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

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• cohabitation
• marriage
• union dynamics
• childbearing
• Europe
• life-course research

Notes

1. We would like to thank Karolin Kubisch for harmonizing and cleaning the data, Joshua Goldstein, Elizabeth Thomson, and Sheela Kennedy for input into the development of analyses, and Kelly Musick, Jim Raymo, and anonymous reviewers for useful comments and suggestions. We would also like to acknowledge financial support from the European Research Council and the Laboratory of Economic and Social Demography at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. Please see www.nonmarital.org for acknowledgments and further information about each individual survey.

2. Brienna Perelli-Harris is at the School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK. E-mail: [email protected]. Michaela Kreyenfeld and Aiva Jasilioniene are at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research; Wendy Sigle-Rushton is at the London School of Economics & Political Science; Renske Keizer is at Erasmus University Rotterdam; Trude Lappegård is at Statistics Norway; Caroline Berghammer and Paola Di Giulio are at the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and at the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Human Capital. Caroline Berghammer is also at the University of Vienna.