Gendered transitions to adulthood by college field of study in the United States.

1. IntroductionRecent cohorts exhibit diverse pathways of transitions from adolescence to adulthood. As the normative ages when people settle into long-term adult roles have been postponed, the life course stage spanning approximately the ages of 18-24 has become a period of emerging adulthood (Arnett 2000). During this period people explore various possible relationships, careers, and identities. A key reason for postponing the transition to adulthood is an increase in the amount of time spent pursuing higher education: In recent decades the proportion of 25 to 29 year-olds who have completed a bachelor's degree or higher has risen to about one third (US Census Bureau 2012). College graduates are advantageously positioned to achieve other milestones of adulthood, including marriage, full-time employment, and independent living (Oesterle et al. 2010). Indeed, college enrollment is often the first step of entry into adulthood, followed by independent living, full-time employment, marriage, and childbearing.College graduates' timing of completing the transition to adulthood may vary by field of study. A graduate's field of study reflects their preferences, abilities, and future career plans (Charles and Bradley 2002; Gerber and Cheung 2008). Specialized training and socialization processes in different fields of study lead to stratification among college graduates in earnings (Roksa 2005), occupational mobility (Roksa and Levey 2010), and pursuit of graduate education (Goyette and Mullen 2006). Particularly, graduates who hold degrees in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM)4 and business fields are tracked into clearly defined occupations, and thus achieve earlier transitions to work; whereas graduates with liberal arts, social science, or humanities degrees have more uncertain career prospects (Davies and Guppy 1997; US Census Bureau 2012). Prior research has examined how field of study influences transitions to specific adult roles (e.g., first birth), but research on emerging adulthood demonstrates that relationship formation, fertility, employment, and other transitions cohere in ways that signify the extent to which transition to adulthood is achieved (Frech 2014; Janus 2009). From a life course perspective, educational attainment, job placement, marriage, and fertility are mutually dependent during the period of emerging adulthood, such that one life event has implications for other events (Elder 1998). Therefore, college field of study may affect the overall success of graduates in completing the transition to adulthood across all relevant domains.In this paper we explore how college field of study, with a special focus on the fields of STEM, business, and education, shapes emerging adulthood by stratifying graduates economically as well as in the areas of relationship and family formation. Whereas graduates' college majors are clearly related to fertility (van Bavel 2010; Lappegârd and Rensen 2005; Michelmore and Musick 2014) and union formation patterns (Eika, Mogstad, and Zafar 2014; Oppermann 2014), the outcomes of full-time employment, marriage, and parenthood after college graduation may be interweaved in ways which signify the complementarity of these roles. Investigating a recent cohort reaching emerging adulthood on the threshold of the Great Recession, we test for gendered patterns of transition to adulthood conditional on college major among young adults. By studying multiple domains of emerging adulthood, this paper adds to the knowledge about origins of work-family conflict among college graduates facing stratified prospects in the labor and marriage markets. By comparing transitions to marriage and parenthood between women majoring in STEM fields and women majoring in business fields, this paper also adds to the knowledge about the experience of transition to adulthood among women in STEM.2. Field of study and transition to marriageField of study may be related to an individual's transition to marriage in three ways. …