Intergenerational persistence of family formation trajectories among teenage-mothers and -fathers in Sweden

Abstract

In this paper, we address the questions of whether early family trajectories of parents are reflected in childbearing teenagers, and how socio-economic and family background factors impact these intergenerational correlations. We use within-dyad sequence analysis to examine combined marital and childbearing trajectories, up to age 30, of two generations of a representative sample of childbearing teenagers born between 1975 and 1985 and their progenitors, drawn from the Swedish population register data. We find evidence for within-family persistence of early family trajectories, with better matches across family state sequences for dyads composed of childbearing teenagers and their parents, than for dyads composed of childbearing teenagers and parents of random birth cohort peers. Regression analysis shows that these intergenerational associations are stronger and occur among later-born siblings from non-traditional family backgrounds, and among families with lower socio-economic backgrounds. This study fills gaps in the knowledge of intergenerational family life course dynamics beyond the early parenthood event.

Affective aspects of parenthood and their intergenerational effects on fertility

“…Recent scholarship has increasingly paid attention to the emotional dimension of parenthood, finding, for instance, that parents tend to be less happy than non-parents but that work-family reconciliation policies can shrink the happiness gap (Glass et al, 2016; Hansen, 2012; Stanca, 2012). Some studies have further shown that parents could have cross-generational effects on the next generation’s fertility intentions, modifying its more temporally proximate determinants (Balbo et al, 2013; Kalucza et al, 2021; Moen et al, 1997). Research in this mold tends to focus on genetic propensity, transmitted values, transferable resources, and behavior.…”