Mothers at Work: Who Opts Out?

Abstract:

Starting from Chapter 4, the author turns to answer five questions that cover opting-out from different perspectives: women from which occupations are more likely to opt-out? Against arguments such that the rigidity, inflexibility, and long hours required by managerial and professional occupation would facilitate opting-out, the author shows that precisely mothers in these occupations were far less likely to be out of the labor force compared to the other mothers. However, given the focus on the differences between occupations, it is unlikely that such data can be found and the tradeoff between the richness of information used and the stricter requirement for longitudinal data is worth it.