The research presented in this volume considers a number of factors associated with women's participation in the labor market. These include the educational and training experiences of women now reaching adulthood, the rationales associated with work attachment during the early years of marriage, and the implications of marital breakdown and of family mobility patterns for work and career. The study sample consisted of over 4,000 young American black and white women who were 14 to 24 years of age in 1968. They were studied longitudinally until 1973, through a series of interviews. Addressed in this work are the following topics: (1) socioeconomic changes faced by the sample; (2) college attendance, in particular that of black women; (3) the labor force dynamics associated with withdrawl from and reentry into the labor force when a woman bears the first child; (4) the characteristics of young women that are associated with the choice of an "atypical" occupation, or one considered to be a "male" job; (5) work attachment, investments in human capital, and the earnings of women; (6) the causes and consequences of migration for the economic welfare of young women and their families; and (7) the determinants of marital disruptions and the consequences for women and their children. The discussion is supplemented through the presentation of statistical tables and figures. (Author/AM)