Complementarity of work and fertility among young American mothers

Abstract In this paper information about cohorts of young women in the National Longitudinal Survey of Work Experience is used to examine the extent to which women maintain a continuity of work attachment during their early years of childbearing, the years when traditionally they were most likely to withdraw from the work force. The results indicate that women who maintain closer ties to the work force immediately before and after their first birth are also more likely to be employed in 1978 - between five and ten years after their first birth - independently of intervening fertility events and other labour supply factors considered to be important predictors of work. The notion that work and fertility are increasingly becoming complementary activities for American women is supported by these data.