PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Tanya Byker
TI  - The Opt-Out Continuation: Education, Work, and Motherhood from 1984 to 2012
AID  - 10.7758/RSF.2016.2.4.02
DP  - 2016 Aug 01
TA  - RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
PG  - 34--70
VI  - 2
IP  - 4
4099  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/2/4/34.short
4100  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/2/4/34.full
AB  - Debate about an increasing trend in highly educated women dropping out of the labor force to care for children—an opt-out revolution—has been considerable. I use unique features of the of Survey of Income and Program Participation—a large nationally representative sample, longitudinal structure, monthly labor-force outcomes, and repeated panels—to study trends in women's birth-related career interruptions over time and across the education spectrum. Methodologically, I use event studies to compare women's monthly labor-force outcomes on the extensive and intensive margins from twenty-four months before to twenty-four months after births in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Rather than an abrupt change in opting out, I find that the pattern of birth-related interruptions has changed surprisingly little over the past thirty years—substantial and sustained interruptions remain common for mothers in all education categories. Rather than a revolution, I find an opt-out continuation.