Perhaps the most significant social trend of the second half of the twentieth century has been the rapid involvement of women, especially mothers, in the labor market. Subsequently, patterns of childcare arrangements have changed dramatically during this time period. Extant research has established that many factors such as gender ideology, educational and career aspirations, and access to family friendly workplace policies affect the choices women make about work and family. However, it is less clear how these patterns have changed over time. Through statistical analysis this research examines the impact of ideological factors and the availability of workplace policies on mother's labor force participation and choice of childcare arrangements for two cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey. This project will answer the following research questions: 1) Are there cohort differences in the ways that women balance work and family demands surrounding the birth of new baby? 2) How do ideological factors and availability of workplace policies impact mothers' labor force participation? 3) How are various work and family behaviors linked to past and future choices? And 4) Do these processes operate in the same way for different generations of women? This research makes a number of broader impacts to the fields of gender and work. Although social scientists have documented women's relative disadvantage in the labor force there has been limited exploration of how these patterns are changing over time and what processes result in this change. This research addresses these absences by documenting cohort differences in work and family behaviors and by determining the relative influence of ideology and opportunity on trends over time. A great deal of work addressing gender differences in labor force participation focuses on how individual and family decisions constrain women's labor market opportunities. Researchers pay far less attention to the influence of labor market structures on women's employment behaviors. This research provides an important step in balancing attention to both individual and structural determinants by addressing the impact of workplace policies on women's choices. The broader impacts of this research lie in its contributions both to academic research on women's labor market participation and to policy discussions on the efficacy of family friendly policies for narrowing the gender gap in labor market behaviors.
