Balancing act: motherhood, marriage, and employment among American women

Abstract

This study began as a revision of the authors 1986 study entitled American Women in Transition. In recognition of the change in womens lives we begin this book with an overview of childbearing patterns among American women....Following that we turn to marital status and living arrangements....The middle chapters...review womens socioeconomic gains of the past decade: in education... in labor force and occupational status... in earnings... and in economic well-being and poverty....[The authors also] examine how women combine employment and family roles. The book is organized around the central roles that women occupy throughout their lives. The dominant theme is that most women now perform a variety of paid and unpaid tasks each day rather than specializing in motherhood at one stage of life and possibly employment at another. The strategies devised by individual women to address these simultaneous demands form the demographic patterns described in this book. Data are from a variety of sources both national and international. (EXCERPT)