A Retreat from Parenthood within Partnerships: A Common Pattern in Northern Europe?

Leen Rahnu , University of Tallinn

The postponement of first birth towards later ages is a well-known phenomenon in Western context, but whether and how this tendency interacts with developments in the domain of partnership in various socio-economic and cultural contexts, is not clear. This study investigates the link between partnership formation, partnership stability and parenthood in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Estonia among women born in the 1960s to 1990s. Employing event-history methodology and the GGS-II data, piecewise constant regression models are estimated to study: (1) the formation of first partnership (marital or non-marital) among women with no biological children and (2) events following partnership formation – birth of a first child or separation. Preliminary insight suggest that, in Northern Europe, forming first co-residential partnership belongs to young adulthood and there is no cohort trend towards delaying partnership formation. At the same time, there is a clear tendency to delay first birth across cohorts in all countries included to the study. It is thus plausible that, compared to predecessors, cohorts born since 1980 tend to wait longer before proceeding to parenthood after forming a partnership and increasingly experience dissolution instead. Relying on the SDT and life course frameworks, we expect to develop an argument of unfolding cultural change where link between partnership and parenthood continues to erode at behavioral level. We expect to complement the observed behavioral trends with information on attitudes and family values that is included in GGS data.

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 Presented in Session P1. Fertility, Family, Life Course