No abstract

Using the secondfollow-up of the National Education Longitudinal Study, we explore how human, financial, and social capital affect educational aspirations differently across racial/ethnic groups. While individual educational performance is important for all racial/ethnic groups, human and financial capital have stronger impact on educational aspirations for whites than for minorities. Asian-American students' aspirations are affected by human capital and whether English is a native language. Parental involvement in school activities-one measure of social capitalhas a strong impact on educational aspirations for African Americans and Hispanics. We then explore the causes for racial/ethnic differences in educational aspirations. When individual characteristics and human, financial, and social capital are introduced, racial/ethnic minorities have greater educational aspirations than whites. The results suggest that factors affecting educational aspirations are different across racial/ethnic groups and some of the racial/ethnic differences in educational aspirations can be accounted for by some otherfactors.

Despite a large body of research on the household division of labor, surprisingly little is known about how husbands and wives divide their family work time across a variety of domestic tasks. What differentiates couples exhibiting gender specialization or segregation in household tasks from those couples who share tasks? Using newly released data from the National Survey of Families and Households, this study has two major objectives. First, a new summary measure of the gender-based segregation of family labor is presented. Second, sources of intercouple variation in the sex segregation of household labor are examined, focusing especially on the effects of time availability, family power, and gender role ideology. The results indicate that, even in the late 1980s, American couples exhibited highly sex-segregated family work patterns, including those couples in which the male partner contributes many hours to housework. The study shows that American males would have to reallocate over 60% of their family work time to other tasks before sex equality in the division of labor is achieved. The analysis indicates that this gender-based division of family work is symptomatic of continuing gender inequality and gender role socialization in American society.

Despite the scarcity of studies of children's participation in housework, it has been established that children contribute a significant amount of total household labor. However, research on why some children contribute more than others has yielded ambiguous results. Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households(J. A. Sweet, L. Bumpus, and V. Call [1988], working paper NSFH-1, Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin, Madison), this study tests two competing theories of children's labor participation. The first, dealing with child socialization,proposes that parents assign household chores to children as a socializing experience (e.g., to promote responsibility). The second posits that children are used as a labor source whenever structural constraints prevent adults from performing the necessary chores, and alter the demand for household labor.The results indicate that children average 7 hours of housework per week, representing 12% of all household labor. Both theories receive support, yet the pragmatic aspects of households (e.g., adult labor force participation) receive greater confirmation.

Previous studies of work/family linkages have emphasized the effects of one domain or the other on the individual, yet few have sought to analyze the interconnective nature of paid labor and family environments. Using data from the 1988 National Survey of Families and Households, this study examines the effects of husbands' and wives' employment and marriage characteristics on their respective perceptions of marital quality. Contrary to previous findings, occupational factors have only a minimal effect on both husbands' and wives' perceptions of marital quality. Husbands and wives are both affected by wives' opinions of fairness in the marriage. The results also suggest that husbands may maintain traditional role expectations for themselves and their wives, despite the dual-earner status of their marriage. The implications of these findings for gender roles in dual-earner marriages are discussed.