Understanding the juggling act: Gendered preferences and social structural constraints

In this paper we use longitudinal data to rest the strength of individual preferences and structural variables as explanations for married women's labor force participation. Data drawn from a subset of the Career Development Study are used to compare gendered preferences measured toward the end of adolescence vs. work and family structural variables as predictors of the actual number of hours married women work for pay. Family structures that push women out of the labor force and pull them into family work prove to be the strongest predictor of married women's employment hours, with work structures (e.g., aspects of "good" jobs) and the subjective definition of paid work as a career also being substantively important for explaining hours in the labor force, Our findings also indicate that attitudes formed before and during early adolescence do have a weak but statistically significant effect on married women's labor force participation, at least for baby boom women.