Understanding the juggling act: Gendered preferences and social structuralconstraints

In this paper we use longitudinal data to rest the strength of individual p references and structural variables as explanations for married women's lab or force participation. Data drawn from a subset of the Career Development Study are used to compare gendered preferences measured toward the end of a dolescence vs. work and family structural variables as predictors of the ac tual number of hours married women work for pay. Family structures that pus h women out of the labor force and pull them into family work prove to be t he strongest predictor of married women's employment hours, with work struc tures (e.g., aspects of "good" jobs) and the subjective definition of paid work as a career also being substantively important for explaining hours in the labor force, Our findings also indicate that attitudes formed before a nd during early adolescence do have a weak but statistically significant ef fect on married women's labor force participation, at least for baby boom w omen.