Are Difficulties Balancing Work and Family Associated With Subsequent Fertility

Despite considerable interest in the causes and consequences of work-family conflict, and the frequent suggestion infertility research that difficulty in balancing work and family is one of the factors leading to low fertility rates in several developed countries, little research uses longitudinal data to examine whether women who report difficulty in balancing their work and family roles go on to have fewer subsequent births. This article uses longitudinal data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care (N = 809) to examine whether difficulties in balancing work and family are associated with fewer subsequent births. Our results provide little support for the idea that working women in the United States who have difficulty in balancing work and family delay or forgo having additional children. Instead, women in the United States may achieve their fertility goals at the expense of continued labor force participation.Key Words: maternal employment, motherhood, workfamily balance, work family conflict, work satisfaction.Ever since mothers entered the labor market in large numbers, there has been concern about the challenges they face trying to balance their work and family roles. Work-family conflict has been linked to poor health outcomes as well as low performance and satisfaction in both family and work domains (Alien, Herst, Bruck, & Sutton, 2000; Perry- Jenkins, Repetti, & Crouter, 2000). Most recently, scholars have suggested that women's struggle to reconcile their work and family roles may be one of the causes of the rapid decline in fertility rates in several developed countries (Frejka & Calot, 2001; Lesthaeghe, 2000). Indeed, it is evident that women with higher education levels who are most likely to try and juggle work and family simultaneously are delaying first births and forgoing higher parity births (d'Addii & d'Ercole, 2005; Sleebos, 2003). But it is unclear whether the conflict they experience trying to balance these roles is indeed leading to their fertility behavior or whether other factors may be involved. In addition, U.S. fertility rates have not dropped to the levels seen in other developed countries, leading some to hypothesize that despite less generous social policies, women in the United States must somehow be managing to handle their work and family roles.Although there are many hypotheses in the literature, few empirical studies directly examine the association between women's perceived difficulty in balancing work and family and their subsequent fertility decisions. In this study, we use longitudinal data on a sample of working mothers in the United States to examine whether mothers who have more difficulty in balancing work and family make different decisions about subsequent fertility than mothers who navigate these two domains with greater ease. Because employment and fertility decisions are often made simultaneously, we further examine whether difficulty in balancing work and family is associated with subsequent fertility and or subsequent labor market exits.The current study contributes to both the demographic and work-family literatures. Demographic research on subsequent fertility has relied primarily on socioeconomic characteristics as predictors (e.g., Bumpass, Rindfuss, & Janosik, 1978; Morgan & Rindfuss, 1999). Our models extend prior demographic work by examining the role of subjective factors, such as attitudes and feelings, in fertility behavior. We consider attitudes and feelings subjective because they are based on a woman's interpretation of her situation. Research has indicated that women's attitudes and feelings play an important part in predicting childbearing (Barber & Axinn, 2005). Further, work-family researchers have studied many causes and consequences of work-family conflict, but none have studied whether it is associated with subsequent fertility. In this study, we directly test the association between work-family conflict and subsequent fertility. …