The "motherhood earnings penalty" is a well-established finding in many Western countries. However, a divide between mothers and nonmothers might oversimplify reality given that the family life course has diversified over the last decades. In addition, whether family choices have consequences for women's employment and earnings in later life is not well known, particularly in a comparative perspective. Using data on 50-to 59-year-old women from the Generations and Gender Programme, the British Household Panel Survey, and SHARELIFE for 22 European countries, we derive a typology of women's family trajectories and estimate its association with women's later-life employment and earnings. Whereas family trajectory-related differences with regard to employment were relatively small, our findings reveal a clear, long-lasting family trajectory gradient in earnings. Childless women (with or without a partner) as well as single mothers had higher personal earnings than women whose family trajectories combined parenthood and partnership. Moreover, in societies in which reconciliation of work and family during midlife is less burdensome, labor market outcomes of women following different family trajectories converge. Our findings show that women's fertility and partnership behavior are inevitably interrelated and jointly influence employment and earning patterns until later in life. The results imply that promoting equal employment opportunities could have long-lasting effects on women's economic independence.

This chapter focuses on adult family-related experiences and the manner in which they affect later-life socio-emotional and economic well-being (loneliness, employment, earnings). Particularly innovative is the investigation of these relationships in a cross-national perspective. Results from two studies conducted by the authors of this chapter within the CONOPP project show that deviations from family-related social customs differently impact socio-emotional and economic well-being outcomes as there is: (a) a non-normative family penalty for loneliness (individuals who never experience cohabitation/marriage or parenthood or postpone such events are the loneliest); and (b) a non-normative family bonus for women’s economic outcomes (single and/or childless women have the highest earnings). Moreover, analyses revealed that European countries differ considerably in the manner in which similar family-related experiences affect later-life well-being. For example, childlessness had a stronger negative impact on loneliness in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe and the observed heterogeneity could be explained by culturally-embedded family-related values and norms (childless individuals in countries placing stronger accent on ‘traditional’ family values are lonelier compared to childless individuals in less ‘traditionalistic’ nations). In terms of economic outcomes, results show that the lower the female labor force participation during child-rearing years, the more substantial the differences in later-life employment and income between women with different family life trajectories.