Chardie L. Baird

Is There a Downside to Shooting for the Stars? Unrealized Educational Expectations and Symptoms of Depression.

Despite decades of research on the benefits of educational expectations, researchers have failed to show that unrealized plans are consequential for mental health, as self-discrepancy and other social psychological theories would predict. This article uses two national longitudinal studies of youth to test whether unrealized educational expectations are associated with depression in adulthood. Negative binomial regression analyses show that unmet expectations are associated with a greater risk of depression among young adults who share similar educational expectations. The apparent consequences of aiming high and falling short result, however, from lower attainment, not the gap between plans and attainment. Results indicate almost no long-term emotional costs of ‘‘shooting for the stars’’ rather than planning for the probable, once educational attainment is taken into account. This lack of association also holds after accounting for early mental health, the magnitude of the shortfall, the stability of expectations, and college-related resources, and it is robust across two distinct cohorts of high school students. We develop a theory of ‘‘adaptive resilience’’ to account for these findings and, because aiming high and failing are not consequential for mental health, conclude that society should not dissuade unpromising students from dreams of college.

EMPLOYEE AWARENESS OF FAMILY LEAVE BENEFITS: The Effects of Family, Work, and Gender

The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was intended to help employees meet short-term family demands, such as caring for children and elderly parents, without losing their jobs. However, recent evidence suggests that few women and even fewer men employees avail themselves of family leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. This paper examines the organizational, worker status, and salience/need factors associated with knowledge of family leave benefits. We study employees covered by the FMLA using the 1996 panel of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to ascertain what work and family factors influence knowledge of leave benefits. Overall, 91 percent of employed FMLA-eligible women report they have access to unpaid family leave, compared to 72 percent of men. Logistic regression analyses demonstrate that work situations more than family situations affect knowledge of family leave benefits and that gender shapes the impact of some work and family factors on awareness. Furthermore, work and family situations do not explain away the considerable gender difference in knowledge of family leave.

Family-friendly benefits and full-time working mothers’ labor force persistence

ABSTRACT Family-friendly benefits are intended to help mothers balance rather than juggle work and family. Prior research assumes that family-friendly benefits have a similar effect on mothers’ persistence in full-time work across parity. However, there is evidence that the transitions to first-time and second-time motherhood are qualitatively, as well as quantitatively, different experiences. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), we investigate women’s labor force status (full-time, part-time, and not working) after both parity transitions among women who were working in the labor force full-time prior to the birth of their first child. We find that mothers often persist in the same labor force status after the birth of their second child that they held after the birth of their first child, but there is wide variability in labor force and parity pathways. In addition, a wider array of family-friendly benefits is associated with second-time mothers’ full-time work than first-time mothers.