Young women in the transition to adulthood carry with them various sets of ideas about “what makes a meaningful or worthwhile life” (Damaske 2011). Among these ideas are schemas that frame young women’s expectations about how their family, education, and work lives are to unfold. While studies have often focused on these realms of life separately, many young women in fact jointly consider work and family matters in forming their aspirations and making critical decisions. A wealth of research detailing work and family attitudes and behaviors that treat these as independent from one another, therefore, may fail to empirically represent advancements in theory that argue individuals’ ideas about education, work, and family as being pieced together—particularly in competing and sometimes conflicting ways (Johnson-Hanks et al. 2011; Miles 2014). Moreover, this dissertation examines (a) how young women combine different ideas about parenting, partnering, education, and work; (b) how these configurations of schema influence educational outcomes; and (c) how configurations of schema change over time especially in relation to experiences of romantic relationships.