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Babies, Work, or Both? The Interdependence of Women’s Employment and Fertility in East Asia

Tue, August 15, 12:30 to 2:10pm, Palais des congrès de Montréal, Floor: Level 5, 513B

Abstract

Married women’s employment and parenthood are closely related, as documented extensively in the sociological literature. Less understood is the interdependence of employment decisions and the formation of intentions about how many children to have. This paper uses original in-depth interviews with over 100 highly-educated married adults in the family formation stage in Japan and Korea to analyze how plans about wives’ employment and couples’ intended number of children are formed. We find that fertility intentions are higher in couples where the wife has already adjusted or plans to adjust her employment to existing labor market conditions, which define an ideal worker in ways that prioritize men as breadwinners and wives as specializing in housework and childcare. Only in a minority of couples do wives intend to engage continuously in full-time employment, thus challenging dominant cultural norms. Among these couples, mean fertility intentions are lower than in couples conforming to such norms. Our results demonstrate not only how married women’s employment and fertility are intertwined but how the macro-level labor market context and the micro-level context of the couple affects intentions about the number of children.

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