Occupational Characteristics and Fertility Delays: Exploring the Link Between Women’s Employment and Childbearing in the Post-Recession United States

Understanding the link between women’s employment and childbearing is essential to evaluate how gendered work and family structures affect individuals’ fertility trajectories and, consequently, population-level trends. Data challenges have limited analyses of the antecedents to parenthood during the 2010s, a period of declining birth rates in the US. This study introduces and evaluates longitudinal data from the Current Population Survey as a novel tool for studying predictors of fertility and combines it with occupational information to examine how young adult women’s employment characteristics shape their likelihood of becoming mothers between 2013 and 2018. Employment itself does not hinder parenthood, but working in high work-family conflict occupations reduces the likelihood of motherhood. This association is not attributable to selecting occupations based on fertility expectations. As birth rates continue to decline, promoting work-family policies may reduce fertility delays.