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.
Highlights
IntroductionThe connection between teenage fertility and family background is well known, and the connection between women’s first birth during teenage years and own mother’s young age at first birth, known as intergenerational reproduction of teenage childbearing, has been established in many previous studies across countries, including Sweden (e.g. Barber 2001; Meade et al 2008; Sipsma et al 2010; Stanfors and Scott 2013; Steenhof and Liefbroer 2008; Wall-Wieler et al 2016).While this intergenerational association is undisputed, little is known on whether teenage parents follow the long-term family trajectories of their own parents
Teenage parenthood is deemed to occur off time (Neugarten 1979; Billari et al 2011) in contemporary societies, where age at first birth has been increasing for decades (OECD 2016a)
If we find a statistically significant lower average dissimilarity in family sequences across related dyads than across unrelated dyads, we will consider this evidence for intergenerational persistence in the family formation patterns from parents to children, that is intergenerational correlation operates through family-related processes
Summary
The connection between teenage fertility and family background is well known, and the connection between women’s first birth during teenage years and own mother’s young age at first birth, known as intergenerational reproduction of teenage childbearing, has been established in many previous studies across countries, including Sweden (e.g. Barber 2001; Meade et al 2008; Sipsma et al 2010; Stanfors and Scott 2013; Steenhof and Liefbroer 2008; Wall-Wieler et al 2016).While this intergenerational association is undisputed, little is known on whether teenage parents follow the long-term family trajectories of their own parents. There have been a number of studies into the strength of the intergenerational correlation (between parents and their children) and family background correlations (between siblings) of age at first birth, finding an overwhelming positive relationship (e.g., Barber 2001; Murphy 2013; Murphy and Knudsen 2002; Stanfors and Scott 2013; van Bavel and Kok 2009). These studies show that close kin are more likely to have similar family formation timing compared to not-so-close kin or non-kin. Teenage mothers have shown high total parity (Olausson 2001) and rapid repeat pregnancies among very young teenage mothers, and mothers with low levels of social support (Kalmuss and Namerow 1994; Manlove et al 2000; Reese and Halpern 2017)
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