Showing papers by "Linda J. Waite published in 1981"

Young women's transition to marriage.

Abstract: This paper examines determinants of timing of marriage for young women by modeling the transition from the single to the married state by age. This approach, combined with a large longitudinal data set, allows us to disaggregate the analysis into fine age groupings and to include situational and attitudinal factors in our model. We find that those characteristics of a young woman's parental family that reflect the availability of parental resources tend to decrease the chances of a marriage during the early teens. Chances of marrying appear to decrease with increases in the availability and attractiveness of alternatives to the wife role and in the costs of assuming it. We discuss these results from the perspective of the societal and parental normative pressures which affect timing of marriage for young women.

Marital Dissolution, Early Motherhood and Early Marriage

Abstract: The age at which a young woman marries appears to be related strongly to the probability that the marriage remains intact: older couples tend to make more stable pairings than those who wed while quite young. But youthful marriages are often accompanied by youthful childbearing. The effects of the age at which the woman 1st wed and the age at which she bore her 1st child on the likelihood that the marriage dissolved during this period were assessed net of each other and of other circumstances and characteristics of the woman. It was found that among young wives teenage parenthood did not appear to increase the risk of divorce or separation whereas teenage marriage significantly raised the probability of disruption. When the analysis was performed separately by race this pattern held among white wives; however for black wives a 1st birth before age 20 was found to increase instability more than a 1st marriage before that age. The finding that age at 1st marriage but not age at 1st birth is significantly related to the probability of marital dissolution appears robust in the total sample: among subsamples of wives all married at about the same age the age at which they had their 1st birth did not influence stability of marriages. Data were drawn from the US National Longitudinal Study of the Labor Market Experiences of Young Women which sampled over 5000 women aged 18-24 in 1968 with reinterviews each following year up to 1972. (authors modified)

U.S. women at work.

Abstract: Women made up 43% of the U.S. labor force in 1980 up from 29% in 1950 and 52% of all women 16 and over were working or looking for work compared to 34% in 1950. The surge in womens employment is linked to more delayed marriage divorce and separation womens increased education lower fertility rapid growth in clerical and service jobs inflation and changing attitudes toward "womans place." Employment has risen fastest among married women especially married mothers of children under 6 45% of whom are now in the labor force. Some 44% of employed women now work fulltime the year round but still average only $6 for every $10 earned by men working that amount. This is partly because most women remain segregated in low paying "womens jobs" with few chances for advancement. Among fulltime workers women college graduates earn less than male high school dropouts. Working wives were still spending 6 times more time on housework than married men in 1975 and working mothers of preschool children are also hampered by a severe lack of daycare facilities. Children of working women however appear to develop normally. Equal employment opportunity and affirmative action measures have improved the climate for working women but not as much as for minorities. The federal income tax and social security systems still discriminate against 2 income families. Womans position in the U.S. labor force should eventually improve with the inroads women are making in some male-dominated occupations and gains in job experience and seniority among younger women who now tend to stay in the labor force through the years of childbearing and early childrearing unlike women in the 1950s and 1960s. (authors)

Wives employment: the role of husbands perceived attitudes.

Abstract: Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of the Labor Market Experiences of Young Women, the relations between husbands' perceived attitudes toward their wives' working and the early employment attitudes and behavior of wives are examined. Revisions in husbands' perceived attitudes during the early years of marriage, to conform with wives' employment attitudes and behavior, are found. In turn, wives' employment behavior is influenced by husbands' perceived preferences, but only among black respondents are wives' attitudes influenced by perceived attitudes of husbands. Implications of our findings are discussed.

Young women's preferences for market work: responses to marital events.

Abstract: A causal model of changes in womens longrun tastes for paid employment was developed. It is based on the premise that women have a certain preference for market versus home work at the beginning of a year and that during the year some women experience a marital event which may be a 1st marriage a 1st birth or the breakup of an existing marriage. This marital event may then cause some of the women experiencing it to revise their relative tastes for employment and work in the home. It is argued that changes in the level of such resources as time and money and changes in feelings of personal fulfillment that occur as a result of marriage 1st birth or divorce are responsible for alterations in market work preferences. Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women were used to examine how womens relative preference for market work and home work are affected by the transitions of 1st marriage marital dissolution and 1st birth. This survey includes yearly data on over 5000 young women over a recent 5 year period. Personal interviews were conducted with a national probability sample of the noninstitutionalized female population age 14-24 in 1968 with yearly reinterviews through 1973. The impact of a 1st marriage during a year on preference for market work at the end of that year was consistently negative from ages 14 through 23. The likelihood that a young woman prefers market to home work at age 35 decreases from 10-20 percentage points upon 1st marriage. Women who first marry beyond age 24 experience no change in preferences for labor force participation. The positive impact of marital dissolution on a young womans preference for labor force participation was substantial--between 18 and 29 percentage points--and tended to be higher the later it occurred. The experience of marital dissolution causes women to need to prepare for work. The results suggest that it also increases their desire to work. A 1st birth had no immediate impact but was followed 1-2 years later by striking upward revisions in market work preferences. For women between ages 16-27 who experienced a 1st birth the probability that they prefer paid employment to home was increased by 10-15 percentage points. This effect was consistently positive and was significant for 6 out of 7 age groups. The occurrence of a 1st birth continued to have an impact on a womans preference for labor force participation up to about age 25; marriage had no impact beyond age 23.

Labor Market Characteristics and the Labor Force Participation of Individuals

Abstract: : If there is a distinctively sociological perspective on human behavior, it is one that is highly sensitive to the way that seemingly individual-level processes are shaped and conditioned by the cultural (e.g., Durkheim, 1895) or material l(e.g., Marx and Engels, 1922) conditions of the collectivities in which people live. In its most distilled form, this perspective focuses neither on the properties or collectivities nor on the characteristics of individuals, but on the interaction between individual and collective phenomena in shaping the actions of individuals. In this paper, we apply this perspective to the analysis of married women's labor force participation. At the theoretical level, we formulate a set of hypotheses about the ways in which demographic and economic characteristics of labor markets intensify or weaken the impact of married women's individual characteristics on their individual probabilities of labor force participation. (Author)