Women's Return to School Following the Transition to Motherhood

Abstract

This study draws on a life course perspective and event history methods to analyze the factors affecting the rate of women's school reentry following marriage and motherhood. We use a panel data archive of women born between 1905 and 1933 who were married and had children at the time of their first interviews in 1956 and draw on life histories collected during a second interview in 1986. Key variables related to an increase in the rate of school reentry include higher levels of prior education, holding nontraditional gender-role orientations, and life course experiences such as divorce and part-time employment. Further, more recent cohorts of women are more likely to return to school than those born earlier in the century.