Trude Lappegård

Family policy and fertility: fathers’ and mothers’ use of parental leave and continued childbearing in Norway and Sweden:

In the Nordic countries, gender equality is an explicit policy goal. For example, Norway and Sweden both offer paid parental leave for approximately one year following childbirth with earnings-related benefits and with certain periods reserved exclusively for the father. In this study, we examine the relationship between fathers’ and mothers’ use of parental leave and continued childbearing among couples in Norway and Sweden. The two countries offer largely similar family policies, but differ concerning family policy context. While Sweden has a consistent policy concerning gender relations, Norway has more ambiguous family policies giving incentives both to gender equality and childrearing at home. Our study is based on event-history analyses of Nordic register data and shows that fathers’ parental leave use is positively associated with continued childbearing in both Norway and Sweden, for both one- and two-child couples. The association is stronger in Norway. For two-child families, a long period of leave for the mother is positively associated with a third birth. It seems as if the two-child family is highly compatible with the combination of work and family life, but that in families who choose to have more children, the mother often seems to have a weaker work orientation.

Changes in union status during the transition to parenthood in eleven European countries, 1970s to early 2000s

Couples who have children are increasingly likely to have lived together without being married at some point in their relationship. Some couples begin their unions with cohabitation and marry before first conception, some marry during pregnancy or directly after the first birth, while others remain unmarried 3 years after the first birth. Using union and fertility histories since the 1970s for eleven countries, we examine whether women who have children in unions marry, and if so, at what stage in family formation. We also examine whether women who conceive when cohabiting are more likely to marry or separate. We find that patterns of union formation and childbearing develop along different trajectories across countries. In all countries, however, less than 40 per cent of women remained in cohabitation up to 3 years after the first birth, suggesting that marriage remains the predominant institution for raising children.

Increasingly heterogeneous ages at first birth by education in Southern European and Anglo-American family-policy regimes: A seven-country comparison by birth cohort.

According to the ‘reproductive polarization’ hypothesis, family-policy regimes unfavourable to the combination of employment with motherhood generate greater socio-economic differentials in fertility than other regimes. This hypothesis has been tested mainly for ‘liberal’ Anglo-American regimes. To investigate the effects elsewhere, we compared education differentials in age at first birth among native-born women of 1950s and 1960s birth cohorts in seven countries representing three regime types. Women with low educational attainment have continued to have first births early, not only in Britain and the USA but also in Greece, Italy, and Spain. Women at all other levels of education have experienced a shift towards later first births, a shift that has been largest in Southern Europe. Unlike the educationally heterogeneous changes in age pattern at first birth seen under the Southern European and Anglo-American family-policy regimes, the changes across birth cohorts in the studys two ‘universalistic’ countries, Norway and France, have been educationally homogeneous.

Socioeconomic Differences in Multipartner Fertility Among Norwegian Men

This article analyzes male fertility, with a particular focus on multipartner fertility, for cohorts born 1955 to 1984 in Norway. We find that socioeconomically disadvantaged men have the lowest chance of becoming fathers and the lowest likelihood of fathering multiple children in stable unions. Multipartner fertility, on the other hand, is positively associated with both disadvantage and advantage: higher-order birth risks with a new partner are more prevalent among men with low as well as high socioeconomic status. An intervening factor among disadvantaged men may be a higher union dissolution risk, and an elevated risk among advantaged men may be associated with their higher preferences for children and other features that make these men more attractive to women as partners and fathers of future children.

Childbearing Across Partnerships in Australia, the United States, Norway, and Sweden

This article compares mothers’ experience of having children with more than one partner in two liberal welfare regimes (the United States and Australia) and two social democratic regimes (Sweden and Norway). We use survey-based union and birth histories in Australia and the United States and data from national population registers in Norway and Sweden to estimate the likelihood of experiencing childbearing across partnerships at any point in the childbearing career. We find that births with new partners constitute a substantial proportion of all births in each country we study. Despite quite different arrangements for social welfare, the determinants of childbearing across partnerships are very similar. Women who had their first birth at a very young age or who are less well-educated are most likely to have children with different partners. The educational gradient in childbearing across partnerships is also consistently negative across countries, particularly in contrast to educational gradients in childbearing with the same partner. The risk of childbearing across partnerships increased dramatically in all countries from the 1980s to the 2000s, and educational differences also increased, again, in both liberal and social democratic welfare regimes.

Studies of Men’s Involvement in the Family—Part 1 Introduction

This special issue (like the one to follow) is designed to highlight research on men’s increased involvement in their families, focusing both on the antecedents that are linked with their involvement and on the consequences that may follow. Thus we show that such research is consistent with our theoretical view that the ongoing gender revolution has two parts. The first half, in which the “separate spheres” are broached by women’s increased participation in paid work, strained the family, but the second, in which the separation between the spheres is finally dissolved by men’s taking an active role in their families, contributing to the care of their children and homes, strengthens the family. This issue focuses on Scandinavia, where both halves of the gender revolution are more advanced than in other industrialized countries; the second issue, although not neglecting Scandinavia, includes not only research on the United States but also cross-national studies.

Diffusion of Childbearing Within Cohabitation

The article analyzes the diffusion of childbearing within cohabitation in Norway, using municipality data over a 24-year period (1988–2011). Research has found substantial spatial heterogeneity in this phenomenon but also substantial spatial correlation, and the prevalence of childbearing within cohabitation has increased significantly over time. We consider several theoretical perspectives and implement a spatial panel model that allows accounting for autocorrelation not only on the dependent variable but also on key explanatory variables, and hence identifies the key determinants of diffusion of childbearing within cohabitation across space and over time. We find only partial support for the second demographic transition as a theory able to explain the diffusion of childbearing within cohabitation. Our results show that at least in the first phase of the diffusion (1988–1997), economic difficulties as measured by increased unemployment among men contributed to the diffusion of childbearing within cohabitation. However, the most important driver for childbearing within cohabitation is expansion in education for women.

Gender Equality in the Family and Childbearing

Gender equality and equity in the division of household labor may be associated with couples’ transitions to first, second, and third births. Our comprehensive analysis includes the division of housework and child care as well as the perception of whether this division is fair and satisfactory. We use a unique data set combining the Norwegian Generations and Gender Survey (2007) with information on childbirths within 3 years after the interview from the population register. We found that an unequal division of housework is associated with a decreased chance of first and subsequent births. Child care is most relevant when the respondent is satisfied with the division, as one-child couples where the respondent is less satisfied with the division of child care are less likely to have a second child. Our findings suggest that, even in a high-equity context such as Norway, equality and equity in the household are also important for childbearing.

How do gender values and household practices cohere? Value-practice configurations in a gender egalitarian context

Previous research has revealed a paradoxical simultaneity of egalitarian gender values and inegalitarian practices in Europe. The social-democratic welfare states, i.e. the Nordic countries, however, stand out collectively as having the most consistent relationship between egalitarian values and practices. The present article examines the consistencies and inconsistencies between gender values and practices among Norwegian married and cohabiting women and men, focusing particularly on the division of housework and childcare. Drawing on data from the Norwegian Generations and Gender Survey, we identify four distinct types of value–practice relationships in families. Analysis of predicted class membership probabilities reveals that half of our sample belongs to a family type with consistent gender values and household practices, of whom the majority has consistent egalitarian values and egalitarian practices. The other half belongs to a family type with inconsistent value–practice relationships. These are significantly gendered, leading us to recast the so-called paradoxical simultaneity of egalitarian values and inegalitarian practices into a female paradox and the simultaneity of inegalitarian values and egalitarian practices into a male paradox. We attribute the gendered nature of the inconsistencies between values and practices mainly to womens and mens dissimilar perceptions of how everyday household work is apportioned between partners.

Studies of Men’s Involvement in the Family—Part 2

This special issue (like the preceding one) is designed to highlight research on men’s increased involvement in their families, focusing both on the antecedents that are linked with their involvement and on the consequences that may follow, and to show that such research is consistent with our theoretical view that the ongoing gender revolution has two parts. The first half, in which the “separate spheres” are broached by women’s increased participation in paid work, strained the family; the second, in which the separation between the spheres is finally being dissolved by men’s taking an active role in their families by contributing to the care of their children and homes, strengthens the family. The previous issue focused on Scandinavia, where both halves of the gender revolution are more advanced than in other industrialized countries; this issue, although not neglecting Scandinavia, includes not only research on the United States but also cross-national studies.