Childbearing and Women's Employment: Parity Differences in Job Exits

Marin Clarkberg, Cornell University
Kathryn Hynes, Cornell University

Childbearing reduces female labor force participation, but most mothers will both return to work and bear another child. Yet, little is known about how higher parity births affect maternal employment. We consider two explanations for the negative impact of childbearing on female employment. First, families compare the gains to female employment to the costs of "outside" child care. Second, some women have an underlying preference to stay home look at the onset of childbearing as an opportunity to exit the work force. These processes work together to contribute to job exits around a first birth, but the balance of these forces may change as parity increases, as many mothers have left the work force already. To examine these processes, we estimate continuous time event historical models of job exits surrounding first versus higher parity births using data on women from the 1979 through 1998 waves of the NLSY.