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

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.

Defining the Concept of Family through the Lens of Fertile-Aged Women in Bucharest, Romania—between Traditionalism and Inclusion

Family is a notion that societies are consistently trying to define and redefine nowadays, according to various interest groups. It also represents a variable functioning within conditions of population aging, especially in developing countries. An analysis of what family means must consider all the factors that influence it both structurally and in terms of size. The main objectives were to identify the perception of fertile-aged women about the notion of family and to measure its possible influence on the target group’s demographic behavior. The inquiry method was part of the research methodology with 499 face-to-face, semi-structured interviews done of a sample size population (women aged 15 to 49) living in Bucharest, Romania and supplemented by an SPSS analysis of the data gathered. The main results show that regardless of their education or income level, the interviewed target group declared that starting a new family or enlarging the current one is mostly correlated with financial aspects, and also that a pregnancy early in a woman’s career is viewed as an obstacle to her future development, even though when asked about the ideal family the financial aspect was rarely mentioned. The authors concluded that respondents’ mental attitude and reproductive behavior are undergoing a transitory phase. As such in Romania there is a need for sustainable demographic measures to tackle fertility issues. Several aspects support this: birth rates in the country have been consistently decreasing; the country’s economy is declining; and the interviewed target group conditioned starting a family or enlarging their current one on having sufficient financial resources.