Did your mother work? Impact of mother’s employment status on daughter’s fertility intentions

Using longitudinal data from the Household Survey on “Family and Social Subjects” carried out in Italy between 2003 and 2007 we study fertility intentions of Italian women in reproductive ages by their mother’s employment status when they were 14 years old. We expect mother’s working experiences during childhood to be a key determinant of fertility intentions especially for younger women at the beginning of their reproductive career who may better anticipate the conflict between work and family life than their counterparts whose mother was at home. Preliminary results suggest that mother’s employment status does not directly influence daughter’s child-number intentions and daughter’s probability to have a child in the inter-survey period given that it was planned in the short period before. However, the experience of having had a working mother during childhood strengthens the correlation between mother’s and daughter’s educational level and decreases the likelihood to revise downwards the initially stated childbearing plans after the birth of a second child.