The Impact of Subjective Work Control, Job Strain and Work?CFamily Conflict on Fertility Intentions: a European Comparison

The link between employment and fertility is often only examined by focussing on women's labour market status or the impact of part- versus full-time employment. This study introduces a new explanation by extending research to examine how women's subjective perceptions of control or autonomy over work, job strain and work-family conflict influence fertility intentions. National-level measures of childcare enrolment under the age of three and the occurrence of part-time work are also included to examine their relation to fertility intentions and their interplay with perceptions of work. Using data from 23 countries from the 2004/5 European Social Survey (ESS), multilevel logistic regression models of fertility intentions are estimated separately for women without children and women with one child. Women with higher levels of work control are significantly more likely to intend to have a second child. Higher levels of job strain (time pressure) significantly lower fertility intentions for mothers in contexts where childcare availability is low. The prevalence of part-time work amongst the female work force significantly predicts the intention to become a mother but has different effects for women who work part-time themselves compared with full-time employees.     

Grandparenting and Childbearing in the Extended Family

The study analyzes the role of grandparents’ childcare provision on their adult children’s fertility behavior using data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) for eleven European countries. An important innovation is that we take into account siblings’ fertility behavior and share of grandparents’ time in terms of childcare. We show that availability of grandparents plays an important role in individuals’ decision of having children. Being helped by grandparents increases the chance of childbearing when existing grandchildren are not too young. On the other hand, the probability of having a child is lower when grandparents are already looking after a sibling’s young child. The role of grandparenting appears stronger in the South of Europe, where public childcare for young children is less prevalent.     

It Takes Two to Tango: Couples’ Happiness and Childbearing

The existing literature has so far considered the role of the individual’s subjective well-being on fertility, neglecting the importance of the partner’s well-being. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and event history models estimated separately by parity, we find that in a couple, women’s happiness matters more than that of the male partner in terms of having the first child. Specifically, we observe that couples in which either partner is happier than usual are more at risk of having the first child, but the effect is stronger with higher happiness of the woman. For the transition to the second child, we find that couples in which the woman declares to be happier or less happy than usual have a lower risk of childbirth. We, moreover, find support for a multiplicative effect of partners’ SWB on the decision to have a first child. Our results show that failing to acknowledge that the subjective well-being of both partners matters for the inherently joint decision making of childbearing can lead to an incomplete view of how subjective well-being affects fertility.     

Pathways to a Third Child in Sweden

The transition from two to three children is investigated, using data on Swedish women's fertility behaviour and labour force participation over a period of some 20 years ending in 1992/93. Two questions are examined: what is the relationship between working life and childbearing of two-child mothers? Are there differences in fertility between cohabiting and married couples? Several paths to the third child are identified, one of women with a university education and another of women with preference for more children, reflected by marriage after having the first or the second child or by persistent working experience followed by household work.     

Gender Inequality in the Home: The Role of Relative Income,Support for Traditional Gender Roles,and Perceived Entitlement

Drawing on relative resources and gender construction theories, we examined economic and psychological factors that affect married parents’ domestic labor. Married parents from the United States (N = 801) reported whether they earned less, equal, or more income than their spouses, as well as the proportion of housework and childcare they performed. In line with a relative resources perspective, participants reported doing less domestic labor as their relative income increased. Yet, in line with gender construction theories, women reported doing more domestic labor than their spouses, regardless of their relative income. Moreover, support for traditional gender roles mediated the effect of income on domestic labor for women, but not men. In contrast, perceived domestic entitlement (feeling justified doing less domestic labor than one’s spouse) mediated the effect of income on domestic labor for men, but not women. The implications for the future of gender equality are discussed.     

0-3 岁托育需求影响因素研究：基于对市场与政府的期望

2016年的全面二孩政策实施效果不及预期,我国的低生育水平难以改善。生育率的高低与生育意愿息息相关,随着三孩政策的出台,幼儿的托育困境作为制约广大群众生育意愿的重要因素亟需得到关注。运用武汉市3岁以下婴幼儿父母问卷调查数据,构建二元Logit模型研究群众因素、市场因素和政府因素与家庭托育需求之间的关系。研究发现:家庭结构、家庭收入、孩子年龄、影响工作程度,母亲受教育程度,托育市场的经济性、便利性和质量以及政府的政策支持会显著影响家庭的托育需求。基于实证结果,提出政策建议:推动托育服务供给主体多元化,促进托育服务规范化发展,发展普惠性公共托育服务,提升托育服务便利性,增强家庭抚育能力。     

When is the Second One Coming? The Effect of Couple’s Subjective Well-Being Following the Onset of Parenthood

Parenthood has strong effects on people’s life. Some of these effects are positive and some negative and may influence the decision of having other children after the first. Demographic research has only marginally addressed the relationship between subjective well-being and fertility, and even less attention has been reserved to investigate how the subjective experience of the first parenthood may influence the decision to have a second child. Performing log-logistic hazard models using HILDA panel data (2001–2012), changes in couples’ objective life conditions and satisfaction within family and work domains after the first childbirth are related to the timing of the transition to the second parenthood. Results show that partners adopting traditional gender specialization in roles proceed quicker to the second child; however, experiencing dissatisfaction in reconciling, in the couple’s relationship and in the work domain negatively affects mothers’ probability of having a second child in the future.     

Religious Socialisation and Fertility: Transition to Third Birth in The Netherlands

Although previous studies have demonstrated that religious people in Europe have larger families, the role played by religious socialisation in the context of contemporary fertility behaviour has not yet been analysed in detail. This contribution specifically looks at the interrelation between religious socialisation and current religiosity and their impact on the transition to the third child for Dutch women. It is based on data of the first wave of the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (2002–2004) and uses event history analysis. The transitions to first, second and third birth are modelled jointly with a control for unobserved heterogeneity. The findings provide evidence for an impact of women’s current church attendance as well as religious socialisation measured by their fathers’ religious affiliation, when they were teenagers. A religious family background remains influential even when a woman has stopped attending church. The effects of religious indicators strengthen over cohorts. Moreover, the combined religious make-up of the respondent’s parents also significantly determines the progression to the third child.     

The Effect of Grandparental Support on Mothers’ Labour Market Participation: An Instrumental Variable Approach

Childcare arrangements are key in women’s ability to juggle motherhood and work outside the home. As such, the study of access to childcare and its use is of great policy relevance. We focus on a particular kind of informal childcare, the one provided by grandparents. Empirically, assessing the effect of grandparental childcare is not an easy task due to unobserved preferences. In light of the potential outcome framework, we interpret the biases resulting from unobserved preferences as arising from the non-compliance of mothers to the availability of grandparents and from preferences of grandparents for activities other than childcare. Using an instrumental variable approach on Italian data, we find that the effect of grandparental childcare on mothers’ labour supply is positive, statistically significant and economically relevant. The effect is stronger for less educated mothers, with young children and living in northern and central Italy.     

Use It or Save It? Migration Background and Parental Leave Uptake in Sweden

Sweden is a welfare state with a family policy that strongly emphasizes equality without distinction by place of birth or gender. In this study, we investigate the differences in uptake of parental leave between native and immigrant mothers, and the connection to labour-market attachment. Sweden represents a unique case study, not only because of the strong effort to combine work and family for all women and men, the high level of fertility and the large presence of immigrants in the country; it also enables a detailed and sophisticated analysis based on the high-quality data derived from its population registers. We find that immigrant mothers use more parental leave benefit the first year after their child’s birth, but then fewer in the second year compared with native mothers. The differences diminish when labour-market activity is controlled for. Additionally, after a time in Sweden, immigrant mothers use leave more similarly to how native mothers do.     

The Impact of Family Policies on Fertility Trends in Developed Countries

We examine how strongly fertility trends respond to family policies in OECD countries. In the light of the recent fertility rebound observed in several OECD countries, we empirically test the impact of different family policy instruments on fertility, using macro panel data from 18 OECD countries that spans the years 1982–2007. Our results confirm that each instrument of the family policy package (paid leave, childcare services and financial transfers) has a positive influence on average, suggesting that the combination of these forms of support for working parents during their children’s early years is likely to facilitate parents’ choice to have children. Policy levers do not all have the same weight, however: in-cash benefits covering childhood after the year of childbirth and the provision of childcare services for children under age three have a larger potential influence on fertility than leave entitlements and benefits granted around childbirth. Moreover, we find that the influence of each policy measure varies across different family policy contexts. Our findings are robust after controlling for birth postponement, endogeneity, time-lagged fertility reactions and for different aspects of national contexts, such as female labour market participation, unemployment, labour market protection and the proportion of children born out of marriage.     

The Delayed Fertility Transition in North-East Italy

The transitional decline of fertility in Italy has never been studied using micro-data, with the exception of small areas. For the first time, we use individual retrospective fertility data collected for all the ever married women living in 20 % of households subjected to census in 1971 in the Veneto region (North-East Italy), a ‘late-comer’ area in the context of Western European fertility decline (TFR = 5.0 in 1871 and 1921, 2.5 in 1951 and 1971). In order to consider broad explanations of fertility decline, we combine individual retrospective data with other information available at two territorial levels (58 districts and 582 municipalities), using a three-level clustered regression model (district, municipality, woman). The main results are: (1) even if the (few) women with 8 + years of schooling born in the last decades of the nineteenth century already had a TFR around two, this value is not seen among women with low levels of education until those born 50 years later; (2) the link between fertility and secularization strengthens cohort after cohort, whereas the connections between fertility and industrialization and fertility and urbanization weaken; (3) throughout the period, the statistical inverse relationship between education and fertility is strong, both at the territorial and individual level.     

Marital and Reproductive Behavior in Italy After 1995: Bridging the Gap with Western Europe?

Despite a delay of 20–25 years, when it comes to cohabitation, Italy has now begun to resemble other Western countries. In addition, the increase in legal separations has accelerated since 1995, although their number still remains far from that observed in countries such as the USA, the UK, and France. Finally, Italy’s fertility decline has come to a halt: the cohort of women born in the early 1970s will likely have the same TFR as those born in the mid-1960s (around 1.55). Moreover, in the Centre–North areas, period TFR rose from 1.1 in 1995 to 1.35 children per woman 10 years later. The territorial diffusion of cohabitation, legal separation, out-of-wedlock births, and fertility recovery overlaps closely with that of the decline in births during the first half of the twentieth century. A similar geographical pattern has been observed for the diffusion of school enrolment, industrialization, secularization, and (during the last 20 years) foreign immigration.     

Employment After Parenthood: Women of Migrant Origin and Natives Compared

Motherhood negatively affects female employment in majority populations across Europe. Although employment levels are particularly low among women of migrant origin, little is known about the motherhood–employment link in migrant populations. This paper investigates whether family formation differentially affects the labour market position of migrant women and their descendants compared to natives. Using longitudinal microdata from the Belgian social security registers, 12,167 women are followed from 12 months before until 48 months after the birth of their first child for the period 1999–2010. Levels of activity (versus inactivity), employment (versus unemployment) and full-time employment (versus part-time employment) are compared between natives and first- and second-generation women of Southern European, Eastern European, Turkish and Moroccan origin. We find that activity and employment levels decrease to a larger extent following the transition to parenthood among women of migrant origin than among natives. With respect to activity levels, differences between second-generation women and natives are largely explained by socio-demographic and pre-birth job characteristics, while differences between first-generation women and natives are not, suggesting that other factors such as tied migration patterns determine labour market attachment among first-generation mothers. With respect to employment levels, unemployment is increasing more among women of migrant origin of both generations than among natives, also when controlling for background characteristics, which signals differential access to stable job positions as well as to family policies. In sum, the results draw attention to the challenge that parenthood creates for mothers of migrant origin in terms of retaining and gaining employment, but also to the role of labour market entry and early career positions.     

职业女性的生育二孩意愿--以上海市HP区楼宇就职女性为对象

以上海市中心城区HP区楼宇就职的白领育龄女性为研究对象,考察职业女性生育二孩的意愿,并对职业女性生育二孩意愿的主要特点和影响因素进行研究发现：经济成本、照料能力和福利水平是影响职业女性生育二孩意愿的主要因素,职场发展机会、生育后的地位变化及生育相关福利保障机制对职业女性的生育意愿也有显著影响。据此,建议尝试建立弹性工作制,采取有效措施支持女性职场提升,同时增加公共性育儿服务,以帮助职业女性平衡工作和家庭角色,为生育二孩者减轻后顾之忧。     

Couples’ First Child Intentions and Disagreement: An Analysis of the Italian Case

The aim of this article is to examine the determinants of couples’ childbearing intentions, by explicitly taking into account the agreement or disagreement of the two members of the couple. The relevance of the partner’s reproductive intentions has been well recognised in the literature, but few studies have provided in-depth analyses of the fertility plans of both partners. In our study, we used the household-level data from a survey on “Family and Social Subjects”, carried out by the Italian National Statistical Office in 2003, which provides characteristics on both partners. We adopted a couple’s perspective which allows us to give a unitary picture of the concordant or discordant nature of partners’ first child intentions. We found that a lack of agreement in the reproductive decision-making process is likely to occur in the Italian couples where the role of the woman is less traditional. In particular, cohabitant, highly educated and working women are more likely to be in disagreement with their partners in the decisions concerning having a first child. Being religious may be also a source of discordance in the couples’ reproductive plans. Our findings support the utility of taking a couple-based approach in studies on fertility intentions.     

Like Mother(-in-Law) Like Daughter? Influence of the Older Generation’s Fertility Behaviours on Women’s Desired Family Size in Bihar,India

This paper investigates the associations between preferred family size of women in rural Bihar, India and the fertility behaviours of their mother and mother-in-law. Scheduled interviews of 440 pairs of married women aged 16–34 years and their mothers-in-law were conducted in 2011. Preferred family size is first measured by Coombs scale, allowing us to capture latent desired number of children and then categorized into three categories (low, medium and high). Women’s preferred family size is estimated using ordered logistic regression. We find that the family size preferences are not associated with mother’s fertility but with mother’s education. Mother-in-law’s desired number of grandchildren is positively associated with women’s preferred family size. However, when the woman has higher education than her mother-in-law, her preferred family size gets smaller, suggesting that education provides women with greater autonomy in their decision-making on childbearing.     

Education,Other Socioeconomic Characteristics Across the Life Course,and Fertility Among Finnish Men

The level of education and other adult socioeconomic characteristics of men are known to associate with their fertility, but early-life socioeconomic characteristics may also be related. We studied how men’s adult and early-life socioeconomic characteristics are associated with their eventual fertility and whether the differences therein by educational level are explained or mediated by other socioeconomic characteristics. The data on men born in 1940–1950 (N = 37,082) were derived from the 1950 Finnish census, which is linked to later registers. Standard and sibling fixed-effects Poisson and logistic regression models were used. Education and other characteristics were positively associated with the number of children, largely stemming from a higher likelihood of a first birth among the more socioeconomically advantaged men. The educational gradient in the number of children was not explained by early socioeconomic or other characteristics shared by brothers, but occupational position and income in adulthood mediated approximately half of the association. Parity-specific differences existed: education and many other socioeconomic characteristics predicted the likelihood of a first birth more strongly than that of a second birth, and the mediating role of occupational position and income was also strongest for first births. Relatively small differences were found in the likelihood of a third birth. In men, education is positively associated with eventual fertility after controlling for early socioeconomic and other characteristics shared by brothers. Selective entry into fatherhood based on economic provider potential may contribute considerably to educational differentials in the number of children among men.     

Parenthood and Well-Being: The Moderating Role of Leisure and Paid Work

This study contributes to our knowledge on the association between parenthood and psychological well-being by examining whether pre-parenthood lifestyles (leisure and paid work) moderate the transition to parenthood. We expected that people with less active lifestyles would find it easier to adapt to the demands of parenthood. Using eleven waves of the Swiss Household Panel (N = 1332 men and 1272 women; 1999–2008, 2010), fixed effects models are estimated for men and women separately. Results show that—on average—parenthood was not associated with well-being for men, whereas it increased well-being for women. As expected, the well-being premium/cost to parenthood was contingent upon individuals’ lifestyle before the transition to parenthood. For men, parenthood reduced well-being, but only if they frequently participated in leisure before the birth of the child. For women, motherhood had a beneficial effect on well-being but this effect was weaker for women who combined leisure with working long hours before motherhood.     

Differential Effects of Perceived Maternal and Paternal Acceptance on Male and Female Adult Offspring’s Psychological Adjustment

The purpose of this study was to measure and compare differential effects of perceived maternal and paternal acceptance of adult sons and adult daughters during childhood on their current psychological adjustment. The sample consisted of 200 young adults (100 males and 100 females) from Bangladesh. Measures used were Adult versions of the Parental Acceptance and Rejection Questionnaire for Mothers and Fathers (Adult PARQ: Mothers and Fathers), and Adult version of the Personality Assessment Questionnaire (Adult PAQ). Results showed that both maternal and paternal acceptance have significant independent effects on adult sons’ psychological adjustment, and only paternal (not maternal) acceptance has significant independent effect on adult daughters’ psychological adjustment. Paternal acceptance accounts for greater variability in adult sons’ and adult daughters’ psychological adjustment than maternal acceptance. Results also showed that parental gender has significant interaction effect on the adult daughters’ (not adult sons’) psychological adjustment. Results further showed that adult daughters reported significantly greater maternal and paternal acceptance and higher psychological adjustment than adult sons.