Births and other life goals: complementarity or competition? (BIRTHLIFE)

In European and other advanced societies people tend to have fewer children than they tell they would like to have. In previous research on this topic the correspondence between childbearing plans and outcomes had generally been investigated in isolation from choices and events in other life course domains. This project tackles this central issue in an innovative way by acknowledging the gap between intended and realised fertility in the unified framework of individual life course. Using new cross-country comparative and longitudinal data, we will investigate the interdependencies between intentions and outcomes in reproduction, education, partnership, work, and residence; with life courses being considered in their structural and institutional context. The project aims to disentangle the correlation structure across individuals simultaneous life goals (or intentions) and individuals subsequent behaviours (or outcomes). Methodologically, the novelty of the project lies in its use of recent cross-country comparative and longitudinal data; and, theoretically, in its specification of competing goals and the opportunities for goal achievement in different social contexts. The project will address the following research questions: 1) Are there interdependencies in the ways adult individuals make their decisions in different life domains, including education, partnership, childbearing, work, and residence? 2) Are life course circumstances responsible for matches and mismatches between intended and realised births and intended and realised events pertaining to other spheres of adult life? How do life intentions/goals other than childbearing influence the match between birth intention and birth outcome? 3) How are the different intention-behaviour matches and mismatches in childbearing and parallel fields of life influenced by the context in which adult individuals operate? The project will use latent class analysis and simultaneous hazard modelling of the various life course intentions and behavioural outcomes to see whether parallel life domains are independent or how they hang together. BIRTHLIFE will offer new perspectives for understanding fertility and reproductive decision-making and will contribute to a new paradigm of post-transitional fertility. Moreover, it will improve our understanding of goal achievement in other life course domains. This knowledge will help policy-makers design measures aimed at facilitating work-family reconciliation and the achievement of other goals in life which will help generate and maintain individuals well-being. The principal investigator, Maria Rita Testa, will be the main responsible for the project. She will work throughout the project with one PhD student and one Post-doc scholar.

Fertility in advanced economies has declined to a point where most countries are experiencing sustained below-replacement fertility levels. However, the reported desire for (additional) children is higher than the observed fertility rate. Using a life course perspective, the BIRTHLIFE project explored through different quantitative research methods how life domains compete with and complement childbearing. The research team investigated the following aspects: fertility intentions and their realization from a couple perspective; uncertainty in fertility decision-making; importance of life domains competing with family formation; employment uncertainty; couples' employment; housing and residential mobility; belonging to the neighborhood, as well as multigenerational family-context. Within the project, different data sources were analyzed, including cross-sectional data from 46 countries globally, comparative longitudinal data on European countries comprising two observations over time, longitudinal data over longer periods of time from the UK and Australia as well as cross-sectional micro-level data on single countries, like Vietnam. Here some results in nutshells: (1) Women, who have the larger burden in childbearing, hold more power in the entry to parenthood. However, larger family sizes turned out to be related to harmonious fertility intentions among couples. (2) For both short-term and overall intentions, a substantial share of people is uncertain about intending a(nother) child, and childless exhibit by far the greatest uncertainty and a higher number in revisions. Partnership and employment status and changes therein are associated with changes and transitions in fertility intentions. (3) According to the self-assessed importance attributed to various aspect of life, family is most often regarded as important in individuals' lives, followed by work, friends, and leisure. This hierarchy remained the same during the last decade. An increase in the importance of family, friends, and leisure, with significant regional differences is observed. (4) Educational attainment changes the relationship between employment and first birth for women, particularly with part-time work being more positively associated with motherhood for the highly educated. Further, unemployment continues to delay fatherhood. (5) So far, there is a gap in the literature about the interaction in life domains of geographic-specific social networks, housing and residential mobility, and childbearing. Our results indicate that a stronger sense of belonging to the neighborhood is positively associated with the transition to parenthood. (6) In countries characterized by a strong filial piety and a son preference, co-residence with the parent generation is associated with women's fertility desires and women living in more traditional family structures likely experience more social and normative pressure to fulfil the two-child norm.