Poster session on Marriage and union formation, families and households (1)

Using data on non-partnered individuals aged 22-35 from eight European countries (N = 8,443), we investigate expected consequences of moving in with a partner within the next three years. Results confirmed that Swedes had the highest probability of expecting improvements in their financial situation, whereas respondents from Belgium, France, and Russia had the lowest probability of anticipating decreasing career opportunities. Further, Romanians and Swedes were most likely to expect less personal freedom, whereas Hungarian and French respondents were most likely to expect increasing life satisfaction. Across all countries, women were significantly more likely than men to expect an improved financial situation. This gender gap was biggest in Bulgaria, Romania and Russia and smallest in Sweden, France and Belgium. Also, Bulgarian men were more likely to anticipate a loss in employment opportunities and personal freedom than women. In Austria, men were more likely to expect increasing life satisfaction than women.

Cohabiting unions and marriages have coexisted in Latin America since the times of colonization. Traditionally, the former was most common among population groups characterized by lower socioeconomic status. However, since the 1990s, consensual unions have increased considerably in almost all countries in the region, suggesting its spreading across traditional social barriers. Centered on the idea that cohabiting unions are not a one-dimensional phenomenon; this paper analyzes the extent to which the demographics of cohabiting unions have changed across different cohorts of women in Latin America, while contrasting country-level differentials. Using census data from IPUMS International (1970-2000/2010) we conduct multilevel multinomial logistic regression models. Second, given the relatively recent increase in women’s labor force participation in this region we compare, across countries, the role of income in predicting cohabitation during the mid-2000s. By addressing these two aspects of consensual unions’ continuity and change, our study contributes to the understanding of the role this type of union plays within the larger society and how it may contribute to its stratification.

Generally, lack of material resources for child care among low income or poor households has been emphasized in both research studies and policies that seek to address poor child nutritional and health status. But female time poverty resulting mainly from occupational and maternal role conflicts has also been identified by a number of studies as a factor associated with suboptimal child care. The present study examined the structural and institutional conditions that undermine the positive benefits of maternal education and occupation and the associated care behaviours among highly educated professional mothers in the city of Accra. The findings show that location of work place was a major factor associated with the ability of the mothers to combine child care activities with work. Long hours of travel to and from work due to heavy vehicular traffic prevented some from even enjoying fully the half-day work benefit for lactating mothers. Child care tasks are delegated to inexperienced house helps. It is recommended that policies that can reduce maternal and occupational role conflicts should be adopted to improve child care behaviours and outcomes among professional women in Accra and Ghana as a whole.

Research and programs have traditionally sought to understand and influence maternal health by focusing on the knowledge, attitudes and practices of recently-pregnant women. Yet, women are often not the decision-makers. In this innovative study, we analyze data collected from women, their husbands, and their mothers-in-law to explore the relative influence of each household member on maternal health practices in rural Mali. The analysis modeled indices of eight cultural domains, including traditionality, gender roles, and power. Key outcomes are antenatal care frequency, antenatal care timing, place of delivery, and receipt of postnatal care. Husbands’ preferences and opinions were not significantly associated with any of the outcomes. In contrast, the preferences and opinions of mothers-in-law had strong effects on the maternal health behaviors of their daughters-in-law. These results indicate that interventions focusing only on women are insufficient to advance women’s reproductive health in patriarchal societies such as Mali.

This study examines the association between child marriage and women's experience of intimate partner emotional, physical and sexual violence in the past twelve months. Data are derived from Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 2007-2010 in Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, and Zambia. The analysis is based on currently married women aged 20-29 years who are in their first marriage. Twenty-eight percent of respondents in Ghana, 48 percent of those in Malawi and more than 50 percent of those in Nigeria and Zambia were married before their 18th birthday. Multivariate logistic regression analyses indicate that child marriage is associated with higher odds of women experiencing sexual violence in Ghana, physical violence in Malawi, and emotional violence in Zambia. In Nigeria, the association between child marriage and emotional violence is mediated by individual- and relationship-level characteristics. In Nigeria and Zambia, first marriage at ages 15-17 is associated with higher odds of physical violence in the past 12 months than first marriage in adulthood. The findings suggest that there is a need for child marriage prevention and domestic violence prevention programs to work together to change the cycle of these forms of violence against women and the social norms that support them.

Urbanisation is occurring rapidly in Sub-Saharan Africa and with it comes significant social change. Towns and cities are places where there are a myriad of social values and expectations placed upon relationships and childbearing; in this rapidly changing environment conjugal relationships become increasingly unstable, which is thought to increase women’s uncertainty about having children. Current evidence shows that reproductive uncertainty is associated with ambiguous fertility intentions and lengthening birth intervals. Using data from six focus group discussions conducted in two informal settlements of Nairobi, Kenya, this research aims to explore the nature of relationships in an urban environment and how they impact upon the timing of births and the number of children women desire. Early results show that relationships are influenced by the environment of the informal settlement, in particular the high levels of financial insecurity. Changing gender roles, specifically increased economic participation amongst women, are altering the perceived costs of bearing children and leading to smaller desired family sizes and to longer birth intervals. In addition, there is pervasive relationship instability and lack of trust between partners which is having a significant influence over the timing of births within these communities

Much research has shown that the relationship between women’s economic prospects and marriage formation has shifted from negative to positive in the western societies in the last few decades in the Western societies. Theoretical framework used to explain the phenomena in developed countries has gradually shifted from Gary Becker’s gender specialization model to V. K. Oppenheimer’s mate searching theory. Drawing data from the 2006 and 2008 Chinese General Social Survey, we investigate circumstances across cohorts of Chinese men and women born between 1940 and 1979. Our findings show different patterns in China. Educational attainment delays women’s marriage formation, but accelerates men’s entering marriage. However, other economic indicators, including occupation, have negative effects on both men’s and women’s marriage formation. We argue that neither model can explain marriage formation patterns in China without the understanding of the unique Chinese socioeconomic and cultural context, and that contextually relevant theories and hypotheses should be developed.

This study examines geographical distance between couples in family formation ages and their older parents using Swedish administrative register data. We look at all unions who gave birth to a 1st child between 1980 and 2007 and measure the distance to the four grandparents of the newly born child. We study the geographical distance to the man'€™s and the woman'€™s parents. The focus of the paper is to examine how education and migration interact and differ by gender. In the period of the study tertiary education expanded in a significant way and women moved from being under-represented to being over-represented in higher education. We show how changing patterns of educational patterns by gender has influenced the geography of inter-generational relationships in Sweden. The role of changing educational hypergamy and assortative mating as female educational achievement increased is also examined.

Sibling studies have been the method of choice to study the effect of family background - everything siblings share - on socioeconomic and demographic outcomes. Recent research on family formation emphasized that fertility and partnership transitions are embedded in a holistic process of family formation that unfolds over time. The main analytical contribution of this study is to combine the sibling approach with sequence analysis to disentangle the mechanisms that link family background to holistic family formation trajectories. We use Finnish register data from 1987 until 2007 to construct family formation sequences for sibling and non-sibling dyads from age 18 to 30 (N=9581 dyads). The empirical analysis employs sequence analysis, sibling correlations, and regression analysis. Preliminary findings show that siblings’ family formation is indeed more similar than family formation of non-sibling dyads. The intersection of education and gender composition of the sibling dyad appear as important explanatory factors for the similarity of siblings’ family formation.

Patterns of marital unions have changed in the Philippines in recent years. Formal marriage has declined while informal marriages or cohabitation has increased. Percentages of live births registered as nonmarital has likewise increased.

In this paper, we revisit and examine the meaning of marriage and cohabitation in today’s society with the goal of documenting and teasing out the different dimensions of those meanings. We use data from 12 FGDs of men and women from three metro areas in the Philippines conducted in 2007.

Results show that normative meanings attached to marriage remain but some of its dimensions have become salient. Marriage remains a natural course in people’s life but the attribution of an old unmarried person appears to be more allied with females than males. Marriage has become less of a marker of adulthood in the context of other more pressing considerations like financial security and stability, establishment of careers, or settlement of parental obligations. In the face of unforeseen events, like the occurrence of pregnancy outside of marriage, marriage remains an ideal while more practical considerations gain prominence. For some young people, they are willing to wait when the ‘time is right” while for others cohabitation becomes a rational choice.