Abstract
Women have made considerable progress in the labor market, not least regarding the professions. Both men and women are attaining high-status degrees and entering fast-track professions such as law, medicine, and academia. This has changed the conditions for both family formation and careers. While high levels of education and career orientation among women are generally associated with reduced involvement in family life, there is evidence of change in Scandinavia as well as USA. This chapter focuses on how fast-track professionals in law, medicine, and academia fare with respect to continued childbearing. Evidence from Sweden is explored and contrasted with the experiences from the United States. The countries differ in terms of how the labor market works, but also with respect to social policy and gender equality. While Sweden has introduced extensive policies alleviating parents from work-family conflicts, such policies are limited in USA. There are differences with respect to continued childbearing within the group of highly educated professionals, in both Sweden and USA. Doctors are more likely to continue childbearing compared to law professionals and academics. Doctors are different compared to the rest; a result that holds for both men and women. There are differences in the variation across professions by gender, indicating that public sector employment is conducive to Swedish women’s continued childbearing. The results indicate that working conditions and career structures contribute to making it easier for some groups than others to combine a professional career and children, irrespective of country context.
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Notes
- 1.
These reports have; however, been contested by scholars like Goldin (2006), who claims that facts speak against the “opting out” story and that greater fractions of college-educated women today are combining family and career than ever before.
- 2.
Child care fees are based on the total gross income of the household in which the child resides. Fees are only income-dependent up to the equivalent of a gross monthly income of 42,000 SEK (in 2009; equivalent to 5,250 USD at the time in question). After that, the same fee applies to all households, irrespective of income, which is especially beneficial for high income earners. Coverage is extensive—about 85 % of all children aged 1–6 were in public day care in 2005—and therefore dual-career couples are able to spend more of their income on other goods and services that may help them combine career and family.
- 3.
Men and women who opt for a PhD are generally 25–29 years old. Only about 10 % of all PhDs in Sweden are awarded to people under 30. In 2007, 41 % of all male PhD recipients and 37 % of all female PhD recipients were in the age range of 30–34.
- 4.
Thus there is per definition not much of a problem of reverse causality.
- 5.
The analyses do not allow for any strictly causal inferences and do not deal with selection, whether this be into professions based on family orientation or into larger family sizes.
- 6.
The data derive from the multigenerational register ( Flergenerationsregistret), which contains information on biological and adopted children to all index persons in the sampling frame (all individuals in birth cohorts 1942–1989 who resided in Sweden at some point in time after 1960). Due to frequent cases of missing information on adoption dates, only biological children are included in the analysis.
- 7.
Total income includes wages for employees and self-employed and benefits paid in connection to work (i.e., parental leave, pensions, unemployment benefits, and payment from sickness insurance). To enable comparisons over time, annual income is related to the so called price base amount (hereafter simply called base amount) of the year. The base amount is set for each year on the basis of changes in the consumer price index (CPI). Its main purpose is to adjust different kinds of public benefits (pensions, student aid, sickness insurance, etc.) to account for inflation. A variable measuring the income share earned by the woman proxies her relative position in the partnership.
- 8.
An odds ratio is a measure of effect size. It describes the strength of association between data values (for example x and y). If the odds ratio is greater than 1, then there is an association in the sense that having some properties, such as x) (relative to not having x) increases the odds of having y. It should be made clear that we are talking about associations since the causal link has not necessarily been established.
- 9.
This is corroborated by sensitivity tests where the model is estimated with different professions as reference categories.
- 10.
The results hold up for a number of sensitivity tests including stepwise modeling with a gradual inclusion of independent variables, and the estimation of logit models of the probability of having a second or a third birth within 5 years, to see if the results are driven by a subgroup with a specific temporal fertility behavior. Also, logit models where the covariates refer to the situation at the time of the previous birth are estimated in order to obtain a counterfactual that renders similar results. Since the original analysis is based on a select group consisting of men and women who have attained their professional status and started their careers at the time of their first birth, logit models are estimated for individuals who ever attain the professional status in question. None of these sensitivity checks alters the pattern observed.
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Stanfors, M. (2015). Family Life on the Fast Track? Gender and Work–Family Trade offs Among Highly Educated Professionals: A Cross-Cultural Exploration. In: Mills, M. (eds) Gender and the Work-Family Experience. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08891-4_17
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