Table Of ContentThis is a volume in
STUDIES IN POPULATION
A complete list of titles in this series appears at the end of this volume.
WORK AND THE FAMILY
A Study in Social Demography
VALERIE KINCADE OPPENHEIMER
Department of Sociology
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
ACADEMIC PRESS
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Oppenheimer, Valerie Kincade.
Work and the family.
(Studies in population)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Wives—Employment—United States. 2. Mothers—
Employment—United States. 3. Children of working
mothers—United States. U. Cost and standard of living-
United States. 5. Family—United States. 6. United
States—Population. I. Title. I I. Series.
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To Tony and Chris
Preface
This book grew out of a continuing interest in women's changing economic
behavior in American society. In previous research I have stressed the role of
the rapid postwar rise in the demand for workers in female occupations as a
major factor in explaining the sharply increasing labor-force participation of
older women during this period (Oppenheimer 1970). On the supply side, I
have focused particularly on sociodemographic factors that had actually
reduced the size of population groups from which most female workers had
traditionally been drawn—emphasizing especially the role of the low fertility
of the Great Depression, the rising school-leaving age, and earlier marriage
and childbearing. With regard to factors affecting labor supply, in the sense
of who does or does not decide to work, Γ largely relied on the work of others
in my earlier research. This had indicated that women do respond to rising
job opportunities with increased labor-force participation.
The present book was initially inspired by a desire to explore for myself the
question of factors influencing women's labor-supply decisions. I wanted to
investigate the relationship of women's work behavior to variations in life
style aspirations and needs associated partly with the family cycle and also
with husband's socioeconomic position. In addition, I wished to examine the
nature of the joint socioeconomic characteristics of husbands and wives and
their impact on wives' work behavior. However, over the course of the study,
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xii Preface
my focus gradually shifted to viewing women's economic behavior as only
one of a variety of behavioral mechanisms for dealing with variations in
actual or potential economic stress. Increasingly, I became concerned with
marital and fertility behavior, as well as women's labor-force participation,
and became intrigued by the heuristic value of focusing on the family as the
major unit of analysis rather than on women alone.
The investigation was primarily based on the Public Use Samples of the
1960 and 1970 U.S. Censuses of Population. If used somewhat imaginative
ly, by their very size, such large data sets provide the opportunity for
empirical approximation of theoretical constructs. I took advantage of this
opportunity to focus on socioeconomic differentials in the interaction of
family and career cycles. To accomplish this I have used the age and
occupation of men as the major devices for distinguishing differences in
socioeconomic position and of simultaneously examining career- and family-
cycle behavior and characteristics. My fundamental objective in this ap
proach has been to use empirical research to develop a general theoretical
perspective on family socioeconomic and demographic behavior. And,
indeed, one of the most rewarding aspects of the research was the constant
interplay between empirical analysis and theoretical development, which at
times led me somewhat afield of my original research goals. But this in itself
represents part of the adventure of undertaking research—taking advantage
of an opportunity to seize upon a potentially fruitful area of investigation and,
by employing relatively simple statistical procedures, further develop the
theoretical statement. It is also a way of developing social theory that
maintains close ties with the empirical world.
In essence, then, this book reports on an exploratory study as it uses an
empirical analysis to develop a theoretical approach. It is also one which, I
hope, reflects the convergence of research on family behavior by scholars
from a wide variety of disciplines, most notably economics and history as
well as social demography. Certainly I found that one of the most intellec
tually exciting aspects of the analysis was to search the historical literature
for—and find—a preliminary confirmation of hypotheses I had developed
using modern data. In addition, microeconomic theories and research on
economic and demographic behavior have been significant in developing my
ideas—first, because they focus on the household as a major unit of analysis;
and second, because of their emphasis on the substitutability of one kind of
behavior for another in achieving any particular goal. To social demography
and occupational sociology I owe a long-term debt for the deep interest they
early inspired in me for the analysis of family and career cycles, on the one
hand, and relative economic deprivation as a major motivating force, on the
other. This study, then, is aimed at the wide audience of demographers,
sociologists, economists, and historians who are interested in family socio-
Preface xiii
economic and demographic behavior. It is also intended to appeal to readers
at all levels of methodological sophistication—whether professionals or
graduate students.
The book is organized into four parts. Part I (Chapters 1 and 2) introduces
the theoretical model to be used and the major objectives of the research
(Chapter 1). It also discusses important conceptual and methodological
problems involved in life-cycle analysis and the use of occupation as a major
analytical tool (Chapter 2). Part II (Chapters 3-5) examines life-cycle
squeezes—structured sources of economic stress arising out of the interac
tion of family and career cycles. Chapter 3 discusses the career-cycle effect
on men's earnings and how this is related to different types of occupational
careers. Chapter 4 focuses particularly on the economic squeeze of early
adulthood. It also examines occupational differences in the severity of this
squeeze and age at marriage as one type of response to these difficulties.
Chapter 5 investigates the economic squeeze associated with the peak child-
dependency period, how this has changed over time, and the implications of
these changes for the relative economic position of various subgroups. It also
describes occupational differences in the timing of the peak child-dependency
period and discusses whether these differences may present an adaptive
response to different occupational career patterns. Part III (Chapters 6-8)
examines the nature of wives' socioeconomic contribution to the family.
Chapter 6 investigates the sensitivity of wives' labor-force participation to
estimates of various types of economic pressures, while Chapter 7 looks at
the effect of wives' potential socioeconomic contribution on their labor-force
status. Chapter 8 examines the impact of wives' employment on their
families' socioeconomic positions and its possible feedback effects on wives'
future labor-market and demographic behavior. Part IV (Chapter 9) essen
tially sums up the theoretical implications of the analyses conducted in
Chapters 2 through 8 and represents a more formal theoretical statement of
the issues in terms of adaptive family strategies. As a test of its theoretical
generality, a preliminary analysis of the relevance of this formulation to
historical as well as contemporary family patterns is also undertaken.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation.
I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to the Foundation for soliciting this
research and for its extreme patience during the many years it has taken to
complete the study. Second, I am extremely grateful to those who, over the
years, provided me with invaluable programming assistance—most particu
larly Ken Ong, Rene Baca, Andrew Cherlin, and Rita Engelhardt. I am
indebted to Judith Blake for a copy of the 1960 Public Use Samples and to
Dualabs for selecting my samples from the 1970 Public Use Samples. My
thanks go to numerous colleagues who provided valuable critical comments,
and to unknown reviewers of this book as well as of earlier articles based on
preliminary versions of some of the material included. Regardless of whether
I always agreed with their comments, they always made me think more
deeply about what I was trying to accomplish as well as how I might do it
better.
Some of the material in this volume has appeared in various forms at
previous times. Permission to reprint revised versions of part or all of the
following publications is gratefully acknowledged: "The Life-Cycle Squeeze:
The Interaction of Men's Occupational and Family Life Cycles," Demo
graphy 11 (May 1974); "The Easterlin Hypothesis: Another Aspect of the
Echo to Consider," Population and Development Review 2 (September-
xv
xvi Acknowledgments
December 1976); "The Sociology of Women's Economic Role in the
Family," American Sociological Review 42 (June 1977); "Structural
Sources of Economic Pressure for Wives to Work: An Analytical Frame
work," Journal of Family History 4 (Summer 1979); "The Changing
Nature of Life-Cycle Squeezes: Implications for the Socioeconomic Position
of the Elderly," in Aging: Stability and Change in the Family, edited by
Robert W. Fogel, Sara B. Kiesler, and Ethel Shanas (New York: Academic
Press 1981).
1
Analytical Goals and Conceptual Tools
For many years demographers have debated the nature of the causal
processes involved in the empirically observed relationship between wives'
work and reproductive behavior. Recently, however, the number of socio
economic and demographic variables that are being considered appropriate
to include within a single analytical framework has been greatly expanded,
largely through the influence of economic theories of household decision
making. By far the most fully developed theoretical models tying together a
variety of economic and demographic factors are those of microeconomists
and they rely heavily on notions of household utility-maximizing behavior,
given certain exogenous economic constraints. While many social demo
graphers may object to the notion that the family can legitimately be treated
as a homogeneous decision-making group, the increased emphasis on the
family as a theoretically important unit of analysis should be a welcome
development for the sociologist-demographer who has traditionally stressed
its analytical importance for marriage and fertility behavior.
As beneficial as the growing emphasis on the family is in the study of an
expanded set of socioeconomic and demographic variables, microeconomic
models of family decision making have posed certain fundamental problems
for social demographers. There have, accordingly, been a number of critiques
of these models by sociologists and demographers (as well as by other
3
