abstract: 'In today''s labor market, the majority of individuals experience a lapse

  in employment at some point in their careers, most commonly due to

  unemployment from job loss or leaving work to care for family or

  children. Existing scholarship has studied how unemployment affects

  subsequent career outcomes, but the consequences of temporarily opting

  out of work to care for family are relatively unknown. In this article,

  I ask: how do opt out parents fare when they re-enter the labor market?

  I argue that opting out signals a violation of ideal worker norms to

  employersnorms that expect employees to be highly dedicated to workand

  that this signal is distinct from two other types of resume signals:

  signals produced by unemployment due to job loss and the signal of

  motherhood or fatherhood. Using an original survey experiment and a

  large-scale audit study, I test the relative strength of these three

  resume signals. I find that mothers and fathers who temporarily opted

  out of work to care for family fared significantly worse in terms of

  hiring prospects, relative to applicants who experienced unemployment

  due to job loss and compared to continuously employed mothers and

  fathers. I examine variation in these signals'' effects across local

  labor markets, and I find that within competitive markets, penalties

  emerged for continuously employed mothers and became even greater for

  opt out fathers. This research provides a causal test of the micro- and

  macro-level demand-side processes that disadvantage parents who leave

  work to care for family. This is important because when opt out

  applicants are prevented from re-entering the labor market, employers

  reinforce standards that exclude parents from full participation in

  work.'
affiliation: 'Weisshaar, K (Corresponding Author), Univ North Carolina Chapel Hill,
  Dept Sociol, 155 Hamilton Hall,CB 3210, Chapel Hill, NC 27599 USA.

  Weisshaar, Katherine, Univ North Carolina Chapel Hill, Sociol, Chapel Hill, NC 27599
  USA.

  Weisshaar, Katherine, Univ North Carolina Chapel Hill, Carolina Populat Ctr, Chapel
  Hill, NC 27599 USA.'
author: Weisshaar, Katherine
author-email: weisshaar@unc.edu
author_list:
- family: Weisshaar
  given: Katherine
da: '2023-09-28'
doi: 10.1177/0003122417752355
eissn: 1939-8271
files: []
issn: 0003-1224
journal: AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
keywords: opting out; family; work; gender; parenthood
keywords-plus: 'UNITED-STATES; IDEAL WORKER; FIELD EXPERIMENT; PROFESSIONAL WOMENS;

  FLEXIBILITY STIGMA; MOTHERHOOD PENALTY; WAGE PENALTY; UNEMPLOYMENT; JOB;

  GENDER'
language: English
month: FEB
number: '1'
number-of-cited-references: '73'
orcid-numbers: Weisshaar, Katherine/0000-0001-5029-9643
pages: 34-60
papis_id: 6dab386128655faa08c156b99c386b75
ref: Weisshaar2018optblocked
times-cited: '82'
title: 'From Opt Out to Blocked Out: The Challenges for Labor Market Re-entry after
  Family-Related Employment Lapses'
type: article
unique-id: WOS:000423323600002
usage-count-last-180-days: '3'
usage-count-since-2013: '69'
volume: '83'
web-of-science-categories: Sociology
year: '2018'