Forming families and careers: The effects of family size, first birth timing, and early family aspirations on U.S. women's mental health, labor force participation, and career choices.

摘要

The three papers comprising this dissertation examine issues surrounding the formation of women's families and careers. The first paper focuses on family size, and utilizes data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth to investigate whether women who have fewer or more children than they initially wanted are at increased risk for depression at mid-life. Results of multiple regression analysis indicate that the relationship between depression and missed fertility targets depends on race and education. Particularly, having more children than initially wanted is related to increased depression at age 40 for black women with less than a high school education. Conversely, having fewer children than initially wanted increases the depression risk for black college educated women at age 40. Most notably, among black and white women who are childless but initially wanted children, only women with less than a college education have an increased risk of depression at mid-life.;The second paper centers on fertility timing and draws on qualitative interview data with 33 highly educated women living in the San Francisco bay area. Findings from this study reveal that delayed childbearing is related to reduced employment postnatally.;Particularly, when women who delay childbearing ultimately become mothers, they are more likely to perceive that they have achieved their career goals, utilized their educations, and made a difference in their fields, which allows them to "feel good" about entering a separate, family-focused phase of their lives, while scaling back or exiting the labor force. This is in stark contrast to women who become mothers earlier, and who feel they still have much to accomplish in their careers.;The third paper uses the same qualitative data to investigate women's career choices. Economic arguments assume that young women have well developed visions of their future family life and how they will combine work and family when they make educational and career decisions. This study demonstrates that this is not usually the case. Young women generally give work-family considerations little thought, assuming they can do it all, and they often ended up with work and family lives that are quite different than they anticipated.