This dissertation explores the connections between changing family structures and economic inequalities in the United States. While previous research shows that motherhood lowers women's earnings, few studies explore how wage penalties for motherhood change over women's lives. Moreover, most research examines only the baby boomer cohort; consequentially, little is known about how millennials experience this wage penalty and how such burdens of motherhood have changed across cohorts. This study investigates whether and how the motherhood wage penalty changes both across women's life course and cohorts with these questions: (1) Does the motherhood penalty change over women's lives? (2) What are the transition patterns to motherhood among millennials? (3) Does the motherhood wage penalty vary between baby boom and millennial cohorts? and (4) What factors are associated with these variations in motherhood wage penalties? Using panel data from the 1979 and 1997 cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I found that among baby boomers child penalty increases a few years after their first childbirth and peaks with having teenagers. Baby boom mothers no longer suffer significant wage penalties during their later years of motherhood. The findings also show that marriage is associated with a greater likelihood of transitioning to motherhood among millennials. Higher education correlates with a decreased likelihood of becoming a mother among white and Latina women, but not among black women. The last set of findings indicates that millennial mothers receive smaller or no child penalties compared to baby boom mothers. Married mothers within the baby boom cohort receive the largest wage penalty while conversely their millennial counterparts enjoy a wage boost. The intellectual merits of this dissertation are twofold. First, whereas most prior studies treat the effect of motherhood on earnings as an average effect over time, I examine how this wage effect varies across women's life course. Second, although much has changed in the work and family lives of subsequent cohorts, most studies focus on the motherhood wage penalty among baby boom women. This study thus has expanded the scholarship to examine the motherhood wage penalty and the transition to parenthood among millennials.

A former New York Times reporter tackles the difficult issue of gender economic equality, confronting the financial penalties levied on motherhood.

In this dissertation, I explore how gender inequality-generating processes unfold across the life course and how these processes vary across women. In three stand-alone empirical chapters exploring related themes, I pay specific attention to variation in the effects of gender and motherhood by women's educational attainment. I show that gender and motherhood have heterogeneous effects by education and by other demographic characteristics including race, parity, and fertility timing. I also consider how and why labor force outcomes vary by race, fertility timing, and parity within education groups. By highlighting and identifying variation in processes and effects across groups and across the life course, my findings add nuance to the conversation on women's labor market trajectories. The first empirical chapter, coauthored with Katherine Y. Lin, argues that gender inequality is more complex than a single point-in-time estimate of the earnings gap; there are important differences by age, education, and race. By integrating ideas about intersectional characteristics with life course theories, we uncover whether multiple forms of inequality are maintained, exacerbated, or undone over the life course. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) cohort to estimate growth curve models of annual earnings, paying attention to differences by race and educational attainment in the levels and slopes of men and women's earnings from ages 22 to 47. Our findings indicate that racially- and educationally-advantaged groups see the greatest gender earnings divergence across life, supporting theories of cumulative advantage and glass ceilings. The second empirical chapter asks, to what extent do education differences in timing and parity of women's fertility contribute to education differences in the motherhood wage penalty? Compared to less educated women, college-educated women have children later and have fewer children by the end of their childbearing years. Using fixed-effects models and data from the NLSY79, I estimate heterogeneous effects of motherhood by age at first birth, parity, and age at later births, considering how these effects differ by educational attainment. For women with a college degree, first births were not associated with a wage penalty overall, although a premium was reaped by women who delayed fertility until at least their mid-30s and it increased with further delays. Second and third births, however, did have negative effects on their wages. Less educated women, on the other hand, faced a wage penalty at all births and delaying fertility did not minimize the penalty. These findings suggest that education differences in motherhood wage effects are thus more complex than past estimates have revealed. The third empirical chapter considers how women's chances of labor force exit vary by the number of children they have. Conventional wisdom suggests there may be a tipping point at the second child when women are particularly likely to leave. Women who only ever have one child, by contrast, are thought to be uniquely unlikely to exit. Using data from NLSY79, event history methods estimate the likelihood of labor force exit as women progress across parity transitions. Results show no evidence for a tipping point around the birth of second children. Women are instead most likely to leave the labor force when they are pregnant with their first child and each subsequent child is associated with a smaller increase in the probability of exit. In addition, women who only ever have one child are less likely to leave the labor force than those who have more children and these differences arise as early as their pregnancies with their first children. College-educated women who only ever have one child are especially unlikely to exit. Findings thus do not support the second child tipping point hypothesis, but they emphasize the importance of completed parity and the transition to motherhood for mothers' labor force behavior.

Featuring forthright testimonials by women who are or have been mothers as undergraduates, graduate students, academic staff, administrators, and professors, Mothers in Academia intimately portrays the experiences of women at various stages of motherhood while theoretically and empirically considering the conditions of working motherhood as academic life has become more laborious. As higher learning institutions have moved toward more corporate-based models of teaching, immense structural and cultural changes have transformed women's academic lives and, by extension, their families. Hoping to push reform as well as build recognition and a sense of community, this collection offers several potential solutions for integrating female scholars more wholly into academic life. Essays also reveal the often stark differences between women's encounters with the academy and the disparities among various ranks of women working in academia. Contributors--including many women of color--call attention to tokenism, scarce valuable networks, and the persistent burden to prove academic credentials. They also explore gendered parenting within the contexts of colonialism, racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, ageism, and heterosexism.

This open access book assembles landmark studies on divorce and separation in European countries, and how this affects the life of parents and children. It focuses on four major areas of post-separation lives, namely (1) economic conditions, (2) parent-child relationships, (3) parent and child well-being, and (4) health. Through studies from several European countries, the book showcases how legal regulations and social policies influence parental and child well-being after divorce and separation. It also illustrates how social policies are interwoven with the normative fabric of a country. For example, it is shown that father-child contact after separation is more intense in those countries which have adopted policies that encourage shared parenting. Correspondingly, countries that have adopted these regulations are at the forefront of more egalitarian gender role attitudes. Apart from a strong emphasis on the legal and social policy context, the studies in this volume adopt a longitudinal perspective and situate post-separation behaviour and well-being in the life course. The longitudinal perspective opens up new avenues for research to understand how behaviour and conditions prior or at divorce and separation affect later behaviour and well-being. As such this book is of special appeal to scholars of family research as well as to anyone interested in the role of divorce and separation in Europe in the 21st century.

This book is published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This open access book provides an overview of childlessness throughout Europe. It offers a collection of papers written by leading demographers and sociologists that examine contexts, causes, and consequences of childlessness in countries throughout the region.The book features data from all over Europe. It specifically highlights patterns of childlessness in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, Austria and Switzerland. An additional chapter on childlessness in the United States puts the European experience in perspective. The book offers readers such insights as the determinants of lifelong childlessness, whether governments can and should counteract increasing childlessness, how the phenomenon differs across social strata and the role economic uncertainties play. In addition, the book also examines life course dynamics and biographical patterns, assisted reproduction as well as the consequences of childlessness. Childlessness has been increasing rapidly in most European countries in recent decades. This book offers readers expert analysis into this issue from leading experts in the field of family behavior. From causes to consequences, it explores the many facets of childlessness throughout Europe to present a comprehensive portrait of this important demographic and sociological trend.