To receive a paper, please email Bob Drago , being sure to include your name, mailing address, and the number of the paper you are requesting. Only paper 01-02 is available electronically. The relationship between women's employment and the risk of divorce is both complex and controversial. In contrast, the economic opportunity hypothesis asserts that female labor force participation does not intrinsically weaken marriage, but gives women the resources to leave unsatisfactory marriages. Here we use data from the two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households to conduct the first large-scale empirical test of those conflicting claims.
Recent research has focused on the sources of time parents devote to their children.
This study uses time diary and telephone survey data from a sample of public, elementary school teachers in 46 schools and four school districts in the U.S. to analyze the issue. As hypothesized, most parental time for children is generated by reducing other activities in the home, and by reducing work for the employer performed outside of the workplace. No gender differences in child care time are found for the teachers who are also parents, nor is any relationship to child care time found for a positive organizational climate around work and family, nor for supportive supervisors. Flexible schedules are highly valued by many workers because they tend to reduce pressures imposed by facing time and role conflicts when work and non-work responsibilities overlap in the same block of time. The tightening labor markets of the 1990s delivered such flexibility in the daily timing of work to a greater proportion of workers.