Nonrecursive Models of Labor Force Participation, Fertility Behavior and Sex Role Attitudes

A negative relationship has been established between female labor force participation and fertility but there has been considerable controversy over the direction and causes of this relationship. 2 causal models of the actual fertility and work behavior of a national sample of married women aged 30 in 1970 are examined using the 2-stage least-squares technique to disentangle reciprocal effects. A 2-variable feedback loop incorporating only fertility and labor force participation and a 3-variable model which adds sex role attitudes to the endogenous variables are included. Much of the work-fertility relationship can be accounted for by controlling background variables such as education and marital duration yet a negative effect from fertility to labor force participation remains. Adding sex role attitudes to the model as a potential source and consequence of fertility and work behavior slightly reduces the size of this effect. In sum the results seem to indicate that the worker and mother roles were to some extent incompatible for these young married women. For this cohort at least the childbearing and rearing role appears to have taken precedence. Work behavior was influenced by the number of children the women had during their 20s; childbearing was not influenced by their work.(AUTHORS MODIFIED)