Abstract
Despite dramatic changes in family life over the past several decades, survey data demonstrate that a ‘standard’ family life course remains a goal for the vast majority. The ideal family life course is to have a stable partnership with two or more children, and to have all of one’s children with the same partner. Achievement of a standard family life course may, however, depend on the opportunities and constraints encountered along one’s life path, in particular those associated with the pursuit and attainment of higher education. Analyses of survey data from France, Sweden and the United States document the family experiences to age 40 of persons born in the 1950s. Overall, about half of the cohorts had experienced a standard family life course. For women, education had both positive and negative influences – greater childlessness but more stable childbearing unions. For French and Swedish men, fatherhood and union stability were both associated with higher education. Educational differences in family transitions – especially childbearing out of union and dissolution of unions with children – are much greater in the U.S. than in the other countries, resulting in a significant educational gap in the likelihood of achieving a standard family life course that is not observed in Sweden or France.
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