How Education Shapes Women's Work and Family Lives Across Race and Ethnicity

Abstract

Drawing on life course and intersectional approaches, this study examines how education shapes the intertwined domains of work and family across race and ethnicity. By applying multichannel sequence analysis and cluster analysis to the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we identify a typology of life course trajectories of work and family and test for the interactive associations of race and ethnicity with college education for different trajectory types. While our results show statistically significant and often sizable education effects across racial and ethnic groups for most of the work‒family clusters, they also suggest that the size and direction of the education effect vary widely across groups. Educational attainment plays an outsize role in shaping Black women's work‒family lives, increasing their access to steady work and partnerships, while educational attainment primarily works to increase White women's participation in part-time work. In contrast, Latina women's work‒family trajectories are less responsive to their educational attainment. In combination, the racialized role of education and persistent racial and ethnic gaps across the education distribution yield unequal patterns in work‒family strategies among Black, Latina, and White women.

Parental separation risk before and after the diagnosis of a child physical health condition

“…As noted above, difficulties in balancing caregiving needs with other responsibilities may adversely affect the employment and income of the parents of a child with a health condition, which could lead to financial strain that exacerbates their stress. Previous literature has found that parents' opportunities to combine family and work are likely to be shaped by their educational level (Pessin, Damaske, and Frech 2023), as education is related to both job demands and flexibility, which are known to affect work-family balance among parents of sick children (Brown and Clark 2017;Hjelmstedt et al 2021;Kish, Haslam, and Newcombe 2020).…”