How Education Shapes Women's Work and Family Lives Across Race and Ethnicity.

Drawing on life course and intersectional approaches, this study examines how education shapes the intertwined domains of work and family across race and ethnicity. By applying multichannel sequence analysis and cluster analysis to the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we identify a typology of life course trajectories of work and family and test for the interactive associations of race and ethnicity with college education for different trajectory types. While our results show statistically significant and often sizable education effects across racial and ethnic groups for most of the work‒family clusters, they also suggest that the size and direction of the education effect vary widely across groups. Educational attainment plays an outsize role in shaping Black women's work‒family lives, increasing their access to steady work and partnerships, while educational attainment primarily works to increase White women's participation in part-time work. In contrast, Latina women's work‒family trajectories are less responsive to their educational attainment. In combination, the racialized role of education and persistent racial and ethnic gaps across the education distribution yield unequal patterns in work‒family strategies among Black, Latina, and White women.

The Myth of Men's Stable, Continuous Labor Force Attachment: Multitrajectories of U.S. Baby Boomer Men's Employment.

Over the past several decades, U.S. men's paid work has transformed from a state of high stability and continuity to a state of increased instability and precarity. Despite this, full-time employment throughout adulthood remains the presumed standard for modern American men. The authors investigated the diversity of men's workforce experiences using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth "National Longitudinal Survey of Youth - 1979 cohort" and identified six multitrajectories of men's time spent employed, unemployed, and out of the labor force from ages 27 to 49. The authors identified one multitrajectory of steady work, three of increasing unemployment or time out of work, one of increasing steady work, and one of intermittent work. Contrary to conventional assumptions, only 41 percent of men followed a trajectory of continuous, high employment over the duration of their prime earning years. This suggests that most men do not achieve the "ideal worker norm," raising implications for how research and policy conceptualize men's work experiences.

The Life Course of Unemployment and Midlife Health.

Objectives: We estimate associations between unemployment trajectories from ages 27-49 and physical and mental health at age 50. Methods: Data are from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 (N=6434). Group-based trajectory models are used to identify unemployment trajectories. Generalized linear models with a modified Bolck, Croon, and Hagenaars (BCH) correction are used to regress health on unemployment trajectory groups. Results: We identified "Consistently Low (70%)," "Decreasing Mid-Career (18%)," and "Persistently High (12%)" unemployment trajectories. Experiencing Decreasing Mid-Career or Persistently High trajectories was associated with worse physical and mental health at age 50 than Consistently Low trajectories. Experiencing a Persistently High trajectory was associated with worse physical and mental health than a Decreasing Mid-Career trajectory. Discussion: Timing and likelihood of unemployment are associated with midlife health. Mid-Career unemployment is associated with worse physical and mental health at age 50, but not to the same degree as Persistently High unemployment.

Gender, Family, and Healthcare during Unemployment: Healthcare Seeking, Healthcare Work, and Self-Sacrifice.

Objective: This study investigates how healthcare seeking for oneself and "healthcare work" for family-constellations that include the continuation of health insurance, access to formal medical care, and medication adherence-change during a period of unemployment. Background: "Intensive mothering" norms that promote selfless caregiving may discourage women's (but not men's) engagement in own healthcare seeking behavior. Breadwinning norms may oblige men (but not women) to provide income and other resources, including health insurance. Method: This paper relies on data from 100 in-depth interviews with unemployed men and women conducted from 2013 to 2015. An iterative coding process guided data analysis; themes and patterns were evaluated to determine their importance across the data. Results: After a job loss, many women (but few men) stopped seeking previously maintained healthcare for themselves. In contrast, some men rejected obligations to provide health insurance for their family. Moreover, the majority of women (but few men) discussed the prioritization of family in their healthcare decision-making. Conclusion: The intersection of financial inequalities and changing gender norms in healthcare seeking and family healthcare work placed a unique toll on women's health. Implications: These findings expand current understanding of how gender functions as a primary frame and how these frames change, suggesting that gender beliefs about family responsibilities extend to healthcare seeking and family healthcare work and are constrained by social class, even as gender frames change to reshape men's obligations to provide health insurance.

Job Loss and Attempts to Return to Work: Complicating Inequalities across Gender and Class.

Drawing on data from 100 qualitative interviews with the recently unemployed, this study examines how participants made decisions about attempting to return to work and identifies how class and gender shape these decisions. Middle-class men were most likely to take time to attempt to return to work, middle-class women were most likely to begin a deliberate job search, working-class men were most likely to report an urgent search, and working-class women were most likely to have diverted searches. Financial resources, gendered labor force attachments, and family responsibilities shaped decision making. Ultimately, those in the middle-class appear doubly advantaged-both in their financial capabilities and in their ability to respond to the crisis with greater gender flexibility.

Men's Income Trajectories and Physical and Mental Health at Midlife.

Using time-varying, prospectively measured income in a nationally representative sample of Baby-Boomer men (the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth - 1979 [NLSY79]), we identify eight group-based trajectories of income between ages 25-49 and use multinomial treatment models to describe the associations between group-based income trajectories and mental and physical health at midlife. We find remarkable rigidity in income trajectories: less than 25% of our sample experiences significant upward or downward mobility between the ages of 25 to 49 and most who move remain or move into poverty. Men's physical and mental health at age fifty is strongly associated with their income trajectories, and some upwardly mobile men achieve the same physical and mental health as the highest earning men after adjusting for selection. The worse physical and mental health of men on other income trajectories is largely attributable to their early life disadvantages, health behaviors, and cumulative work experiences.

Crossover of Resources and Well-Being within Employee-Partner Dyads: Through Increased Schedule Control.

This study examined whether one partner's additional resources obtained from a workplace intervention influence the other partner's perception of having those resources at home (crossover of resources). We also examined whether one partner's decreased stress by increased work resources crosses over to the other partner's stress levels (crossover of well-being). Longitudinal data came from IT employees and their married/cohabiting partners in midlife (N=327). A randomized workplace intervention significantly increased employee-reported schedule control at the 6-month follow-up, which, in turn, increased partner-reported employees' work schedule flexibility to handle family responsibilities at the 12-month follow-up. The intervention also decreased partners' perceived stress at the 12-month follow-up through the processes by which increases in schedule control predicted decreases in employees' perceived stress, which further predicted decreased levels of partners' perceived stress. Notably, crossover of resources and well-being were found in couples who lived with children in the household, but not in couples without children. Our findings suggest that benefits of workplace support can permeate into the family domain, by increasing partner-perceived family resources and well-being.

Este estudio examinó si los recursos adicionales a un miembro de la pareja obtenidos a través de una intervención en el lugar de trabajo influyen la percepción del otro miembro de tener esos recursos en la casa (cruce de recursos). También examinamos si la disminución de estrés en un miembro de la pareja al aumentar los recursos laborales se traslada a los niveles de estrés del otro miembro (cruce de bienestar). Los datos longitudinales provinieron de empleados de TI (Tecnología Informática) y sus parejas casadas/convivientes en la mediana edad (N = 327). Una intervención aleatoria en el lugar de trabajo aumentó significativamente el control del horario reportado por empleados en el seguimiento de 6 meses, lo que, a su vez, aumentó la flexibilidad del horario laboral de los empleados para manejar las responsabilidades familiares, según reportaron las parejas de los empleados en el seguimiento de 12 meses. La intervención también disminuyó el estrés percibido por las parejas de los empleados en el seguimiento de 12 meses, a través de los procesos mediante los cuales los aumentos en el control programado predijeron disminuciones en el estrés percibido de los empleados, lo que también predijo niveles más bajos de estrés percibido de las parejas de los empleados. En particular, el cruce de recursos y bienestar se encontró en parejas que vivían con niños en el hogar, pero no en parejas sin niños. Nuestros hallazgos sugieren que los beneficios de apoyo en el lugar de trabajo pueden penetrar el dominio familiar, al aumentar los recursos familiares y bienestar percibidos por la pareja.

Covariation in couples' nightly sleep and gender differences.

OBJECTIVES: For most partnered adults, sleep is not an individual-level behavior-it is a shared health behavior with a partner. This study examined whether perceived nightly sleep duration and sleep quality covaried within couples and whether the unique influence of partner sleep on individual sleep differed by gender. DESIGN: Eight consecutive days of diary data. PARTICIPANTS: US hotel employees and their spouses/partners (N=76 from 38 couples, 600 daily observations). MEASUREMENTS: Each day, couples separately reported their previous night's sleep duration (in hours) and sleep quality (1=very unsatisfactory to 5=very satisfactory). Analyses adjusted for sociodemographic, family, work, and day-level characteristics. RESULTS: Dyadic multilevel modeling revealed positive covariation in nightly sleep duration within couples. After controlling for the effects of contextual covariates, partner influence on individual sleep duration was more apparent in men's sleep. When a female's sleep duration was longer or shorter than usual, their male partner's sleep duration was also longer or shorter than usual, respectively. However, a female's sleep was not significantly predicted by her male partner's sleep duration after taking into account the effects of her sleep on the male partner's sleep and contextual covariates. Sleep quality covaried on average across days between partners, and this association did not differ by gender. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate positive covariation in sleep duration and sleep quality within couples. Couples' sleep duration covaried night-to-night, and their sleep quality covaried on average across days. A male's sleep duration is predicted by the female partner's sleep duration but not vice versa. Future research should examine health consequences of couple sleep covariation.

Single mother families and employment, race, and poverty in changing economic times.

Using American Community Survey data from 2001, 2005, and 2010, this paper assesses the relationships between employment, race, and poverty for households headed by single women across different economic periods. While poverty rates rose dramatically among single-mother families between 2001 and 2010, surprisingly many racial disparities in poverty narrowed by the end of the decade. This was due to a greater increase in poverty among whites, although gaps between whites and Blacks, whites and Hispanics, and whites and American Indians remained quite large in 2010. All employment statuses were at higher risk of poverty in 2010 than 2001 and the risk increased most sharply for those employed part-time, the unemployed, and those not in the labor force. Given the concurrent increase in part-time employment and unemployment between 2000 and 2010, findings paint a bleak picture of the toll the last decade has had on the well being of single-mother families.

GENDER AND THE MBA: Differences in Career Trajectories, Institutional Support, and Outcomes.

This study asks how men's and women's careers diverge following MBA graduation from an elite university, using qualitative interview data from 74 respondents. We discover men and women follow three career pathways post-graduation: lockstep (stable employment), transitory (3 or more employers), and exit (left workforce). While similar proportions of men and women followed the lockstep pathways and launched accelerated careers, sizable gender differences emerged on the transitory pathway; men's careers soared as women's faltered on this path-the modal category for both. On the transitory path, men fared much better than women when moving to new organizations, suggesting that gender may become more salient when people have a shorter work history with a company. Our findings suggest that clear building blocks to promotions reduce gender bias and ambiguity in the promotion process, but multiple external moves hamper women, putting them at a clear disadvantage to men whose forward progress is less likely to be stalled by such moves.

Stress at work: Differential experiences of high versus low SES workers.

This paper asks whether workers with higher socioeconomic status (SES) experience different levels of stress at work than workers with lower SES and, if so, what might explain these differences. We collected innovative assessments of immediate objective and subjective measures of stress at multiple time points across consecutive days from 122 employed men and women. We find that in comparison to higher SES individuals, those with lower SES reported greater happiness at work, less self-reported stress, and less perceived stress; cortisol, a biological marker of stress, was unrelated to SES. Worker's momentary perceptions of the workplace were predicted by SES, with higher SES individuals more commonly reporting feeling unable to meet work demands, fewer work resources, and less positive work appraisals. In turn, perceptions of the workplace had a generally consistent and robust effect on positive mood, subjective stress, and cortisol.

Women's Work Pathways Across the Life Course.

Despite numerous changes in women's employment in the latter half of the twentieth century, women's employment continues to be uneven and stalled. Drawing from data on women's weekly work hours in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), we identify significant inequality in women's labor force experiences across adulthood. We find two pathways of stable full-time work for women, three pathways of part-time employment, and a pathway of unpaid labor. A majority of women follow one of the two full-time work pathways, while fewer than 10% follow a pathway of unpaid labor. Our findings provide evidence of the lasting influence of work-family conflict and early socioeconomic advantages and disadvantages on women's work pathways. Indeed, race, poverty, educational attainment, and early family characteristics significantly shaped women's work careers. Work-family opportunities and constraints also were related to women's work hours, as were a woman's gendered beliefs and expectations. We conclude that women's employment pathways are a product of both their resources and changing social environment as well as individual agency. Significantly, we point to social stratification, gender ideologies, and work-family constraints, all working in concert, as key explanations for how women are "tracked" onto work pathways from an early age.

Male Scientists' Competing Devotions to Work and Family: Changing Norms in a Male-Dominated Profession.

Using in-depth interviews with 74 men across different ranks in biology and physics at prestigious US universities, we ask to what extent changing norms of fatherhood and a flexible workplace affect men working in a highly male-dominated profession and what variation exists in family forms. We conceptualize four typologies of men: those forgoing children, egalitarian partners, neo-traditional dual-earners, and traditional breadwinners. Findings suggest male scientists hold strong work devotions yet a growing number seek egalitarian relationships, which they frame as reducing their devotion to work. The majority of men find the all-consuming nature of academic science conflicts with changing fatherhood norms.

Has work replaced home as a haven? Re-examining Arlie Hochschild's Time Bind proposition with objective stress data.

Using innovative data with objective and subjective measures of stress collected from 122 employed men and women, this paper tests the thesis of the Time Bind by asking whether people report lower stress levels at work than at home. The study finds consistent support for the Time Bind hypothesis when examining objective stress data: when participants were at work they had lower values of the stress hormone cortisol than when they were at home. Two variables moderated this association - income and children at home - such that the work as haven effect was stronger for those with lower incomes and no children living at home. Participants also, however, consistently reported higher subjective stress levels on work days than on non-work days, which is in direct contrast to the Time Bind hypothesis. Although our overall findings support Hochschild's hypothesis that stress levels are lower at work, it appears that combining work and home increases people's subjective experience of daily stress.

The relationships between mothers' work pathways and physical and mental health.

We contribute to research on the relationships between gender, work, and health by using longitudinal, theoretically driven models of mothers' diverse work pathways and adjusting for unequal selection into these pathways. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Youth-1979 (N = 2,540), we find full-time, continuous employment following a first birth is associated with significantly better health at age 40 than part-time work, paid work interrupted by unemployment, and unpaid work in the home. Part-time workers with little unemployment report significantly better health at age 40 than mothers experiencing persistent unemployment. These relationships remain after accounting for the unequal selection of more advantaged mothers into full-time, continuous employment, suggesting full-time workers benefit from cumulating advantages across the life course and reiterating the need to disentangle health benefits associated with work from those associated with pre-pregnancy characteristics.