Mothers’ Employment when Children are in Preschool: Variations by Race, Ethnicity, and Immigrant Origin

• In Event: 3251 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 11. Gender and Work

Abstract

Public support for childcare in the United States is generally meager compared to other advanced democracies, but public preschool programs have expanded dramatically in recent decades. There has been significant scholarly attention to the implications of this development for inequalities in children’s educational outcomes, but less attention to the implications for the work-family lives of parents. In this paper, drawing on data from 2001-2017 American Community Surveys (ACS), I examine how the public preschool enrollment of children is associated with the employment patterns of mothers, with particular attention to differences by mothers’ race, ethnicity, and immigrant origin. Findings document unequal access to preschool programs for children across groups, as previous research has also shown, but also different patterns of association between children’s preschool enrollment and mothers’ employment. Immigrant families are often doubly disadvantaged compared to their U.S.-born counterparts: Children are less likely to be enrolled in preschool, and when children are enrolled in preschool, this does little to facilitate their mothers’ employment. In conclusion, I discuss the general limitations of existing public preschool programs for work-family reconciliation, but also emphasize that the limitations are more severe for some families than others.

Author

• Christel Kesler, Colby College