An Investigation of the Relationship Among Occupational Opportunities for Women, Marriage, and Fertility Page: 35
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35
are positive. If large families are economically profitable
and if the values of a society reinforce increased child-
bearing, then labor-force participation does not lower the
birth rate. A subdiscipline within the field of economics
has investigated the "household" as a unit of analysis
assuming that each household seeks to maximize its profit
and minimize its costs. They have focused on the costs of
the mother's labor in and outside of the home. Their find-
ings indicate that
. . .the relationship between female employment and
fertility across cultures is not nearly so systematic
as the new home economics suggests. Female employ-
ment is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition
for fertility reduction. During the late 1950's in
the United States, fertility rose even with relatively
high female labor-force participation rates. Fertil-
ity is lower in Egypt, Taiwan, and countries in Latin
America than in most parts of Africa, although female
employment is much greater throughout Africa than in
the former areas. Northern and Southern Portugal have
similiar labor-force participation rates for women but
different fertility rates. Studies in Puerto Rico,
Chile, Costa Rica, and Taiwan indicated that female em-
ployment did appear to result in lower fertility; but
in the Philippines and Thailand, female working status
actually appeared to increase fertility (3, p. 705).
The concept of "role extensiveness," i.e., career com-
mitment, has been introduced in many studies attempting to
make a statistical refinement of labor-force participation
of women. "Studies of role extensiveness have shown that in
urban Greece women with high work commitment have fewer chil-
dren and use birth—control methods more effectively than
women with low work commitment" (3, p. 709). Similar studies
of Latin American women illustrate that career motivation
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Ross, Patricia A. An Investigation of the Relationship Among Occupational Opportunities for Women, Marriage, and Fertility, dissertation, May 1977; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc330883/m1/44/?rotate=270: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .