of some careers can be facilitated by delaying family formation, and
decisions may be made with this in mind. Moreover, for young
women, who are still often the primary caretakers for their young
children, there was further evidence of “timing” or “sequencing”
strategies. Young women who had higher educational and occupa-
tional achievement ambitions planned to marry at older ages than
did their male peers. High-aspiring young women placed no less
importance on their future family lives than those who had lower
aspirations, yet they did plan to allocate more time to the non-
married state, perhaps in order to achieve their career goals.
Educational, career, and family formation pathways are woven
together in the early adult years. Educational attainment and fertility
timing, for example, are interrelated for women in the United States
(Marini, 1984; Martin, 2000), and the effects are bidirectional. Edu-
cational attainment has a delaying effect on childbearing, but entry
into parenthood also limits women’s educational attainment. The age
at which young men and women enter family roles has historically
had important consequences for occupational attainment. For exam-
ple, earlier age at entry into family roles promoted men’s earnings and
limited women’s earnings (Marini, Shin, & Raymond, 1989). Evi-
dence from recent cohorts indicates that relatively early family for-
mation continues to have gender-specific effects on adult attainment.
Over the first few years after high school, young women who marry
are less likely to be attending postsecondary education and to be
working part-time (Mortimer & Johnson, 1999). Early parenting lim-
its both young men’s and women’s investments in postsecondary edu-
cation and part-time work and further limits women’s participation
in full-time work. Most jobs in early adulthood are short in duration,
and job exits (to attend school, take another job, or for other reasons)
are tied to young men’s and women’s family status (Koenigsberg,
Garet, & Rosenbaum, 1994). Such early work histories can leave
long-lasting imprints on prestige and earnings trajectories.
Beyond the initial timing of entry into work and family roles
and the ways families shape the early career, decision making in
each domain has ongoing implications for the other. And family
62 CAREER CHOICE AND DEVELOPMENT