Socioeconomic resources and division of breadwinning responsibilities in the early stages of childrearing

Socioeconomic resources and division of breadwinning responsibilities in the early stages of childrearing.

The analysis is based on register data comprising all Norwegian married and cohabiting couples whose first common child was born in the period 1987 – 2001. We analyze the sharing of breadwinning responsibilities at three stages of the family cycle: the year the first common child was born, two years after and six years after. We define the following groups of breadwinning models: I Traditional (mother’s income amounts to 35 percent or less of father’s income), II “Equality light” (mother’s income amounts to between 35 and 80 percent of father’s income), III Equal (mother’s income amounts to between 80 and 120 percent of father’s income) and IV Untraditional (mother’s income amounts to more than 120 percent of father’s income, including couples where father’s income = 0). We investigate to what extent the couples’ distribution on breadwinning models are influenced by socioeconomic resources, defined as couple’s education (combined classification) and father’s income, marital status (married or cohabiting), as well as family changes after the initial year – like additional children born and transition to marriage for cohabitants. We also include several demographic variables as control variables.