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Author: Smith-Donals, Louise
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Smith-Donals, Louise |
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Life Goals and Occupational Plans: A Comparison of Young American Men and Women Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University, 1983 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning Keyword(s): Bias Decomposition; Career Patterns; Educational Aspirations/Expectations; Family Influences; Occupational Aspirations; Sex Roles This study analyzed the effects of occupational, marital, and parental life goals on contemporary youths' occupational plans. Its basic thesis was that both sexes' plans for employment in their early 20's are influenced by their midlife career goals but that anticipated family roles affect the occupational planning process of young women only. Regression analysis was used to estimate models of occupational plans and to test whether sex interacted with life goals and other determinants of occupational plans. Nearly all youths studied had formulated occupational and family life goals for age 35, but nearly one- fifth of them did not know what job they could expect to have 5 years after the survey. Unexpectedly, boys were far more likely than girls to lack occupational plans. The former group also was surprisingly heterogeneous with respect to academic ability and socioeconomic status. Educational opportunities appeared to distinguish youthful drifters from those whose plans for early employment are likely to be unrelated to their occupational goals. Youths plans were highly sex- stereotyped and strongly influenced by the prestige and sex-typicality (i.e., proportion of female incumbents) of their occupational goals. Sex interacted with significant others' encouragement to enter high-status occupations, those determining youths' occupational goals, educational plans, and the sex-typicality of early work plans. Desired family size and marriage age were unrelated to the prestige of youths' plans, but the latter produced more sex- stereotyped early work plans. Mothers' occupations influenced both plans process of the boys' and girls' at various points, but maternal employment did not affect youths' plans directly. In sum, the results indicate that socially directed "self- selection," as opposed to overt structural constraints or parental influence, constitutesthe dominant mechanism in youths' occupational planning process. |
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Bibliography Citation
Smith-Donals, Louise. Life Goals and Occupational Plans: A Comparison of Young American Men and Women. Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University, 1983. |