Family Formation Trajectories Research Articles

Legal Status and Fertility Patterns: Regulation-Induced Disruption Among Previously Undocumented Immigrant Women in Italy

We explore, using a unique survey dataset containing retrospective information on immigrants’ legal status, the relationship between previous irregular experience—from arrival up to the first residence permit achievement—and fertility patterns among non-EU immigrant women in Italy. While competing hypotheses explaining migrants’ fertility behaviour have been recurrently offered, there is a substantial lack of knowledge on the role of undocumented experience as a contextual barrier in shaping international migrants’ family formation processes. We adopt a life-course approach, employing event history analysis and Poisson regression modelling, to investigate how irregularity among immigrant women intertwines with the timing of the first childbirth and the total number of births occurred in Italy. We find that irregular experience—as a time-dependent process—delays the transition to childbirth post-migration. Furthermore, having experienced irregular status reduces completed fertility, offering few possibilities to catch-up over the life-course with fertility levels of women continuously having the legal status. Findings suggest long-lasting effects of irregular status and the potential disruption of migrant’s fertility induced by migration policies, admission systems, and regulation factors. The reduced possibility of legal entry channels and lack of migration policies for planning and managing migration into Italy may thus have an impact on family formation trajectories among international immigrant women.

Parenthood, earnings, and the relevance of family formation sequences

Prior research sheds little light on how shifts in family formation trajectories have implications for recent cohorts' earnings gains and losses with childbearing. Using longitudinal data from a contemporary cohort, we examine how the pay premium or penalty for parents varies by their relationship status at childbirth and subsequent changes in the status. Fixed effects models show that children born to unpartnered women are associated with substantial pay penalties for the mothers. Conversely, women giving birth within cohabiting or marital unions experience small or no motherhood penalties. For residential fathers, only children born after marriage are linked to pay increases. Men having children while cohabiting or unpartnered receive no fatherhood premiums even if they later transition into marriage. Married mothers' earnings outcomes also depend on their sequence of marriage and childbearing. Whereas women bearing children before marriage encounter a substantial motherhood penalty, those doing so after marriage face none. The variation in parenthood penalties or premiums by childbearing context cannot be entirely elucidated by the differences in the age of entering parenthood, ethnoracial composition, education, or pre-parenthood earnings growth rate among people having children in various contexts. We suggest that the family formation sequence is related to individuals’ expectations and the support they receive for their parental roles, which shape parenthood earnings outcomes.

Sexuality and Demographic Change: Documenting Family Formation Trajectories and Cohort Change in the LGB Population

Narratives of demographic shifts overlook how societal changes shape the family trajectories of sexual minorities. Using sequence analysis, we describe how partnering and parenthood evolve over the life course of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) women and men in the United Kingdom (N = 455) and how the types of these family trajectories changed across two birth cohorts (born before 1965 and in 1965–1979). We find five distinct trajectories between ages 18 and 40, wherein two thirds of the sample belonged to a family trajectory that did not involve living with children. Partnership-centered trajectories became more common across cohorts, and this increase came at the expense of trajectories characterized by singlehood among gay men and lesbian women. However, parenthood trajectories became less common among all LGB groups. Furthermore, family trajectories became more complex across cohorts, including more transitions, which coincides with trends in the general population. Yet we also find that family trajectories became less diverse among lesbian women and bisexual men, in contrast to the trend among gay men and the general population. The results demonstrate the dynamic, complex, and diverse nature of LGB individuals' family lives and why existing narratives of family-related demographic change should explicitly consider sexual minorities in demographic narratives.

Family formation trajectories and migration in the United States by the end of the 20th century

Studies often explain differences in family behaviors by migration status by testing four hypotheses: socialization, selection, disruption, and assimilation/ adaptation. These hypotheses were initially formulated as competing explanations, but some scholars have argued that they are complementary. Currently, however, this complementary relationship is not well understood. In this article, I draw on intersectionality theory to challenge this hypothesis-based narrative of the relationship between migration and family formation and dissolution trajectories. I use retrospective information on marriages, union dissolutions, and births of men and women from five waves of the National Survey of Family Growth (1995–2015) to construct a six-category typology of family trajectories. This typology divides men and women into groups with similar family formation and dissolution trajectories. I correlate this typology with information on each respondent’s race/ethnicity, educational attainment, place of birth, and age at migration. The exploratory analysis of these correlations underlines the need for approaches that move beyond testing the above-mentioned hypotheses toward nuanced descriptions of the multiple ways in which family formation and migration paths are intertwined, and how these relationships are influenced by gender and social class inequalities.

Gendered and Stratified Family Formation Trajectories in the Context of Latin American Migration, 1950 to 2000

The interdependence of migration and family formation has been studied extensively, but studies that consider the embeddedness of this interdependence within gender and class relations are less common. Most existing research on family and migration treats gender and social class as separate determinants of family events or transitions, instead of analyzing how the intersections of both shape full family formation trajectories, defined as all partnership and childbearing statuses throughout an individual life course. We overcome this gap by using an intersectionality framework to analyze trajectories of family formation and migration collected by the Mexican and Latin American Migration projects (1982–2016). Using retrospective information, we reconstruct full family formation and dissolution trajectories (i.e., individuals’ marital statuses and number of children born from ages 15 to 39) for 16,000 individuals and apply sequence and cluster analysis to define a six-category typology of ideal family formation trajectories. Next, we associate this typology with individuals’ sex, age at migration (domestic, international), and educational attainment as a way to measure individuals’ social class position. Our results suggest that the relationship between migration and typical family trajectories depends on the intersection of individuals’ social class and gender. Previous studies have neglected this intersection by overly focusing on the “average” migrant's experience. Migration research must acknowledge and account for migrants’ heterogenous experiences and pay more attention to how intersecting social categories mediate the relationship between migration and other demographic processes.

The Interplay Between the Early Work and Family Trajectories of Young Adult Women Born in West Germany: Differences by Parental Origins

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), this paper employs sequence analysis to identify “typical” early (observation window limited to ages 15 to 30) employment and family formation trajectories among female second-generation migrants in Germany. For the employment domain of the life course, four types of employment trajectories were identified according to their modal states: “long education,” “full-time employment,” “part-time employment,” and “non-employment.” For the family domain of the life course, three types of family trajectories were identified: “postponement of family formation,” “early family formation,” and “early single motherhood.” For the analysis on cluster affiliation, a multinomial logistic regression was used to investigate how parental origin relates to jointly determined employment and family trajectories. As expected, the descriptive results showed that trajectories of low labor market participation are highly related to trajectories of early family formation. The categorization by parental origins shows that there were few differences in the trajectories of most native and G2 women groups. One pattern that stood out was that compared to other origin groups, G2 women of Turkish parental origin were more likely to be on an early family formation path, and they were more likely to be on a path with multiple non-employment spells. In the modeling strategy, the remaining differences in the women’s patterns were partially explained by the differences in their socioeconomic backgrounds (compulsory school track and the father’s professional degree) and their maternal employment role models (the mother’s employment when the woman was age 15).

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

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.

Family Complexity and Children's Behavior Problems over Two U.S. Cohorts.

We consider the prevalence of family complexity and its association with children's externalizing behavior problems over children's life course and over historical time. A growing literature has demonstrated the prevalence and multidimensional nature of family complexity and its association with child behavior. The nature/strength of this association may have changed in recent cohorts as family complexity has become more common. Data are from the 1997 and 2014 cohorts of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement. Samples represent U.S. children ages 0-12 years born since 1985 (N=5,030). Ordinary least squares regression estimated change in the association between family complexity and behavior between cohorts. Difference-in-difference models estimated baseline and longitudinal differences in children's behavior as linked to family complexity. The prevalence of family complexity has stabilized over the last two decades, and the antecedents to parental repartnering and complex sibship organization remain similar. The expectation that increasing family complexity contributes to elevated behavior problem scores was not supported. Instead, children who eventually acquired a step- or half-sibling or who experienced parents' union dissolution had elevated behavior problems prior to those changes. The prevalence of and precursors to complex family organization were stable across recent child cohorts. The observed association between family complexity and child behavior problems may be attributable to selection mechanisms linked to both parents' family formation trajectories and to children's behavior, rather than to family change itself.

Not all the same: Swedish teenage mothers' and fathers' selection into early family formation trajectories.

Previous research has focused on teenage parenthood as a single outcome, and has overlooked the wider family formation trajectory in which it is situated. In this paper, using Swedish register data and sequence analysis tools, we explore the diversity in timing and ordering of childbearing and (re)partnering events among teenage parents. We identify trajectory clusters of traditional family patterns, modern family patterns, single parenthood and re-partnering patterns. We also examine the role of resources in the family of origin for the probability of following the different types of family formation trajectories among teenage parents. Where economic resources in the family of origin is related to the type of trajectory teenage fathers follow, family structure is of greater importance for teenage mothers. The family formation trajectories of teenage parents display substantial heterogeneity, which contradicts a view that a person who has a child early in life suddenly has their life's script written.

Family formation trajectories across borders: A sequence analysis approach to Senegalese migrants in Europe.

This article examines the relationship between the timing of international migration and family formation trajectories (union formation and fertility) of Sub-Saharan African migrants in Europe. Longitudinal life-history data from Senegalese migrants in France, Italy and Spain, collected as part of the Migrations between Africa and Europe (MAFE) project are used. Applying sequence analysis techniques and distinguishing between men and women, individuals are grouped into different clusters according to the (dis-)similarities in their family formation trajectories before and after migration. Furthermore, multinomial logistic regression models are used to test associations between individual and contextual characteristics and the obtained clusters. The results show important differences between men and women regarding their migration-family formation trajectories. Moreover, the interrelatedness of family and migration events was more pronounced among women than men. The regression analysis indicates that male and female trajectories are related in particular to age and the country of destination, but there are also differences by educational level. The findings stress the importance of differentiating between men and women when studying the family formation behavior of migrants.

The capabilities approach and agency for shaping family formation trajectories in Ghana

Context/Background: Developed by Amartya Sen, the Capabilities Approach (CA) has been applied in several domains of abstraction for understanding human well-being and development. However, there is very little about CA in the processes of forming families, particularly in Africa. This paper employs CA to examine the Ghanaian family formation trajectories. It explores the norms and preferences, the choices and decision-making processes, timing as well as constraints embedded in the family formation process. Data sources and methods: This paper draws on a bigger Ghana/Mali qualitative research that contrasted individual realities and collective images of family formation trajectories in the two countries, but specifically focuses on the Ghana case to understand the individual family formation trajectories in terms of their family life histories, resources available to them as well as their notions on the ideal family life. It is based on analyses and discussions of thirty (30) in-depth interviews conducted in rural and urban Ghana. Results:The results show an inherent interplay of agency-driven idealized goals and socio-cultural concerns, in other words, realities that reflect agency-structure concerns with regards to different family life domains (pre-marital relationships, partner choice-making, marriage, etc.). Conclusion:Based on the analyses, we conclude that the concepts of ‘ambivalence’ and ‘agency’ are important in smoothening the difficulties family formation actors encounter in pursuing their personal family life goals within the context of socio-cultural family life requirements.

Understanding trends in family formation trajectories: An application of Competing Trajectories Analysis (CTA)

Over the past 50 years, family formation trajectories have undergone major changes in the events that occur as well as in the timing and order of these events. Whereas previous studies showed when and how these shifts occur, not much research has been conducted to test why these changes have taken place. This paper tests two possible explanations, namely cultural (secularization) and economic (youth unemployment) change using the Fertility and Family survey of the Netherlands conducted in 2008. We also employed a new method, Competing Trajectories Analysis (CTA), which combines features of sequence analysis and event history analysis, to examine the relationship between secularization and youth unemployment and pathways into adulthood. Our results show that the start of family formation is postponed in times of high secularization and youth unemployment, when pathways including early marriage and parenthood become less popular, and cohabiting without having children becomes more popular.

Траектории формирования российской семьи: изменения и факторы, их определяющие

In the last few decades, demographers have observed changes in the way individuals organize their lives. This study is devoted to comparing Russia with other European countries in terms of matrimonial behavior modernization, as well as to identifying clusters of Russians depending on their family formation trajectories, analyzing the spread of modern trajectories among generations of Russians born from 1935 to 1984, and identifying factors for choosing particular trajectory. Parameters of family formation behavior, available in the second wave of the “Generation and Gender Programme” international survey, show that Russia follows a common modernization path with European countries. The results of a cluster analysis, based on panel data from the Russian part of the “Generation and Gender Programme”, revealed 9 clusters of Russians, according to the sequence and time of frst cohabitation, marriage and childbirth. Such trajectories as “early marriage, birth of a child” and “late marriage, birth of a child” are the most common. More than 60% of respondents from Soviet generations followed these two trajectories. In the case of modern generations, they were surpassed by trajectories where early or late cohabitation precedes marriage, as well as such a trajectory as “cohabitation, birth of a child”. The amount of people choosing the other four trajectories is statistically stable among different generations. Multinomial logistic regression showed that type of settlement, level of education, age of separation from parents and attaining one’s frst job, gender, generation and parents’ matrimonial experience are all factors of choosing a family formation trajectory.

The roads more or less traveled - A sequence analysis of family formation and parenthood for a cohort of Danish women born in the 1970s

Relatively low fertility and an increased age at first birth, along with the development of assisted reproduction technologies have increased attention to when and how many times Danish women give birth. While some argue that family formation has become increasingly plural and differentiated, others maintain that the nuclear family remains the ideal family for the majority of women. In this article, I investigate family formation trajectories for a random sample of 1,500 women born in 1973 and 1974. For this sample, I perform sequence analysis of longitudinal registry data on civil status, fertility, education and income through the ages 22 to 37. Focusing on timing, order and duration in the sequences studied, I identify seven distinct clusters (i.e. typologies) of family formations in Denmark. The majority (68 percent) of the women’s trajectories represent varieties of the nuclear family. For all clusters, my results confirm the event of the first child as a constituting factor of the nuclear family, which often precedes marriage. However, the identified clusters also show great variation when it comes to age at birth of first child, socio-economic status and overall turbulence in their trajectories.

Are there gender differences in family trajectories by education in Finland?

BACKGROUND: Previous studies suggest that in some countries socioeconomic differences in family formation are highly gendered, whereas gender-neutral patterns are reported in other countries. Most previous studies focus on single events and therefore it is unclear how the gender differences and neutralities in family transitions combine into variation in longer family-formation trajectories. Objective: We explore how family trajectories vary by educational attainment and gender. The research asks whether there are gender differences in family trajectories by education. We focus on the trajectories of women and men in Finland between the ages of 18 and 39, and on the 1969 and 1970 birth cohorts. The trajectories consist of states entered via the formation and dissolution of cohabitation and marriage and the birth of the first child. Methods: We give a sequence representation of Finnish register data comprising monthly histories of union dynamics and childbearing. We focus on the number and order of family states. Results: We find notable differences in family trajectories by educational attainment; however, the gender differences in the trajectories within educational groups are negligible. For instance, the proportion of never-partnered and childless at age 39 is largest among those with low education, regardless of gender. Further, at age 39, highly educated women and men are most likely to live in the same union in which they became first-time parents. Contribution: This study adds to previous literature by showing that in an egalitarian Nordic welfare state, longitudinal family-formation trajectories are highly stratified by education but remarkably gender-neutral. Language: en

Homogamy, global and educational distance between spouses

This article analyzes whether the process of recognition, validation and certification of competences (RVCC) can be a part of an attempt for an adult to converge his education level to the spouse’s. Taking as a starting point the theoretical framework on the spouse choice and homogamy, 289 questionnaires were applied to adults in the RVCC process, in Lisbon, during 2009. The school and family formation trajectories were reconstructed to analyze the global and educational distance between spouses. Data analysis showed that despite the prevalence of homogamy in the studied population, the presence of atypical cases emphasized the relevance of the study of heterogamy. When there is a difference in the educational level of the spouses, the adult in the RVCC process will approach his spouse. In the homogamic couples, the RVCC process brings out the schooling of the female population, the so called educational hypogamy.

Sibling similarity in family formation.

Sibling studies have been widely used to analyze the impact of family background on socioeconomic and, to a lesser extent, demographic outcomes. We contribute to this literature with a novel research design that combines sibling comparisons and sequence analysis to analyze longitudinal family-formation trajectories of siblings and unrelated persons. This allows us to scrutinize in a more rigorous way whether sibling similarity exists in family-formation trajectories and whether siblings' shared background characteristics, such as parental education and early childhood family structure, can account for similarity in family formation. We use Finnish register data from 1987 through 2007 to construct longitudinal family-formation trajectories in young adulthood for siblings and unrelated dyads (N = 14,257 dyads). Findings show that family formation is moderately but significantly more similar for siblings than for unrelated dyads, also after controlling for crucial parental background characteristics. Shared parental background characteristics add surprisingly little to account for sibling similarity in family formation. Instead, gender and the respondents' own education are more decisive forces in the stratification of family formation. Yet, family internal dynamics seem to reinforce this stratification such that siblings have a higher probability to experience similar family-formation patterns. In particular, patterns that correspond with economic disadvantage are concentrated within families. This is in line with a growing body of research highlighting the importance of family structure in the reproduction of social inequality.

Family Formation Trajectories in Romania, the Russian Federation and France: Towards the Second Demographic Transition?

This study examines family formation trajectories as a manifestation of the second demographic transition (SDT) in three countries, comparing and contrasting two post-socialist countries (Romania and the Russian Federation) with France as benchmark country advanced in the SDT. By examining combined partnership and fertility sequences and transcending the mainly descriptive nature of trajectory-based studies, the current study expands our knowledge by including key explanatory factors, such as cohort, country, and educational level. Pooled data from the Gender and Generations Survey (N = 30,197) is used to engage in sequence, optimal matching (OM), cluster and multinomial logistic regression analysis. Post-Communist cohorts are significantly more likely to engage in long-term cohabitation, childbearing within cohabitation or lone parenthood. Educational level operates differently across countries, with the highly educated in Romania and the Russian Federation less likely to follow certain de-standardized paths. Non-marital cohabitation with children is associated with lower education in all countries. Strong differences emerge between the shape and stages of the SDT in Romania and Russia, with Russians having a higher probability to experience childbearing within cohabitation, opposed to Romanians who follow childless marriage patterns or adopt postponement and singlehood. The three countries differ in their advancement in the SDT and factors shaping partnering and childbearing choices. We conclude that although the SDT remains a useful construct, it needs to be supplemented with more nuanced contextual accounts of socio-economic conditions.

Cohabitation and Family Formation in Japan

This paper documents the prevalence, duration, and marital outcomes of cohabiting unions in Japan. It then examines the correlates of cohabitation experiences and describes differences in the family formation trajectories of women who have and have not cohabited. Cohabitation has increased rapidly among recent cohorts of women and cohabiting unions in Japan tend to be relatively short and almost as likely to dissolve as to result in marriage. Life table analyses demonstrate that the cumulative probabilities of marriage and parenthood are roughly similar for women who did and did not cohabit. The most notable difference is in the pathways to family formation, with women who cohabited more likely to both marry subsequent to pregnancy and delay childbearing within marriage. Taken as a whole, these results suggest that cohabiting unions in Japan are best viewed as an emerging stage in the marriage process rather than as an alternative to marriage or singlehood. We conclude with speculation about the likelihood of further increases in cohabitation in Japan and the potential implications for marriage and fertility.

Cohabitation and family formation in Japan

This article documents the prevalence, duration, and marital outcomes of cohabiting unions in Japan. It then examines the correlates of cohabitation experiences and also describes differences in the family-formation trajectories of women who have and have not cohabited. Cohabitation has increased rapidly among recent cohorts of women, and cohabiting unions in Japan tend to be relatively short in duration and are almost as likely to dissolve as to result in marriage. Life table analyses demonstrate that the cumulative probabilities of marriage and parenthood within marriage are roughly similar for women who did and those who did not cohabit. The most notable difference is in the pathways to family formation, with women who cohabited more likely both to marry subsequent to pregnancy and to delay childbearing within marriage. Taken as a whole, these results suggest that cohabiting unions in Japan are best viewed as an emerging prelude to marriage rather than as an alternative to marriage or singlehood. We conclude with speculation about the likelihood of further increases in cohabitation in Japan and the potential implications for marriage and fertility.