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Title: The Changing Effects of Parenthood On Men's and Women's Employment
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Noonan, Mary Christine
The Changing Effects of Parenthood On Men's and Women's Employment
Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, 2001. DAI-A 62/10 p.3577, April 2002
Cohort(s): NLSY79, Young Men, Young Women
Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning
Keyword(s): Employment; Fatherhood; Maternal Employment; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Motherhood; Parenthood; Wage Effects

This dissertation examines trends in men's and women's employment behavior around the time of first childbirth, and in doing so contributes to the sociological literature on gender roles, labor markets, and social change. I use data from multiple cohorts of the National Longitudinal Surveys and employ a range of analytic methods, including decomposition analysis and fixed-effects regression techniques. The first part of the dissertation examines trends in the parenthood-employment relationship for both men and women. Results show that men's employment patterns around the time of childbirth show no significant change; employment for both cohorts of men remains at consistently high levels in the months surrounding childbirth. Recent cohorts of women continue to withdraw from the labor force around the time of their first birth, although they work longer into pregnancy and return to work sooner after childbirth than early cohorts of women. In the second part of the dissertation, I develop a measure of the long-term costs of a work interruption and test whether it predicts women's employment behavior at the time of first birth. Results show that while the average short-term cost of a one-year employment break is $17,000, the average long-term cost is over $80,000. Put differently, over the long term, a woman who takes a one-year break will earn only 67% of what a comparable woman would earn who had not taken a break. Both the short and long-term costs have significant negative effects on the likelihood of women taking one-year employment breaks around the time of their first childbirth; however, the effect of the short-term cost appears to be stronger. The final part of the dissertation assesses whether changes in the magnitude and effect of the long-term costs of an employment break help explain trends in women's employment around the time of childbirth. Results show that the average long-term cost of an employment break has increased considerably over time and does account for a substantial portion of the increase in women's employment. The long-term cost has a negative effect on women's employment behavior at the time of first birth in both cohorts, however the effect has remained relatively stable over time.
Bibliography Citation
Noonan, Mary Christine. The Changing Effects of Parenthood On Men's and Women's Employment. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, 2001. DAI-A 62/10 p.3577, April 2002.