Similarity in Different-Sex Couples' Joint Employment Pathways after the Transition to Parenthood

• In Event: 088 - Regular Session. Family, Work, and Careers

Abstract

Despite growing maternal employment participation, and increasing paternal engagement in childcare, parenthood continues to shape men's and women's employment participation patterns in gendered ways. Changes and continuities in aggregate gendered employment patterns over the past decades raise questions with regard to the variation in these patterns among women and men, as well as within couples. This paper examines a) the variation in American different-sex couples' joint employment patterns during the pre-school years of the first child; b) shifts in couples’ joint employment pathways over time, and c) how individual and couple characteristics shape the degree of similarity in couples’ engagement in paid work. The paper employs a novel analytical approach which combines sequence analysis techniques with regression analyses to capture the degree of similarity in couples’ joint employment pathways, and to examine which factors are linked to greater similarity in these pathways. Findings suggest that partnered parents' employment patterns have become somewhat more similar to each other over time, but that parenthood continues to pull many couples towards unequal engagement in paid work. While the gendered division of paid and unpaid work is often portrayed as driven by economic considerations, findings show that the pattern is gendered: While men’s labor market advantages are clearly associated with a higher degree of dissimilarity in couples’ engagement in employment after parenthood, women’s greater earnings potential relative to their male partners is not.

Author

• Irene S. Boeckmann, WZB Berlin Social Science Research Center