The Changing Role of Mothers’ Status in Children’s College Completion

Despite vast changes in women’s status in society and in the home, we have little understanding of the changing role of mothers in shaping children’s life chances. Mothers’ contributions may have grown given their increased status—measured here as their education, earnings, and occupational status—and the rise of single-parent families. Using data from three large nationally representative U.S. surveys, we find that the returns to mothers’ and fathers’ status for children’s college completion have been remarkably stable among children born from the 1930s to the 1980s and thus account for little of observed increases in college completion. By contrast, increased levels of mothers’ status account for more of recent increases in college completion than fathers’ status. That continued increases in college completion have more to do with the rising status of mothers than fathers has been overlooked by previous research.