2.2b Education and Parenthood

College-educated women are more likely to become parents after marriage than other women (see Figure 2.7). Only 14% of births to college-educated women happen outside marriage (9% of these women are cohabitating and 5% are single) (Guzzo, 2021). In contrast, 43% of births to women with some college education (28% are cohabitating and 15% are single).

Fallon and Stockstill (2018) studied how women with elite backgrounds managed marriage and parenthood with their careers. Their backgrounds included having a degree from a top-50 university and higher-than-median income. The researchers found that these women felt social pressure to achieve professional success, marriage, and parenthood. They felt pushed into a “condensed courtship clock” to graduate from college, establish careers, get married, and become parents before they were 40 (in that order). Elite women have the economic means to have children outside marriage but conform to class-based expectations of “a two-parent family” (Fallon & Stockstill, 2018).

Social class, gender, and education are meso-level factors, which can mediate macroeconomic factors like stagnating and declining wages and microlevel factors like family support. As a result, women with more education become parents after marriage more often than other women.