Mobility, Non-Familial Activity, and Fertility

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Abstract
Summary: In this analysis of fertility data from a sample of non-Catholic faculty couples in an American university, temporal patterns and variations in education, employment, marriage, and parenthood of the husbands and wives are discussed in reference to (1) the social mobility-fertility hypothesis and (2) a non-familial activity-fertility hypothesis. The couples are divided into four groups on the basis of family size and mobility status: (1) mobile-small, (2) non-mobile-small, (3) mobile-large, and (4) non-mobile-large. Whatever their mobility status, the four groups of husbands successfully completed requirements for the doctoral degree at about the same age and became established at about the same time in life and within the profession. Whatever their husbands’ social origins, the wives also differ little with respect to educational attainment and in their work experiences in prematrimonial days. However, a different pattern is found in the work experiences of the wives since marriage. Those with two children are more likely to be employed after marriage and parenthood. On the other hand, a good many more wives with four or more children not only never worked before marriage but also remained outside the labor force after marriage (in the earlier years of marriage as well as after the tenth anniversary). The present data thus seem to support an analytically useful distinction between the “working wives” and the “working mothers.”