Social Science and the Public Interest

Excerpt

In the February 2019 issue of Demography, Alexandra Killewald and Xiaolin Zhuo argue that “previous research on maternal employment has disproportionately focused on the immediate postpartum period and typically modeled either cross-sectional employment status or time until a specific employment transition.” Instead, the authors “conceptualize maternal employment as a long-term pattern, extending the observation window and embedding employment statuses in temporal context.” They “document five common employment patterns of American mothers over the first 18 years of maternity. Three typical patterns revolve around a single employment status: full-time (36 %), part-time (13 %), or nonemployment (21 %); the other two patterns are characterized by 6 (15 %) or 11 (14 %) years of nonemployment, followed by a period of transition and then full-time employment.” They believe that they have provided “the first description of American mothers’ long-term employment sequences following the birth of their first child, demonstrating considerable heterogeneity in how women combine employment and motherhood. Research that considers only total employment hours, does not consider part-time work separately, or focuses only on the years immediately following a first birth is likely to provide an underdeveloped picture of mothers’ work-family balance throughout the child-rearing years. This incomplete picture will, in turn, limit understandings of how the traits of mothers and their families are associated with their work outcomes, especially when women’s characteristics distinguish more sharply between the patterns of employment than the levels. Future research on mothers’ employment patterns and their later-life consequences will benefit from continuing to consider a rich set of employment statuses, expanding the length of time postpartum that is investigated, and conceptualizing employment statuses as interlinked and embedded within a holistic trajectory.” (Access at: https://​link.​springer.​com/​article/​10.​1007/​s13524-018-0745-9). …