partner’s career partner’s job performance organization (old) (new) own life goals spouse’s life goals

174


14. After this event, how did you feel? (Probe for stress.) In particular, how satisfied or dissatisfied did you feel? Second, how committed did you feel to each of these parts of your life? (scale of 1–7; 7 = highest) Satisfaction Commitment/importance Your own total life Your leisure life The relationship with your partner The relationship with your children The relationship with your employer (NEW) (OLD) Organization Boss co-workers job Other relationships (ID who) Community involvement (ID what) Are there any other consequences that I should know about? GO to next event and repeat pages 1 and 2 of events until all are covered. Now that we have covered the most significant events in your family and employment life, is there anything else that you want to tell me that will help me to understand how you and your family combined these two parts of your life – family and employment – and why you did it in these particular ways? What about your future plans or dreams for your family and for your work life and for your partner’s work life during the next decade? What do you particularly look forward to? Do you have any specific career plans for your own future? If so what are they? Do you know of any specific career plans your partner has? If so what are they? Do you have any particular plans or expectations for your family? If so what are they? (Probe marriage and children and other family members.) What do you see as your biggest challenges or obstacles to these future plans?

Appendix A

175

What do you see as your biggest help or facilitators for these future plans? What do you see as your big sources of satisfaction in the next decade? Finally, in order to compare these data with other data sets I need to ask you some basic background questions if we haven’t already covered the information. What is the highest level of regular school that you have ever attained? ____ a. Graduated from a four-year college. ____ b. Some postgraduate work. ____ c. Obtained a Master’s degree. ____ d. Obtained a terminal degree (MD, LLD PhD). How many people counting yourself depend on you and your partner for some financial support?________ What is the general range of your own, your partner’s, and any other household contributor’s current gross annual income from all sources at this time? Self

Partner

Others

Less than $20,000 $20,000–39,000 $40,000–59,000 $60,000–79,000 $80,000–99,000 $100,000–149,000 $150,000–199,000 Over $200,000 Thank you for your time and patience. How can I get the results to you?

Appendix B Table B.1

Changes in consequences of working including all subjects Phases I and II

Consequences

Phases I and III

Phases II and III

Phase I Phase II Phase I Phase III Phase II Phase III mean mean mean mean mean mean

Having fun Sense of accomplishment Feeling tied down Variety in life Feeling guilty Feeling resentful Feeling tired Feeling bored Feeling close to husband Feeling close to child Running smooth household Training child myself Maintaining career skills Maintaining job contacts Advancing my career Earning enough income for self Having enough family income Having extra income Making more $ than it costs me to work Husband needing two jobs Missing child’s growth milestones Finding adequate childcare Having enough time for child Having enough time for self Having enough time for husband Husband helping around the house Child will be independent

3.43 4.11 2.31a 3.61 2.81a 1.93a 3.41a 1.83 3.74 3.59 3.20a 3.06 4.35 4.28 4.09a

3.50 4.19 3.26a 3.61 3.33a 3.09a 4.19a 1.98 3.59 3.72 2.70a 2.80 4.15 4.24 3.72a

3.47 4.16

3.78 4.16

3.53 4.16

3.78 4.16

2.90b

3.71b

3.39

3.73

3.45b

4.29b

4.12

4.27

3.78 3.58b 3.22b 3.10 4.37b 4.31 4.10b

3.41 4.20b 2.86b 3.33 4.08b 4.10 3.68b

3.63 3.76c 2.75 2.78c 4.18 4.27 3.74

3.45 4.22c 2.86 3.31c 4.04 4.06 3.60

3.74

3.70

4.28 4.00

4.35 4.13

4.31 4.10b

4.08 3.61b

4.33c 4.12c

4.04c 3.53c

3.80 1.41

4.09 1.69

3.88

3.9

4.06

3.84

2.91 3.44

3.39 3.63

3.33 3.00a

3.02 2.37a

3.33 3.00b

3.02 1.80b

3.08 2.39c

3.06 1.82c

3.35a

2.74a

3.33b

2.25b

2.80c

2..29c

4.31 4.04a

3.94 3.76a

4.37b 4.06

3.20b 4.00

3.86c 3.80

3.25c 3.98

176

Appendix B Phases I and II

Consequences Child will be secure Child will be well disciplined Chill will get along with others Child will learn beliefs Child will feel loved Child will have attention when needed Child feels closer to others than to me Child will believe women are competent

177

Phases I and III

Phases II and III

Phase I Phase II Phase I Phase III Phase II Phase III mean mean mean mean mean mean 3.76

3.67

3.75

3.75

3.69

3.75

3.72

3.59

3.71

3.67

3.57

3.67

4.04 3.09a 4.13

3.85 3.46a 4.00

4.04

3.96

3.82

3.96

4.14

4.27

4.00

4.27

3.63

3.33

3.63

3.86

3.37c

3.88c

2.81

3.04

3.94

4.18

Notes: a Phase I significantly different from Phase II, p = 0.05 N = 202–198 b Phase I significantly different from Phase III, p = 0.05 N = 100–97 c Phase II significantly different from Phase III, p = 0.05 N = 100–97 The mean numbers are different even for the same phase because in each comparison, the people who were included were each participant who answered those particular two phases.

178

Table B.2


Changes in consequences of not working including all subjects Phases I and II

Consequences

Phases I and III

Phases II and III

Phase I Phase II Phase I Phase III Phase II Phase III mean mean mean mean mean mean

Having fun Sense of accomplishment Feeling guilty Feeling resentful Feeling tired Feeling bored Feeling close to husband Feeling close to child Running smooth household Training child myself Maintaining career skills Maintaining job contacts Advancing my career Having enough family income Having extra income Making more $ than it costs me to work Having enough time for child Having enough time for self Having enough time for husband Husband helping around the house Child will be independent Child will be secure Child will be well disciplined Chill will get along with others Child will feel loved Child will have attention when needed

3.53 3.00 2.15 2.69 2.75 3.27 4.13 4.38 4.06 4.56 2.64 2.33 1.82

3.85a 3.27 2.36 3.00 2.95 3.36 3.96 4.69a 4.19 4.69 2.05a 1.98a 1.51a

3.52 3.04 2.06 2.71 2.78 3.33 4.06 4.34 4.34 4.54 2.66 2.36 1.86

3.78 3.06 2.44 3.00 3.24b 3.23 3.44b 4.36 4.12 4.36 2.04b 2.00 1.88

3.90 3.32 2.30 2.88 2.94 3.44 4.00 4.68 4.56 4.74 2.08 1.98 1.51

3.78 3.06 2.44 3.00 3.24 3.23 3.44c 4.36c 4.12c 4.36c 2.04 2.00 1.88c

3.20 2.31

2.71a 1.91

3.30 2.39

2.52b 1.82b

2.74 1.92

2.52 1.82

1.47

2.24

1.63

2.02

1.85

2.02

4.55 4.50

4.23 4.05a

4.56 4.45

4.37 3.41

4.23 3.98

4.40 3.42c

3.52

3.16a

3.73

3.59

3.18

3.62c

3.34 4.11 4.41

3.28 4.00 4.33

3.14 3.86 4.35

2.54 3.38 4.13

3.32 3.98 4.33

2.53c 3.45c 4.15

4.11

4.00

4.14

3.93

4.05

3.93

3.98 4.66

3.86 4.88a

3.96 4.68

3.83 4.34

3.87 4.87

3.83 4.35c

2.98

2.83

3.25

4.34

2.93

4.35c

Notes: a Phase I significantly different from Phase II, p = 0.05 N = 202–198 b Phase I significantly different from phase III, p = 0.05 N= 100–97 c Phase II significantly different from phase III, p = 0.05 N= 100–97 The mean numbers are different even for the same phase because in each comparison, the people who were included were each participant who answered those particular two phases.

Appendix B

179

Table B.3 Changes in normative influences including all subjects Phases I and II

Factors Mother approves Comply with mother Father approves Comply with father Husband approves Comply with husband Friends approve Comply with friend Supervisor approves Comply with supervisor Co-workers approve Comply with coworkers

Phases I and III

Phases II and III

Phase I Phase II Phase I Phase III Phase II Phase III mean mean mean mean mean mean 3.07

3.49

2.69a 2.62a 3.56a 3.98a 3.87 2.64a

3.71a 3.75a 4.36a 3.02a 3.84 1.98a

3.08b 2.73b 2.71b 2.54b 3.61 3.96b 3.92 2.69b

3.63b 3.33b 3.31b 3.44b 3.96 2.66b 3.96 4.00b

3.51

3.63

3.36 3.44 4.16 2.74 3.82 3.54c 4.61 3.86 4.24 4.11

3.31 3.44 3.96 2.66 3.96 4.00c 4.34 3.67 4.11 3.80

Notes: a Phase I significantly different from Phase II, p = 0.05 N = 202–198 b Phase I significantly different from Phase III, p = 0.05 N = 100–97 c Phase II significantly different from Phase III, p = 0.05 N = 100–97 The mean numbers are different even for the same phase because in each comparison, the people who were included were each participant who answered those particular two phases.

180

Table B.4


Changes in consequences of working of Phase IV subjects only

Consequences Having fun A sense of accomplishment Feeling guilty Feeling tired Feeling close to my partner Feeling close to my child Running my household smoothly Training my child myself Maintaining my career skills Maintaining my job contacts Advancing my career Having enough family income Having extra income Making more $ than it costs me to work Having enough time for the child Having enough time for myself Having enough time for my partner Partner helping around the house Child will be independent Child will be secure Child will be well disciplined Child will get along easily with others Child will feel loved Child will have attention when needed Child will believe women are competent

Phase I Mean St. Dev

Phase II Mean St. Dev.

Phase III Mean St. Dev.

3.68 4.19 2.96 3.53 3.79 3.61

0.90 0.80 1.16a,b 1.13a,b 0.92b 1.01b

3.43 4.04 3.67 4.57 3.52 3.58

0.94 0.91 1.02a 0.78a 0.88 0.94c

3.71 4.24 3.92 4.27 3.27 3.88

1.12 0.87 1.09b 1.15b 1.10b 1.15b,c

2.97 2.84

0.87a 0.96a

2.25 2.54

0.96a 1.06a,c

2.57 2.96

0.94 1.13c

4.37

0.65a

4.15

0.86a,c

4.1

0.83c

4.34 4.07

0.69 0.84a

4.24 3.69

0.80 1.09a

4.02 3.68

0.95 1.00

4.48 3.99

0.61b 1.05

4.24 3.97

0.89 1.10

4.10 3.73

0.90b 1.30

3.98

0.95

4.14

1.01

3.94

1.26

3.06

1.10a,b

2.77

1.09a,c

2.67

1.16b,c

2.65

1.06a,b

2.02

0.97a

1.78

0.95b

3.09

1.07a,b

2.56

1.10a

2.14

0.94b

4.39 3.91 3.61

0.63a,b 0.74a 0.86a

3.91 3.64 3.28

1.04a,c 0.83a 0.8a,c

3.04 3.80 3.59

1.30b,c 0.94 0.86c

3.53

0.88a

3.25

0.91a

3.45

0.95

3.92 4.16

0.80 0.88a

3.75 3.90

0.80 0.92a,c

3.78 4.25

0.89 0.82c

3.64

1.00a

3.19

1.06a,c

3.71

1.03c

3.97

0.78

4.10

0.90

Notes: * p = 0.05, n = 65–67 depending on missing values a = Phase I different from Phase II b = Phase I different from Phase III c = Phase II different from Phase III

Appendix B

Table B.5

181

Changes in consequences of not working of Phase IV subjects only

Consequences Having fun A sense of accomplishment Feeling guilty Feeling tired Feeling close to my partner Feeling close to my child Running my household smoothly Training my child myself Maintaining my career skills Maintaining my job contacts Advancing my career Having enough family income Having extra income Making more $ than it costs me to work Having enough time for the child Having enough time for myself Having enough time for my partner Partner helping around the house Child will be independent Child will be secure Child will be well disciplined Child will get along easily with others Child will feel loved Child will have attention when needed Child will believe women are competent

Phase I Mean St. Dev

Phase II Mean St. Dev.

Phase III Mean St. Dev.

3.57 2.86 2.17 2.72 4.06 4.40

0.97 1.16a 1.06b 1.0a,b 0.88b 0.72a

3.79 3.34 2.35 3.07 4.06 4.67

0.90 1.01a 1.10 1.25a 0.87c 0.53a

3.84 3.06 2.51 3.39 3.35 4.35

1.06 1.08 1.10b 0.94b 1.02bc 1.11

4.25 4.55

0.75 0.68a

4.37 4.75

0.76c 0.44a,c

3.86 4.14

1.15c 1.28c

2.66

0.96a

2.07

0.94a

2.31

1.16

2.33 1.75

0.86a 0.79a

1.90 1.50

0.82a 0.84a

2.22 1.88

1.12 1.11

3.32 2.47

1.14a,b 1.17a,b

2.75 1.81

1.40a 1.13a

2.69 2.36

1.09b 1.32b

1.52

0.83b

1.53

0.97c

2.27

1.40b,c

4.46

1.07

4.71

0.72c

4.26

1.16c

4.04

1.11b

3.82

1.09

3.42

1.16b

4.21

1.08b

4.25

0.86c

3.49

1.08b,c

3.29 3.33 4.19

1.23a 1.07 0.84

2.79 3.37 4.31

1.22a 0.87 0.80

2.80 3.60 4.04

1.36 1.07 1.05

4.24

0.75b

4.15

0.72

3.84

0.98b

3.82 4.63

0.99 0.55

3.87 4.72

0.78 0.52

3.84 4.40

0.10 1.03

4.51

0.59

4.71

0.72c

4.30

1.11c

3.95

0.83

3.86

1.10

Notes: * p = 0.05, n = 65–67 depending on missing values a = Phase I different from Phase II b = Phase I different from Phase III c = Phase II different from Phase III

182

Table B.6


Changes in normative influences of Phase IV subjects only Phase I

Factors Mother approve Father approve Spouse approve Friends approve Supervisor approve Coworkers approve Mother comply Father comply Spouse comply Friends comply Supervisor comply Coworkers comply

Phase II

Mean

St. Dev

Mean

2.95 2.81 3.48 3.75

1.29b 1.21b 1.22b 1.08

2.89 2.76 4.00 2.84

1.11 1.12b 0.96a,b 1.23a,b

3.17 3.21 3.69 3.96 4.30 4.11 3.20 3.21 1.95 3.39 3.65 3.72

Notes: * p = 0.05 n = 65–67 depending on missing values a = Phase I different from Phase II b = Phase I different from Phase III c = Phase II different from Phase III

St. Dev. 1.22 1.21 1.42 0.99 0.87 0.89 1.24 1.19 1.05a,c 1.12a 1.18 1.23

Phase III Mean

St. Dev.

3.42 3.41 3.94 3.94 4.45 4.25 3.39 3.36 2.81 3.73 3.70 3.74

1.29b 1.24b 1.16b 0.85 0.74 0.81 1.19 1.20b 1.21b,c 1.11b 1.14 1.10

Table B.7 Differences in consequences of working between full-time career women, part-time career women, homemakers, and entrepreneurs

Consequences

FT career N = 30 Mean St. Dev

PT career N = 11 Mean St. Dev.

Home. N = 15 Mean St. Dev.

Entrep. N = 16 Mean St. Dev.

183

Differences in Phase I and Phase II Having enough time for the child, Phase I Having extra income, Phase II Having enough time for the child, Phase II

3.24 3.71 3.21

1.06 1.01 0.96d

3.50 4.55 2.70

1.08c 0.52e 1.34

2.31 4.43 2.21

0.95c 1.02 0.98

3.14 3.25 2.08

0.29 1.66e 0.79d

Differences in Phase III Having fun A sense of accomplishment Feeling guilty Feeling tired Feeling close to my partner Feeling close to my child Running my household smoothly Training my child myself Maintaining my career skills Maintaining my job contacts Advancing my career Having enough family income Having extra income Making more $ than it costs Having enough time for the child Having enough time for myself Having enough time for spouse Partner helping around the house

4.00 4.47 3.59 4.41 3.41 4.35 2.94 3.29 4.06 4.00 3.62 4.12 3.52 4.06 3.29 1.94 3.25 3.12

0.94 0.51 0.94 1.06 0.87 0.79a,b 0.75 1.11 0.66 0.50 0.72 0.86 1.13 1.20 0.69b,d 0.66 0.49 1.09

4.25 4.50 3.38 3.75 3.75 4.62 2.75 3.50 4.25 4.25 3.12 3.75 3.50 4.12 3.62 2.50 3.00 3.25

0.89 0.76 1.30 1.39 1.17 0.52a,c 0.89 0.93c 0.89 0.89 1.25 0.89 1.77 1.13 1.06c,e 1.07c 0.76c,e 1.28

3.08 3.92 4.31 4.77 2.85 3.00 1.92 2.23 4.15 4.15 4.00 4.23 4.15 4.00 1.85 1.23 1.54 2.92

1.04 0.95 1.18 0.60 0.99 1.28b,c 0.76 0.93c 0.90 0.90 0.91 1.17 1.21 1.23 0.99b,c 0.60c 0.78c 1.51

3.36 3.85 4.29 3.86 3.07 3.29 2.86 2.86 3.86 3.64 3.57 4.21 3.71 3.64 2.07 1.71 1.93 2.79

1.22 1.14 0.83 1.35 1.21 1.27 1.17 1.23 0.95 1.34 1.16 0.70 1.33 1.50 1.07d,e 1.14 1.14e 1.19

Table B.7 Continued

Consequences Child will be independent Child will be secure Child will be well disciplined Child will get along easily with others Child will feel loved Child will have attention when needed Child will believe women competent 184

Notes: p = 0.05 significantly different a = FT career different from PT career b = FT career different from homemakers c = PT career different from homemakers d = FT career different from entrep. e = PT career different from entrep. f = Homemakers different from entrep.

FT career N = 30 Mean St. Dev 4.00 3.94 3.76 4.12 4.41 4.06 4.35

0.71 0.66 0.83 0.72 0.71 0.83 0.61

PT career N = 11 Mean St. Dev. 4.25 4.00 3.88 4.00 4.62 4.25 4.50

0.46 0.54 0.84 0.54 0.52 0.71c 0.76

Home. N = 15 Mean St. Dev. 3.69 3.08 2.92 3.38 4.00 3.00 3.62

1.01 0.95 1.12 1.04 1.00 1.00c 0.96

Entrep. N = 16 Mean St. Dev. 3.43 3.29 3.21 3.50 4.00 3.29 3.79

1.09 0.91 0.80 0.94 0.88 1.07 1.05

Table B.8 Differences in consequences of not working between full-time career women, part-time career women, homemakers, and entrepreneurs

Consequences

185

Differences in Phase I and II Feeling tired, Phase II Differences in Phase III Having fun A sense of accomplishment Feeling guilty Feeling tired Feeling close to my partner Feeling close to my child Running my household smoothly Training my child myself Maintaining my career skills Maintaining my job contacts Advancing my career Having enough family income Having extra income Making more $ than it costs Having enough time for the child Having enough time for myself Having enough time for my partner Partner helping around the house Child will be independent Child will be secure





3.39

1.03a

2.09

1.04a

3.07

1.27

2.75

1.49

4.00 3.12 2.29 3.41 3.35 4.35 3.94 4.35 2.12 2.24 2.12 2.29 1.88 2.14 4.29 3.65 3.47 2.53 3.35 4.00

0.79 0.93 0.99 1.06 0.70 1.00 1.03 1.06 0.93 1.25 1.17 0.99 0.96 1.23 1.05 0.86 1.01 1.81 1.12 1.00

3.67 3.11 2.78 3.67 3.67 4.56 3.89 3.89 2.44 2.11 1.44 2.89 1.78 2.25 4.67 3.11 3.67 3.22 3.89 4.11

1.00 1.36 0.97 1.00 1.32 0.73 0.78 1.27 1.13 0.93 0.53 1.17 1.30 1.58 0.71 1.45 1.00 0.97 0.78 0.78

4.08 3.42 2.67 3.17 3.42 4.08 3.67 4.17 2.92 2.33 1.83 3.25 3.00 2.45 4.17 3.75 3.50 3.25 3.58 4.00

1.24 1.00 1.44 0.94 1.24 1.51 1.67 1.34 1.44 1.37 1.19 1.22 1.28 1.75 1.40 1.22 1.09 1.29 1.31 1.54

3.54 2.69 2.50 3.07 3.00 4.21 3.93 4.14 2.00 2.21 1.93 2.43 2.64 2.15 4.08 3.31 3.58 2.69 3.62 4.00

1.20 1.25 1.16 0.92 1.11 1.42 1.33 1.56 1.36 1.25 1.27 0.94 1.50 1.28 1.32 1.38 1.38 1.75 1.26 1.16

Table B.8 Continued

Consequences

Child will be well disciplined Child will get along easily with others Child will feel loved Child will have attention when needed Child will believe women are competent

186

Notes: p = 0.05 significantly different a = FT career different from PT career b = FT career different from homemakers c = PT career different from homemakers d = FT career different from entrep. e = PT career different from entrep. f = Homemakers different from entrep.


3.65 3.71 4.29 4.06 3.88

0.79 0.85 0.99 1.20 1.26


4.11 4.00 4.33 4.44 4.00

0.60 0.71 0.71 0.73 0.87


3.75 3.75 4.33 4.25 3.50

1.49 1.49 1.56 1.55 1.17


3.85 3.77 4.46 4.38 3.92

1.21 1.30 1.20 1.19 1.32

Table B.9 Differences in normative influences between full-time career women, part-time career women, homemakers, and entrepreneurs

Consequences





Differences in Phase I and Phase II

187

Mother approve, Phase II Spouse approve, Phase II

3.31 4.32

1.26 0.89b

2.91 3.27

0.94e 1.74

2.50 2.92

1.23 1.51b

3.25 3.50

1.36e 1.24

Differences in Phase III Mother approve Father approve Spouse approve Friends approve Supervisor approve Coworkers approve Mother comply Father comply Spouse comply Friends comply Supervisor comply Coworkers comply

3.88 3.93 4.41 4.18 4.59 4.29 3.35 3.20 3.00 3.60 3.29 3.47

0.99 0.88 0.87 0.64 0.62 0.69 1.37 1.37 1.16 1.06 1.16 1.18

3.33 3.88 4.25 3.78 4.57 4.71 3.56 3.50 2.75 3.89 3.71 3.71

1.58 0.84 1.04 1.09 0.54 0.49 1.24 1.31 1.17 1.05 1.38 1.25

2.85 2.54 3.08 3.69 4.25 4.00 3.50 3.25 2.83 3.75 4.27 4.00

1.35 1.27 1.26 0.95 1.06 1.04 0.91 1.14 1.34 1.14 0.91 1.20

3.00 2.82 3.50 3.79 4.00 3.77 3.17 3.60 2.77 3.54 3.85 4.00

1.41 1.54 1.35 0.80 1.24 1.30 1.19 0.97 1.24 1.20 1.07 0.95

Notes: p =.05 significantly different a = FT career different from PT career b = FT career different from homemakers c = PT career different from homemakers d = FT career different from entrep. e = PT career different from entrep. f = Homemakers different from entrep.

Index accomplishment 16, 31–2, 50–52, 58, 61, 66, 70, 73, 118 adolescence 6, 26, 63, 99, 133 advancement see career, advancement advisors 139–40 African-American women 6–8, 30, 56, 59, 130 age 5, 8, 11, 17–18, 27, 36, 103, 147 see also child, age for maternal employment Ajzen, I. 20–21, 37, 148 anxiety 82–3, 86, 93–4, 96, 105–6, 109, 118, 129 approval see norms aspirations see plans attitude 14, 20–22, 28, 35, 118, 131, 151 authenticity 19, 147 autonomy 26, 33, 62 baby see infant babysitter see childcare balance 19, 22, 28, 32, 51, 62, 64, 81, 83, 88, 92, 95, 99, 104, 106, 120, 129, 141, 145, 151 barriers 7, 16, 23, 28, 69, 75, 85, 105–6, 122, 128, 149 behavior 20–21, 30, 32, 130, 133, 137 see also plans, consistency with behavior beliefs 6, 7, 22, 28, 32, 68–9, 84–5, 95, 101, 103–6, 121, 129–33, 137, 139, 142 benefits see employment, benefits birth see childbirth boredom 33, 53, 55, 67–8, 70, 74, 78, 90, 93, 96, 98, 105, 108, 113–15, 132, 146 boss see supervisor breadwinners 8–9, 11, 13, 49, 53–4, 59–60, 64–7, 133–5 see also husbands, as breadwinners

career 13, 16, 18–20, 24, 27, 32, 91, 93–4, 105, 142 advancement 8, 22–4, 28, 51–2, 86, 91, 99, 131, 139–42, 145–50 see also mobility; promotion boundaryless 19, 148 change see occupation, change; plans, changed; change, individual choice 18–19, 22, 27, 32–3, 72–3, 91, 112, 128–31, 137–52 counseling 139–40 development 18–20, 147 goals, see goals opportunity see opportunity patterns 18–19, 26, 32, 36, 72–3, 88–9, 91, 152 plans see plans preparation 18, 32, 36 see also college protean 19–20, 148 stage 17–20, 35–6 success 26, 30, 32, 35, 93, 148–9, 152 careerists 8–9, 11, 13, 49–53, 55–64, 73–7, 86, 112, 133–5, 149 career women 49–69, 107, 121–2, 128, 136, 138 caregiver 35, 57, 63–4, 66–8, 70, 75, 83, 102–3, 107, 109, 121, 128, 142–4, 151 caretaker see caregiver causality 152 challenge 8, 19, 23, 52, 55–8, 62, 64, 75–6, 90, 92, 137, 140, 145–7 change individual 17–20, 38, 86, 93, 98, 105, 110–11, 130–37 occupational see occupation, change social 133, 147, 150 child 4–8, 10, 12, 16, 23, 26 age for maternal employment 68, 73, 75, 78–80, 82, 95, 97–9, 101, 103–4, 110–12, 114, 117, 119 189

190


see also mother, childcare by attention when needed 26, 51, 77–8, 85, 95, 102, 105, 128 consequences of employment on 25–6, 86, 150 discipline 25–6, 101 feel close to 69, 85, 104 growth 52, 80, 94–6, 98, 103, 116, 118, 138 illness 31, 57, 70 independence 26, 55, 76, 89, 95, 98, 100, 111 loved 95, 101–2 never had 49, 64–8, 70, 109, 143 number 33–4, 50, 53, 69, 85, 91, 99, 103–4, 121, 128–9, 143, 152 security 95, 101 spacing 6, 50–51, 91, 99, 152 training 85, 104, 101 welfare 25, 31, 34, 86, 100, 104–5, 132, 136–7, 143, 148–9 childbearing see childbirth childbirth 7–8, 17–18, 23–4, 31, 33, 36, 38, 68, 72, 85, 89, 138 delayed 4, 6, 8, 30, 50, 58, 69, 78, 88, 91, 128 see also pregnancy childcare 8, 13, 24–6, 69, 83, 92, 99, 115–18, 120–22, 130 quality 25–6, 28, 34, 36, 51, 58, 74, 77, 81, 101, 105, 128, 146 see also daycare; husbands, child care by; mother, childcare by; nanny; relatives, childcare by childless see child, never had childrearing 6, 22, 33, 91, 100, 103 children see child choice 17–19, 22, 27, 32–3, 72, 91, 112, 116, 128–30, 136–7, 142, 148 see also decision-making cohort 30, 133 college 5–6, 8, 12, 128–31 beliefs 130–37, 139 for respondents’ children 25, 59–60, 63, 75–6, 81, 90, 93–4, 111, 114, 138 respondents as students 6–8, 32, 50, 58, 61, 64, 67, 73, 75–6, 78, 82, 84, 88–91, 93, 95–6, 99–101, 104, 113–14, 118–21, 138–9

commitment to career or employment 33–4, 70, 72, 93, 121, 151–2 to child or parenthood 25, 51, 104 to homemaking 33, 104, 121 to organization 22–3, 27, 35, 101 commute 51, 53, 57, 74, 102 compensation see income; pay conflict see role, conflict consequences 20, 22–9, 31, 34, 36–8, 70, 86, 105, 131–3, 137, 148–50 control 21, 33, 73, 85, 96, 105 coping 33–4, 51–3, 57, 69, 79, 85, 95, 150–51 counseling see career, counseling couple 6, 19, 143, 148, 152–3 co-workers 23–4, 33–4, 51, 132, 148 see also peers creativity 24, 36, 81, 103 cultural context 5, 7, 9, 10–11, 153 daughter 6, 28–30, 55, 91 daycare 6, 58, 74–86, 92–3, 98, 105, 107, 116–19, 137 see also childcare decision-making 7, 16–17, 19–20, 23–5, 30–38, 85, 151 alternatives 6, 7, 18, 20, 22, 29–31, 36–8, 50, 58, 61, 66–8, 99–100, 102–3, 110, 115, 121, 123, 129–30, 137– 41, 143, 150 become an entrepreneur 108–23, 129–30, 137 change employer 51–9, 62–4, 66–7, 74, 80–81, 102, 104, 137, 145 change occupation 62–3, 66–8, 75–7, 81–3, 86, 90, 113–14, 118 have a child 51, 65–6, 68, 73, 96, 108, 114 not work 67, 69, 78–9, 89–90, 92–106, 112–13, 115–21, 129, 137 work 51, 53–5, 59–60, 66, 69, 73–5, 91–2, 97–9, 108, 110–12, 114–15, 128, 135–7 work part-time 73–4, 76–86, 128–9 see also choice decision rules and scripts 20, 30–37, 137, 148

Index demotion 52, 89, 92, 120 depression 73–4, 80, 113, 118, 142 development 16–19, 23, 26, 101, 146–7 see also career, development discrimination 25, 28, 149 divorce 53, 58–61, 70, 76, 82, 94, 103–4, 108, 119, 144 downsizing 4, 94 economy 7, 9 education 11, 22–3, 26–7, 106, 119, 138 graduate 8, 10, 12, 51, 62, 66, 74, 76–7, 80, 82, 88, 90, 94, 98, 101, 104, 106, 110, 120 see also college emotions 24–5, 28, 34–5, 51, 69, 70, 86, 90, 96, 105, 113, 141–2 see also anxiety; happiness employee 10, 34, 107, 145–6 employer see organization; policy, organizational employment benefits 26, 90, 102–3, 111–12, 123, 130, 146 full-time 4, 8, 12–13, 26–7, 37, 42, 49–76, 78, 88, 91–3, 99, 102, 108, 122, 128–9, 133–7 interruptions see leave opportunities see opportunity part-time 6, 8, 12–13, 26–7, 34, 37, 60, 72–86, 88, 92–6, 98–104, 113–15, 118, 121, 128–9, 133–7, 140–41, 146, 149 temporary 90, 227 empty nest 17 entrepreneur 10, 12, 33–4, 103, 107–23, 129–30, 140 exhausted see tired expectations 21, 29–30, 51–2, 62, 72–4, 89, 113, 120, 137–9, 150 career or job 6, 51–2, 89–92, 123 family 6, 8, 11, 22, 51, 95 experience 6, 21–3, 26, 30, 35, 38, 89, 91, 95, 106, 109, 111, 120, 133, 150 family 4–5, 8, 18, 22, 37 52, 55–8, 63–4, 69–70, 76, 83–5, 90, 102, 105–6, 109, 117, 121 family business 76, 107, 110–12, 122–3

191

family-friendly employment policies see policies, organization family values see values father 6, 25–6, 28–9, 52, 81, 98, 110–12, 142 child care by see husband, childcare by; relatives, childcare by see also parents fatigue see tired fear see anxiety feelings see emotion fertility 29, 56, 69, 73, 85, 89, 105, 128, 143, 153 finances see income, need firm see organization Fishbein, M. 20–21, 37, 148 flexibility 4, 24, 26, 33–34, 51–3, 57, 62, 70, 72, 76–7, 79–81, 84, 86, 93–4, 99, 102, 106, 111, 113, 115, 121, 123, 128, 130, 137–41, 145 foster child 63–4 friends 34, 65, 67–9, 76, 81, 83–4, 90–91, 93, 99, 105, 116, 132 fringe benefits see benefits full time employee see employment, full time future 52, 59, 62–3, 66, 75–6, 79–82, 90, 93–4, 98–100, 102–4, 109–15, 117–21, 138 fun 55, 58, 78, 108, 137 gender role see role, gender glass ceiling 4 goals 6, 17, 19, 29–30, 32, 95–6, 130 government see policy, government grandchild 63, 94–6, 116 grandparents 30, 78, 120 Greenhaus, J. H. 151 growth see child, growth guilt 25, 34, 54, 70, 81, 93, 99, 132, 143 Gutek, B. A. 18, 147 Hall, D. T. 19 Han, S. K. 19, 148 happiness 35, 54, 70, 73, 81, 86, 90, 93, 105, 109, 142 haven 35 health 9, 31, 34–5, 57, 73, 84–5, 91, 97, 105, 111–12, 119, 137–8, 140, 148, 153 see also illness

192


health insurance see employment, benefits help see support home 34, 36, 64, 66, 74–6, 79, 84, 90, 99, 101, 107–8, 110, 113, 115, 118–20, 138 homemaker 8–10, 12–13, 17, 24, 30–33, 36–7, 77–8, 80, 84–5, 88–107, 122–3, 129–30, 133–8, 142–4 homemaking 6, 18, 22, 24–5, 32, 55, 79, 88–107 hours 27–8, 33–4, 51, 62, 69, 73, 76–85, 90–92, 98–102, 107–9, 113, 121–3 flexibility of see flexibility see also time housewife see homemaker; wife housework see homemaking human resource management (HRM) see policy, organizational husband 8, 19, 24–5, 54–6, 62–3, 65, 68, 77, 85–6, 94–105, 108–12, 144 approval by see norms, husband advice in decision making 85, 89–90, 98, 101, 103–5, 108, 110, 113, 117, 120, 142, 144, 148 as breadwinner 31–2, 94–5, 98, 103–4, 129 careers of 24–5, 36–7, 52, 58, 69–70, 75, 83, 105–6, 109, 111–12, 115, 137 childcare by 25–6, 56, 79, 84, 101, 109 consequences for 24–5, 85, 105 support for wife 6, 24–5, 28, 34, 51–2, 69–70, 74, 80–82, 105, 114, 118, 128, 132, 136, 144 see also couple; income, husband; relationship; time, for husband identity 19, 28, 31–2, 78, 133 illness 6, 68–70, 72, 74, 84, 90, 99, 102, 105, 109, 115, 116, 119 see also health income 20–23, 34, 36–7, 62, 69, 85, 92, 99, 110, 137 family 10, 31, 51, 54–5, 64, 69, 79, 97, 102–3, 107–9, 113, 115, 120, 130

husband 8, 10–12, 24, 50, 69, 94–5, 98, 103–6, 120, 122, 129, 144, 150 own 8, 10–12, 22–3, 25–7, 35, 37, 51–2, 56, 59, 62, 69, 81, 108–9, 113–17, 119, 122, 128–9, 132, 139, 142–3 need for 29, 31, 50, 54, 58–9, 70, 72, 74, 81–4, 91–3, 95–8, 101–2, 105, 115, 123, 148, 150 see also pay independence 24–5, 36, 77, 143 see also child, independence infant 4, 8 infertility see fertility in-laws see relatives job 6–8, 16, 26, 31–3, 69, 73–4, 85, 105, 138 flexibility see flexibility loss see unemployment sharing 74, 82, 140 see also employment; occupation; satisfaction, job; security Kossek, E. E. 32, 35, 151 labor force 4, 26–8, 36, 88, 104–8, 127, 129–53 participation rate 4, 23, 69, 88 labor market 26–7, 88 laid off see unemployed Lambert, S. 32 Larwood, L. 18, 147 leave 9, 106 maternity 27–8, 33–4, 51, 53–4, 60, 69, 76, 78–82, 85, 90, 92–4, 111, 114, 120–22 see also turnover leisure 24, 32, 35–6, 52, 111, 138, 149 Levinson, D. 16–17, 147 life events 3, 14, 30, 38, 85, 105 life stages see development lifestyle 8, 17, 22, 52, 93, 98, 107, 110 loneliness 86, 90 105, 108 Lopata, H. 17, 147 luck 56, 80, 84, 102, 153 Mainiero, L. A. 19, 147

Index marriage 6, 8, 11–12, 17–18, 29, 35, 51, 53, 59–60, 62–3, 66, 69–70, 74–6, 78–83, 85, 89, 93–4, 96, 98–9, 102–4, 110–11, 114–15, 117–19, 138 delayed 30, 109, 128 see also family; relationship maternity leave see leave, maternity maximum expected utility see rational expected utility mentor 23, 37, 59, 100, 149 mental stimulation 77, 83, 86, 92, 129, 140 mobility 5, 19–20, 23, 54, 78, 81–2, 94, 114, 140, 146 see also career, advancement; promotion models of development see development Moen, P. 19, 148 mother 6, 11, 28–32, 51, 62, 67, 73, 75–6, 79–80, 82, 89, 91–3, 96, 103, 108, 112, 115–16, 119–20, 135–6 childcare by 25, 35–7, 79, 80, 83, 88–106, 117, 129, 142–3 see also child, age for maternal employment single 58–60, 73, 77, 142, 152 see also parents; relatives move see relocation nanny 54, 57, 74–5, 99 nesters 8–9, 11, 13, 133–5 network 18–19, 23, 35, 37, 57, 75, 120, 149, 153 non-parent women see child, never had norms 65 gender role see role, gender of husband 25–6, 29, 79–80, 84–5, 104–5, 109, 115–16, 121, 129, 138, 150 of parents 28–9, 104, 115, 121, 129, 132 of supervisors and coworkers 132 obstacles see barriers occupation 4, 6, 8, 12, 19, 24, 32 106, 122–3 152 accounting 5, 7–8, 10, 12, 18, 22, 36, 38, 50, 63, 66, 74–5, 90–91, 112

193

change 73, 75, 77, 81–3, 86, 113–14, 118, 129, 140, 150 choice see career, choice computers 8, 55, 59, 79, 81, 109–10, 113–15 consulting 60, 83–4, 92, 109, 115, 121–2, 141 homemaking 88–106 law 53, 56, 76–7 management 4–5, 8, 12, 27, 50–56, 58, 60, 62–3, 89, 92, 94, 97–9, 110–12, 117, 120 musician 65, 95, 109, 114–16 nursing 76, 101 physician 53, 56, 109 professional 5, 19, 24, 26, 34, 64, 53, 80, 83, 93, 97, 99, 106, 108 real estate 63, 82–3 scientist 8, 12, 66, 119 social work 89, 103–4, 111 teacher 12, 59, 76, 82–3, 91, 95, 97–8, 109, 113–19 occupational segregation 27, 33 opportunity 4–5, 16, 18, 22, 26–9, 33, 37, 54, 70, 75, 79, 83–4, 105–6, 140, 142, 146, 153 organization 19–20, 22–3, 28, 35, 74, 80, 144–56, 153 policies see policies, organizational parents 16, 28–9, 52, 58, 73, 95, 101, 103, 105, 117, 143 approval see norms, parents see also mother; father; relatives support of see relatives, support part-time employment see employment, part-time pay 23–4, 26–8, 32–3, 90, 108, 113, 133, 149 raises 26–8, 94, 140 see also income peers 16, 19, 34, 38, 52 see also co-workers perceptions 22, 25, 133, 150 performance 22, 27–8, 109, 115–16 persistence 69–70, 141 phase I 5–7, 9–11, 14, 17, 37–8, 49, 53, 88, 127, 131 phase II 7–14, 17, 37–8, 51, 69, 82, 84, 91, 96–7, 104, 108, 110, 112, 114, 120–21, 127, 131

194


phase III 9–12, 14, 37–8, 51, 69, 85, 104, 121, 127, 131 phase IV 10–12, 14, 17, 38, 69, 85, 88, 105, 121, 127, 138 plans 4, 6–7, 13, 29–30, 38, 50, 54, 58, 61, 64–7, 78, 80–82, 84–5, 88, 91, 93–5, 97, 99–103, 108, 110, 112, 114–18, 121, 128, 138–9, 150 changed 51, 54, 60, 62, 66–7, 70, 80, 88–9, 92, 97–8, 111, 113, 116, 118, 138–9 consistency with behavior 9, 12, 133–7 policy government 17, 34, 101, 153 organizational 65, 69–70, 85, 102, 105, 137, 140, 148 postpartum depression see depression Powell, G. N. 151 pregnancy 18 54, 74, 84, 90, 108 see also childbirth pre-school child see toddler prestige 26, 140 process theories 18–20, 147–8 profession see occupation promotion 4, 26–7, 32, 51–2, 54, 62, 73–4, 94, 146, 149 see also mobility; career, advancement psychological contract 4 quit 55, 57, 68, 76, 80, 94, 105, 108, 111, 116–17 see also turnover; unemployment Rapoport, R. & Rapoport, R. N. 18, 147 raise see pay, raise rational expected utility 20–21, 30–31, 35–6, 137, 149 recognition 23–4, 36 regret 51, 54, 58, 60, 76, 93, 95, 112, 110, 112, 119, 141, 144 relationship 6, 11, 59, 63, 76, 111, 118 relatives 99 care for 26, 57, 62, 70, 115 help from 26, 34, 57, 64, 69–70, 78, 81, 93, 98, 102, 105, 120, 128, 142–3 religion 6, 11–12, 77, 91, 101, 103 religious values see values

relocation 29, 55–6, 62, 65–6, 69, 82–3, 90, 96–7, 99, 102, 106, 109, 111, 115, 120–21, 138, 143, 152 resentment 60, 96, 99, 108 resign see quit response rate 8, 10–11 retirement 59, 75, 111, 114–5, 119, 123, 130, 138 role 19, 28, 30–5, 128 balance see balance; work-family balance conflict 29–30, 33–5, 37, 89, 96, 105–6, 140–41, 150, 153 see also work-family conflict enhancement 34–6, 150–51, 153 family 31–2, 152 gender 26, 28, 31–8, 150 interactions 32–4 socialization 6, 28, 31–3, 37, 144 theory 35, 150–51 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey 5 sacrifice 52, 89, 93, 99, 101, 115, 140, 149 salary see income; pay satisfaction 34–5, 51, 54, 59–60, 66, 81, 86, 114, 141, 151 family 25–7, 34, 51, 81, 90–92, 94, 96, 103, 106, 143–4 job 22, 51, 54, 91, 96, 105–6, 113, 143, 151 life 34, 36, 59, 141 schema see decision rules and scripts security 4, 36, 79, 93, 99, 116, 123–4, 148 self-concept 35, 70, 118 self-confidence 8, 30, 79, 83, 93 self-employment 49, 65, 99, 103, 107–23, 129–30 self esteem 25, 36, 51, 91, 98, 100, 139 service 24, 36, 111, 118 sex segregation see occupational segregation single mothers see mothers, single single women 23, 152 skills 23, 28, 89, 93, 110, 115, 118, 120–21, 128, 132, 141 out of date 27, 82, 121, 129 social status 36–7, 89, 128, 145

Index socialization see role, socialization socio-emotional development see development son 26, 52, 58–9 spouse see husband status see social status stereotype 24, 26, 32–3, 145 strategy 6–7, 29–30, 34–5, 95, 107, 118, 128 stepchildren 61–3, 104, 143 stress 33–4, 36–7, 52–6, 69, 79, 82, 92–3, 96, 99, 102, 106, 144 success see career, success Sullivan, S. E. 19, 147 Super, D. E. 18, 147 supervisor 23, 34, 38, 52, 59, 64, 69–70, 74–5, 78–80, 85, 106, 128, 137, 140, 145, 148–9 support from professionals 69, 85, 105, 128 see also friends; husbands, support of wife; organization; parents; policy; relatives, help from teenager see adolescence telecommuting 65, 78–9, 140 Temple University 5 temporary employment see employment, temporary theory of reasoned action 20–22, 37, 148 time 5, 16–19, 24, 32, 34, 36, 67, 78–9, 83, 85, 102, 105, 121 for child 8, 24–5, 51, 62, 69, 75, 82–5, 89, 101–6, 109, 116, 121–3, 138 for self 24, 85, 100, 102, 105, 118, 121–2, 129, 140, 143–4, 149 for husband 69, 85, 94, 105, 113, 118, 122, 138, 148–9 out of the labor force see leave see also hours tired 62, 70, 73, 86, 93, 108, 132 toddlers 17, 24–5, 101

195

training 23, 26, 33, 37, 78–9, 81–2, 89, 102, 110, 113, 149 child see child, training transfer see relocation travel 59, 66, 80, 100, 104, 106, 121, 138 turnover 8, 23, 27, 34–5, 74, 80, 85, 146 see also quit; unemployment twins 73, 90–91 unemployment 4, 9, 12, 28, 55–9, 63–4, 68–9, 75, 77, 79, 81, 88–90, 101, 110–13, 120, 143 see also quit; turnover US Census Bureau 4 US Supreme Court 9 values 21–2, 24, 32–3, 37–8, 70, 78, 82, 106, 122, 142 career 19, 28, 84, 141, 145 family 9, 72, 116 individual 19, 50, 58, 61, 64, 93, 103, 135, 140, 144–8, 153 religious 101 variety see boredom volunteering 79–80, 90, 94, 100, 105, 116, 120, 138 wages see income; pay well-being see child, welfare; emotions; health wife 24–5, 31–2, 35, 65, 67 see also homemaker work see employment; homemaking work-family balance 14, 22, 27, 32, 37, 53, 55, 60, 63, 68, 79, 123, 149, 151 see also balance work-family conflict 25, 32–5, 89, 141, 151, 153 see also role, conflict Work-Family Role Choices for Women in Their 20s and 30s 15 worry see anxiety

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