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Author: Kangas, Nicole
Resulting in 2 citations.
1. Kangas, Nicole
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
Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, Stanford University, August 2011
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT)
Keyword(s): Depression (see also CESD); Educational Attainment; Family Size; Fertility; First Birth; Labor Force Participation; Racial Differences

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

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.

Bibliography Citation
Kangas, Nicole. 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. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, Stanford University, August 2011.
2. Musick, Kelly
England, Paula A.
Edgington, Sarah
Kangas, Nicole
Education Differences in Intended and Unintended Fertility
Social Forces 88,2 (December 2009): 543-572.
Also: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/social_forces/summary/v088/88.2.musick.html
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Keyword(s): Abortion; Childbearing, Premarital/Nonmarital; Contraception; Educational Attainment; Fertility; Modeling, Hazard/Event History/Survival/Duration; Racial Differences; Sexual Behavior

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Using a hazards framework and panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979-2004), we analyze the fertility patterns of a recent cohort of white and black women in the United States. We examine how completed fertility varies by women's education, differentiating between intended and unintended births. We find that the education gradient on fertility comes largely from unintended childbearing, and it is not explained by child-bearing desires or opportunity costs, the two most common explanations in previous research. Less-educated women want no more children than the more educated, so this factor explains none of their higher completed fertility. Less-educated women have lower wages, but wages have little of the negative effect on fertility predicted by economic theories of opportunity cost. We propose three other potential mechanisms linking low education and unintended childbearing, focusing on access to contraception and abortion, relational and economic uncertainty, and consistency in the behaviors necessary to avoid unintended pregnancies. Our work highlights the need to incorporate these mechanisms into future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Bibliography Citation
Musick, Kelly, Paula A. England, Sarah Edgington and Nicole Kangas. "Education Differences in Intended and Unintended Fertility." Social Forces 88,2 (December 2009): 543-572.