Abstract
It is well recognized that women's roles have changed toward greater equality with men, especially as seen in the long-term rise in married women's labor force participation. Marriage norms have changed to expect men to help more with household tasks and child-rearing. Recently, however, the rise of mothers in the labor force has leveled off, and some high profile women managers and professionals have quit work to be with their children at home. The question has arisen whether the feminist revolution is stalled or perhaps even reversed. The research reported here reframes the question of whether women's equality is threatened and asks instead which women are staying at home and why, and which women continue to combine families and careers. Answering these questions requires a life course approach that compares homemakers and women with careers but who are as similar as possible in age, education, race, and social class. The findings reported here are based on interviews with 48 white and African-American college educated women, of whom two-thirds were women with careers and families and one-third were homemakers. The interviews were transcribed and coded for themes related to identity, relational style, goals and motivation, and adaptive mode. For mothers who are homemakers, motherhood is at the very center of their identity, and this orientation colors all other aspects of their lives. They are dedicated to making their children thrive, and they believe that only a mother can truly fulfill that function. The relational style of a homemaker mother is managerial in all tilings maternal. She is in charge of the household and is wary of help from outsiders, but she is an expert in forming networks that will help her children find friends and engage in outside activities. She enjoys being with her children and is in the habit of always putting her family's needs ahead of her own - a pattern that sometimes leaves her feeling drained and frustrated in meeting her own needs. In her adaptive style, she can be unusually innovative and creative in forging new and better ways to nurture her children. But in facing the future once her children are older, she may be cautious and worried about what she will do, or she may already be thinking about a return to the world of work. The mothers with careers present a contrasting picture especially with respect to their identity. They are more likely to see themselves first as workers who didn't expect to get married or have children. Yet they are thankful for the way family has rounded out their lives. In relational style they are much more likely to seek and welcome help from husbands and caregivers in raising their children. They appear to be driven by enormous ambition to achieve and be recognized. They welcome new experience and adapt by being innovative and flexible in order to find new ways to pursue both work and family life. Race differences were striking in both the homemaker and career groups. Black women in the homemaker group had to go against cultural expectations of their families that mey would continue to work, and they did so with zeal. White homemakers, however, were doing what they considered natural in light of their family history. Consistent with these differences, the black homemakers saw their choice to stay at home as not only deliberate but time-limited, and they generally planned to return to work when their children were a bit older. The future timetable for the white women seemed much more indefinite. Both white and black women in the career group had a strong sense of themselves as being different from others - being told they were outstanding, or the smartest in the class, or the person who would become a leader in the future. While the black women had experienced race discrimination, the white women had not. But the white women had fought discrimination in some other way - because of their religion, coming from a poor family, or having a disability. For women of both races who combined family and career, achievement and recognition through their work was vindication and proof of their distinctive qualities. In sum, the individual life course differences between college-educated homemakers and mothers with careers are very clear. Although both groups have experienced broad historical and demographic change in what is expected of educated married women, their distinctive personal characteristics and life histories help to explain why each group responds differently to the long term rise in women's employment and occupies a different niche on the spectrum of egalitarian marriage norms.