Education and the Transition to Fatherhood: The Role of Selection Into Union

Diverse pathways to permanent childlessness in Singapore: A latent class analysis

The proportions of adults reaching midlife without having children have been rising rapidly across the globe, particularly in Asia. However, little is known about the pathways to permanent childlessness within the region's childless population. This study utilized latent class analysis (LCA) to typologize pathways to childlessness based on dynamic characteristics of multiple life domains (i.e., partnership, education, and occupation) among 489 childless Singaporeans aged 50 and above from a 2022 nationwide survey. Additionally, we utilized multinomial logistic regressions to examine the sociodemographic correlates of pathway profiles and Shannon's entropy index to assess the heterogeneity in pathways to childlessness among successive cohorts. Results revealed five distinct profiles of pathways to childlessness: the Never-Married Semi-Professionals, the Low-Flex Blue-Collars, the Highly Educated Professionals, the Ever-Married Semi-Professionals, and the Flexible Blue-Collars. These pathway profiles were significantly associated with sociodemographic characteristics such as gender and family background. Women's pathways to childlessness were more standardized and heavily influenced by partnership characteristics, compared to those of men. The childless from privileged family background were less likely to follow pathways characterized by disadvantageous education and occupational status. There were also rising trends of voluntary childlessness among married childless individuals and increasing heterogeneity in pathways to childlessness across successive birth cohorts. In sum, our findings are consistent with some of the predictions of the Second Demographic Transition theory, suggesting that Singapore may be experiencing a demographic transition characterized by rising childlessness, decoupling of marriage and childbearing, and de-standardization of the life course.

Fatherhood timing and men's midlife earnings: A within-family study of Finnish cohorts born in 1938-50

Fathers tend to achieve higher earnings than childless men, but there is limited evidence on the associations between fatherhood timing and men's later earnings. Using a longitudinal census-based sample of Finnish men, including a subsample of brothers, we investigated fatherhood timing and men's midlife earnings using both between- and within-family models. Earnings around age 50 were lower among adolescent and young fathers than for men who became fathers at ages 25-29 or later, but these associations became negligible after accounting for measured confounders and unobserved familial confounding. Overall, our findings highlight the important roles of selection into early childbearing and into childlessness. At the population level, early fatherhood was associated with clear negative distributional shifts in fathers' midlife earnings. However, among all men, any influence of fatherhood timing on men's midlife earnings distribution paled in comparison with that of childlessness.

Gendered division of housework and childcare and women’s intention to have a second child in Spain

The Gender Revolution Theory forecasts a rise in fertility as gender equality increases and permeates the private sphere. However, empirical evidence across different societies has not always been conclusive, which suggests further research on the relationship between gender equality and fertility is needed. This research aims to assess the impact of the distribution of housework and childcare within the couple on one-child mothers’ fertility intentions in Spain. The educational expansion in recent decades has facilitated women’s mass entry into the workforce in this country. Nevertheless, the distribution of unpaid labour remains quite gendered and public support for families is scarce, making family/work balance challenging, especially for women. Using data from the 2018 Spanish Fertility Survey, the results suggest that when the distribution of housework is highly unbalanced between mothers and fathers, women are less likely to intend to have a second child. In contrast, unequal childcare workload does not substantially impact their intention to have a second child. Furthermore, whereas women’s satisfaction with the distribution of housework and childcare does not seem to moderate the effect of distribution, their education level slightly does. University-educated women are more likely to revise their fertility intentions downwards when the distribution is highly unequal.

Fertility Decision-Making in the UK: Insights from a Qualitative Study among British Men and Women

Scholars are interested in better understanding the low fertility observed in higher income countries. While some people are choosing to have smaller families, countries also report a ‘fertility gap’, which is the proportion of people who end up with fewer children than originally desired. This paper investigates some causes of the fertility gap in the UK. We amassed qualitative data from seven focus groups conducted among men and women of reproductive age with different educational backgrounds. These focus groups suggest that social support is an influential factor for Britons thinking about having children, although discussions differed in terms of whether this was support from partners or parents. Discussions with university-educated women featured themes of career opportunity costs, and non-university men contributed insights on the financial burden of parenthood. This exploratory study provides up-to-date material on unwanted childlessness and the low fertility in the UK, and highlights the merit of using qualitative methods in understanding the fertility gap.

Fathers' Involvement in the Family, Fertility, and Maternal Employment: Evidence From Central and Eastern Europe

For a sample of Central and Eastern European countries, characterized by historically high female labor force participation and currently low fertility rates, we analyze whether fathers' increased involvement in the family (housework and childcare) has the potential of increasing both fertility and maternal employment. Using two waves of the Generations and Gender Survey, we show that more paternal involvement in the family increases the likelihood that the mother will have a second child and work full-time. Men's fertility and work decisions are instead unrelated to mothers' housework and childcare. We also show that fathers' involvement in housework plays a more important role than involvement in childcare. The role of fathers' involvement in housework is confirmed when we consider women who initially wanted or intended to have a child, whose partner also wanted a child, or who intended to continue working.

Male childlessness across the adult life course: A case study addressing a potentially 'vulnerable' population

BACKGROUND

Like other Latin American countries, over the past half-century, Colombia has experienced rapid urbanization, dramatic fertility decline, and massive educational expansion. These socio-demographic changes have transformed gender roles and, with them, the landscape surrounding reproductive decisions, family life, and opportunities in other life 'domains.' I draw on the 'life course cube' (LCC) approach, which frames individual actions within a multidimensional behavioral process shaped by interdependencies between time, life domains, and levels to explore Colombian male childlessness.

OBJECTIVE

I seek to answer two questions: How does Colombian non-fatherhood vary across the life course (with respect to overall prevalence and associated factors)? and How do men frame their non-fatherhood, and, especially, how do they envision a future without children?

METHODOLOGY

To address the first question, I used the 2015 Colombian Demographic and Health Survey's men's dataset (N > 30,000) to explore the overall level of male childlessness across age/generational groups and separate voluntary/involuntary childlessness. Then, using generalized linear models, I analyzed the relationships between different life domains (e.g. education, employment) and non-fatherhood at time points representing early-, mid-, and later-life childlessness (among men in their thirties, forties, and fifties). To address the second question, I used qualitative data from in-depth life history interviews I conducted with male (N = 7) and female (N = 28) parents/non-parents in Bogotá, analyzing connections between different 'levels' of men's experiences: their inner feelings, past and (envisioned) future actions, and societal factors framing childlessness.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The quantitative findings indicate that male childlessness across the adult life course is strongly associated with later start of first union/never entering a union, and with small ideal family size. Later-life, definitive childlessness is also strongly associated with relative economic disadvantage and lower-prestige occupations, though early-life fatherhood postponement is not. Qualitatively, interviewed men expressed more worry and less preparation for the future than childless women. Understanding 'vulnerability' as 'the dynamics of stress and resources across the life course', I discuss these findings, paying attention to older non-fathers' potential psycho-social, relational, and socioeconomic vulnerability. Therefore, this work seeks to contribute to the literature on the determinants and experiences of male childlessness, focusing on a Latin American perspective.

Historical Context Changes Pathways of Parental Influence on Reproduction: An Empirical Test from 20th-Century Sweden

Several studies have found that parental absences in childhood are associated with individuals’ reproductive strategies later in life. However, these associations vary across populations and the reasons for this heterogeneity remain debated. In this paper, we examine the diversity of parental associations in three ways. First, we test whether different kinds of parental availability in childhood and adolescence are associated with women’s and men’s ages at first birth using the intergenerational and longitudinal Uppsala Birth Cohort Study (UBCoS) dataset from Sweden. This cultural context provides a strong test of the hypothesis that parents influence life history strategies given that robust social safety nets may buffer parental absences. Second, we examine whether investments in education help explain why early parental presence is associated with delayed ages at first birth in many post-industrial societies, given that parents often support educational achievement. Third, we compare parental associations with reproductive timing across two adjacent generations in Sweden. This historical contrast allows us to control for many sources of heterogeneity while examining whether changing educational access and norms across the 20th-century change the magnitude and pathways of parental influence. We find that parental absences tend to be associated with earlier first births, and more reliably so for women. Many of these associations are partially mediated by university attendance. However, we also find important differences across cohorts. For example, the associations with paternal death become similar for sons and daughters in the more recent cohort. One possible explanation for this finding is that fathers start influencing sons and daughters more similarly. Our results illustrate that historical changes within a population can quickly shift how family affects life history.

The diversity of pathways to childlessness in the Czech Republic: The union histories of childless men and women

Despite the fact that not having a partner is a strong predictor for remaining childless, few studies have explored the heterogeneity of partnership trajectories among childless persons. This article fills the gap in knowledge about the pathways to childlessness in Central Europe by exploring the within-group diversity of partnership trajectories among childless persons between the ages of 18 and 40 under state socialism and during the post-1989 transformation in the Czech Republic. Based on data from the Gender and Generations Survey, we identify different types of union history among childless persons using sequence analysis and optimal matching-based clustering. Moreover, we directly assess variations in partnership trajectories across gender, education, and birth cohorts by analysing sequence discrepancy and the complexity index. In both the state-socialist and post-socialist contexts the most prevalent trajectory types were 'never partnered' and 'long-term partnerships', with only a small proportion of unstable partnership trajectories. Childless women experience more diverse and complex trajectories than childless men and their partnership trajectories vary more pronouncedly across educational groups than those of men. In contrast, cohort differences are more pronounced among childless men. We discuss the findings against the backdrop of the transition from a state-socialist to a post-socialist welfare state. The findings thus contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the social and historical embeddedness of pathways to childlessness and show how the links between gender, education, and family life-courses are context-specific.

Preferences, Partners, and Parenthood: Linking Early Fertility Desires, Marriage Timing, and Achieved Fertility

In the United States, underachieving fertility desires is more common among women with higher levels of education and those who delay first marriage beyond their mid-20s. However, the relationship between these patterns, and particularly the degree to which marriage postponement explains lower fertility among the highly educated, is not well understood. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort to analyze differences in parenthood and achieved parity for men and women, focusing on the role of marriage timing in achieving fertility goals over the life course. We expand on previous research by distinguishing between entry into parenthood and average parity among parents as pathways to underachieving, by considering variation in the impact of marriage timing by education and by stage of the life course, and by comparing results for men and women. We find that women with a bachelor's degree who desired three or more children are less likely to become mothers relative to women with the same desired family size who did not attend college. Conditional on becoming mothers, however, women with at least a bachelor's degree do not have lower completed family size. No comparable fatherhood difference by desired family size is present. Postponing marriage beyond age 30 is associated with lower proportions of parenthood but not with lower parity among parents. Age patterns are similar for women and men, pointing at social rather than biological factors driving the underachievement of fertility goals.

Social class and fertility: A long-run analysis of Southern Sweden, 1922-2015

This paper examines social class differences in fertility, using longitudinal micro-level data for a regional sample in Sweden, 1922-2015. Using discrete-time event history models, we estimated the association between social class and parity-specific duration to next birth, adjusting for household income in separate models. Social class was associated with fertility quite independently from income and the association was both parity-dependent and sex-specific. For transitions to parenthood, higher class position was associated with higher fertility for men and lower fertility for women before 1970, but then converged into a positive association for both sexes after 1990. For continued childbearing, a weak U-shaped relationship before 1947 turned into a positive relationship for second births and a negative relationship for higher-order births in the period after 1990. These patterns likely reflect broader changes in work-family compatibility and are connected to profound shifts in labour markets and institutional arrangements in twentieth-century Sweden.

Self-employment as a work-and-family reconciliation strategy? Evidence from Poland

As self-employment offers greater flexibility compared to wage and salary contracts, women might choose it to achieve a better work-family balance. Past empirical research on this topic yielded equivocal results, however. We add to this discussion and provide evidence for Poland. Public support for working parents in Poland is relatively poor and women need to develop strategies in order to combine work and care. Running one's own business might be such a strategy. We adopt a life-course perspective and investigate whether self-employment encourages childbearing and whether women who have already given birth are more likely to opt for self-employment. We estimate multi-process hazard models, using the Generations and Gender Survey. We find that self-employment neither affects women's fertility decisions nor does it attract mothers on wage and salary contracts. Nevertheless, it is chosen by non-employed mothers as it may be the only opportunity for them to enter the labour market.

Partners' Educational Characteristics and Fertility: Disentangling the Effects of Earning Potential and Unemployment Risk on Second Births

This study investigates the link between the educational characteristics of partners in heterosexual relationships and their transition to second births, accounting for the selection into parenthood by fitting multi-level event history models. We compare the fertility of Beckerian unions characterized by gender-role specialization with the fertility of dual-earner couples, characterized by the pooling of incomes. Focusing on the economic aspect of the educational degree, in a first step, we estimate the earning potential and unemployment risks by field and level of education, country and sex using European Labour Force Surveys. Next, we link these results with Generation and Gender Survey data from six countries and model couples' transition to second births. We find evidence in support of both the pooling of resources family model (notably in Belgium) and the Beckerian gender-role specialization model. The effects of the earning potential and unemployment risk attached to his and her field of education tends to vary by country context.

The Heterogeneity of Partnership Trajectories to Childlessness in Germany

In recent decades, childlessness has increased across many European countries. In addition to socioeconomic characteristics, having a partner is considered a prerequisite in most fertility studies. Yet, still little is known about the partnership biographies of childless women and men. We assess the heterogeneity in the partnership trajectories of childless persons in Germany and explore compositional differences of partnership trajectories by gender and education. We use data from the German Family Panel to reconstruct partnership biographies reflecting the occurrence and frequency of different partnership states (singleness, living apart together, cohabitation, marriage). The sample comprises women and men born 1971-1973 whose life courses are observed from age 18-40. Applying sequence and cluster analysis, we identify five patterns of partnership trajectories: (1) 'Marriage' (14.6%); (2) 'Long-term cohabitation' (11.8%) with one partner; (3) 'Serial cohabitation' (15.6%); (4) 'LAT' (18.8%), long-term/multiple living-apart-together relationships; and (5) 'Single' (39.3%), long-term singleness. Men are overrepresented in the 'Single' cluster, especially if highly educated. Women are more often married and more likely to experience long-lasting singleness or multiple LAT episodes when being highly educated. We speculate that theories predicting high levels of childlessness in contexts where gender norms and work-family policies do not account for the increasing gender equality in education and labor force participation might also explain differences in the pathways leading to childlessness. Generally, our findings point at a more elaborate conceptualization of childlessness that moves away from a binary cross-sectional indicator and set the ground for future cross-national comparisons.

Pathways to Parenthood in Social and Family Context: Decade in Review, 2020

OBJECTIVE

This article reviews research from the past decade on patterns, trends, and differentials in the pathway to parenthood.

BACKGROUND

Whether, and under what circumstances, people become parents has implications for individual identity, family relationships, the well-being of adults and children, and population growth and age structure. Understanding the factors that influence pathways to parenthood is central to the study of families and can inform policies aimed at changing childbearing behaviors.

METHOD

This review summarizes recent trends in fertility as well as research on the predictors and correlates of childbearing, with a focus on the United States and on research most relevant to family scholars. We document fertility differentials and prevailing explanations for variation across sub-groups and discuss alternative pathways to parenthood, such as adoption. The article suggests avenues for future research, outlines emerging theoretical developments, and concludes with a discussion of fertility policy.

RESULTS

U.S. fertility has declined in recent years; whether fertility rates will increase is unclear. Elements of the broader social context such as the Great Recession and increasing economic inequality have impacted pathways to parenthood, and there is growing divergence in behaviors across social class. Scholars of childbearing have developed theories to better understand how childbearing is shaped by life course processes and social context.

CONCLUSION

Future research on the pathways to parenthood should continue to study group differentials, refine measurement and theories, and better integrate men and couples. Childbearing research is relevant for social policy, but ideological factors impact the application of research to policy.

Partners' Educational Pairings and Fertility Across Europe

We provide new evidence on the education-fertility relationship by using EU-SILC panel data on 24 European countries to investigate how couples' educational pairings predict their childbearing behavior. We focus on differences in first-, second-, and third-birth rates among couples with varying combinations of partners' education. Our results show important differences in how education relates to parity progressions depending on the education of the partner. First, highly educated homogamous couples show a distinct childbearing behavior in most country clusters. They tend to postpone the first birth most and display the highest second- and third-birth rates. Second, contrary to what may be expected based on the "new home economics" approach, hypergamous couples with a highly educated male and a lower-educated female partner display among the lowest second-birth transitions. Our findings underscore the relevance of interacting both partners' education for a better understanding of the education-fertility relationship.

Education, Gender, and Cohort Fertility in the Nordic Countries

Systematic comparisons of fertility developments based on education, gender and country context are rare. Using harmonized register data, we compare cohort total fertility and ultimate childlessness by gender and educational attainment for cohorts born beginning in 1940 in four Nordic countries. Cohort fertility (CTF) initially declined in all four countries, although for cohorts born in the 1950s and later, the CTF remained stable or declined only modestly. Childlessness, which had been increasing, has plateaued in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Women's negative educational gradient in relation to total fertility has vanished, except in Finland, while men's positive gradient has persisted. The highest level of men's childlessness appears among the least educated. In the oldest female cohorts, childlessness was highest among the highly educated, but these patterns have changed over the cohorts as childlessness has increased among the low educated and remained relatively stable among higher educated women. In Denmark, Norway and Sweden, childlessness is now highest among the least educated women. We witness both a new gender similarity and persistent (among men) and new (among women) educational disparities in childbearing outcomes in the Nordic region. Overall, the number of low educated has decreased remarkably over time. These population segments face increasing social and economic disadvantages that are reflected as well in their patterns of family formation.

Trends in Childlessness Among Highly Educated Men in Sweden

Among men with post-secondary degrees in Sweden, one in four are childless by age 45, and this level has been constant over time (in this study, for men born 1956–1972). This high level of childlessness is somewhat surprising in the context of a significant gender imbalance among the highly educated (and thus the relative scarcity of highly educated men). In this study, I examine differences in childlessness among the highly educated by studying how educational prestige, social class, and income are associated with the likelihood of becoming a father. Higher income and social class background are positively associated with fatherhood, and this association has not changed over time. Educational prestige (higher degrees, or degrees from traditional universities) is not positively associated with fatherhood, while 2-year degrees have become more positively associated with fatherhood over time. The findings of this study suggest that socioeconomic resources are important for men's family formation in Sweden compared to educational resources, contrary to expectations from educational homophily and partner market perspectives.