After the baby - work-home combinations profiled

American Demographics, Dec, 1997 by Marcia Mogelonsky

Back to work or stay at home with the baby? Most of us tend to think of it as an either-or decision. But the choice is much more complicated than that, and mothers pursue literally hundreds of possible work-home combinations while their children are young.

Only 11 percent of white mothers tracked by the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 stayed out of the labor force for the entire ten-year period following the birth of their first child, finds Audrey Vendenheuvel of the International Survey Research Corporation. Another 13 percent stayed in the labor force the entire time. The other 76 percent followed any one of 255 variable-role sequences, alternating periods of labor-force participation with homemaking, school, or other nonwork activity.

For black mothers, the figures were substantially different. Just 2 percent stayed out of the work force the entire ten years, and 35 percent worked at paid jobs for the duration. The other 63 percent went back and forth in a variety of 105 sequences.

The analysis demonstrates that most women have a solid commitment to the work force, even during their childbearing years. Labor-force persistence is especially high for women who didnt have a second child during the ten-year period. Twenty-six percent of white mothers and 41 percent of black mothers with one child were in the labor force for the entire decade after they first became mothers.

Womens Roles After First Birth: Variable or Stable? is in the June 1997 issue of Gender & Society. Marcia Mogelonsky