influences children’s work values and eventual occupational attain-
ment (Mortimer, Lorence, & Kumka, 1986).
Research in the 1990s increasingly focused on maternal as well
as paternal employment characteristics (Perry-Jenkins, Repetti, &
Crouter, 2000). In a study focusing on both mothers’ and fathers’
occupations and work values, Ryu and Mortimer (1996) found that
supportive relationships with fathers fostered sons’ intrinsic work
values when fathers had higher self-direction in their jobs. Their
analysis also suggests that adolescents learn their occupational val-
ues more from the same-sex parent than from the opposite-sex par-
ent. Mothers’ work histories, in fact, may play an important role in
daughters’ orientations to work generally. Among young women in
the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY), those whose
own mothers were employed outside the home re-entered the labor
force more quickly after childbirth and were more likely to be em-
ployed one year after childbirth than those whose mothers were
full-time homemakers (Wenk & Garrett, 1992).
The conditions of parents’ jobs affect several child outcomes
that have the potential to shape occupational attainment. For
example, the complexity of a mother’s job influences the quality of
the home environment she can provide for children, ultimately
affecting children’s cognitive development (Parcel & Menaghan,
1994). Mothers’ and fathers’ opportunities for self-direction on the
job, including the chance to exercise autonomy and engage in sub-
stantively complex tasks, affect children’s internalization of parental
norms, thus lessening behavior problems (Parcel & Menaghan,
1993; Cooksey, Menaghan, & Jekielek, 1997). Whitbeck and col-
leagues (1997) found that autonomy at work enabled fathers to be
more flexible in their parenting styles, fostering a sense of mastery
and control in their adolescent children. Mothers’ job autonomy,
in contrast, had no influence in this study.
Schulenberg, Vondracek, and Crouter (1984) conclude that the
family’s influence on vocational development lies along two dimen-
sions: (1) by providing opportunities (for example, educational,
financial, informational), and (2) through socialization (for example,
A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE 53