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Fertility and partnership status in the last two decades
Abstract
The family context in which babies are born is of continuing interest to policy makers. This article begins by reviewing trends in births within and outside marriage in England and Wales in the last two decades. It then examines the driving factors behind the ongoing rise in the proportion of births outside marriage, with particular focus on the proportion of married women of childbearing age, and changes in marital and non-marital fertility rates. Given the variety of modern living arrangements into which children are born, the emphasis of the article then shifts to non-marital births within cohabiting partnerships. For the first time estimates of fertility for cohabiting women of different ages are presented. These are based on information collected at birth registration and survey estimates of the cohabiting population. Fertility rates for cohabiting women are then compared with those of married women and other (non-married, non-cohabiting) women. Although there are limitations to the methodology, the article shows that over the past two decades, cohabiting women in England and Wales have had an overall level of fertility below that of married women but considerably above that of other unmarried women.
... Studies from the U.S. have indicated that the proportion of women who bore children outside of marriage increased from 18.4% in 1980 to 41% in 2009 [1]. A significant increase in the number of infants born to unmarried women in European countries has also been noted [2,3]. The recent increase in non-marital childbearing in Western countries has decreased the likelihood of marriage in response to pregnancy [4]. ...
... Thus, we excluded births after 24 months of marriage. 3 Bridal pregnancy was defined as childbirth occurring before 5 months of marriage and was categorized as premarital birth and premarital conception. 4 Premarital birth was defined as childbirth before marriage followed by a marriage that occurred ,1 month after birth. ...
... Adjusted for birthplace, sex, paternal and maternal age, paternal and maternal employment, and paternal and maternal education level. 3 Post-marital pregnancy is defined as childbirth between 10 and 24 months of marriage. 4 Bridal pregnancy is defined as childbirth before 5 months of marriage. ...
Objective
In East Asia the recently increased number of marriages in response to pregnancy is an important social issue. This study evaluated the association of marriage preceded by pregnancy (bridal pregnancy) with obstetric outcomes among live births in Korea.
Methods
In this population-based study, 1,152,593 first singleton births were evaluated from data registered in the national birth registration database from 2004 to 2008 in Korea. In the study population, the pregnancy outcomes among live births from the bridal pregnancy group (N = 62,590) were compared with the outcomes of the post-marital pregnancy group (N = 564,749), composed of women who gave birth after 10 months but before 24 months of marriage. The variables preterm birth (PTB; <37 weeks gestation) and low birth weight (LBW; <2.5 kg) were used to determine the primary outcome. The adjusted odds ratios (aORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated after controlling for socio-demographic factors.
Results
The socio-demographic factors among the bridal pregnancy group were associated with a social disadvantage and particular risk factors. In the subgroup analyses of maternal age, differences in adverse pregnancy outcomes from bridal pregnancy were identified between women in the following age group: (i) ≤19, (ii) 20–39, and (iii) ≥40 years. After the multivariate analysis, the aORs for each age group were 1.47 (95% CI: 1.15–1.89), 1.76 (1.70–1.83), and 1.13 (0.77–1.66), respectively, for PTB and 0.92 (0.70–1.21), 1.60 (1.53–1.66), and 1.11 (0.71–1.74), respectively, for LBW. In the adjusted logistic regression models, bridal pregnancy was associated with PTB (1.76, 1.69–1.82) and LBW (1.53, 1.48–1.59).
Conclusion
Pregnancy outcomes among live births from bridal pregnancies are associated with higher risks for PTB and LBW in Korea.
... Since the 1970s, increasing numbers of men have lived away from their children. One reason for this trend was the rising number of births out of wedlock (ONS 2009, O"Leary et al. 2010. The majority of these children were born to cohabiting couples, but the lower stability of non-marital unions meant that these fathers faced a higher risk than did married fathers of living away from their children at some point in their lives. ...
... The majority of these children were born to cohabiting couples, but the lower stability of non-marital unions meant that these fathers faced a higher risk than did married fathers of living away from their children at some point in their lives. In addition, the percentage of children born to single mothers also increased considerably from the 1970s until the early 1990s, and has been stable since then (O"Leary et al. 2010). Finally, the rising divorce rate since the 1970s meant that more married fathers stopped living with their children (ONS 2012c). ...
Increasing numbers of childless men as well as fathers with reduced or no contact with their children have sparked concern about an erosion of fatherhood. Although the general trend is undisputed, claims about men's decreasing family involvement lack a sound empirical basis that enables comparisons between countries and sub-groups of society.
Objective: This study derives long-term trends in father-child co-residence over the life course in England and Wales, and provides comparisons of these trends by level of education and ethnic origin.
Methods: The paper calculates shares of father-child co-residence from the National Statistics Longitudinal Study (LS) and the British Labour-Force Surveys (LFS).
Results: There has been a decline of father-child co-residence in England and Wales for men in their thirties, an even greater decline for men in their twenties, and a small increase in the shares of father-child co-residence at higher ages. The trends for different educational groups were similar, but men with a degree had particularly low rates of father-child co-residence at younger ages, and relatively high ones at older ages. Neither less-educated men, nor men from Black-Caribbean and Black-African origins showed rates of father-child co-residence as low as one might have expected.
Conclusions: The steady decline of father-child co-residence among men born between 1930 and 1979 in England and Wales lends support to claims about an erosion of fatherhood. However, it is unwarranted to generalize findings from other countries about particularly low levels of father-child co-residence among less-educated men to men in England and Wales.
... Here we study women in the UK who were born in 1970. Since this birth cohort began their childbearing, there have been changes in the observed associations between childbearing and its most commonly studied socio-economic determinants (Berrington et al., 2015;Berrington and Pattaro, 2014;Hobcraft, 1996;Kneale and Joshi, 2008;O'Leary et al., 2010;Rendall and Smallwood, 2003;Steele et al., 2005Steele et al., , 2006. The most prominent determinants of UK fertility trends over the last 30 years include an increased participation in higher education among women, an increase in female employment and a reduction in the prevalence of marriage (Aassve et al., 2006;Berrington and Pattaro, 2014;Chamberlain and Gill, 2005;Neels et al., 2017;Ní Bhrolcháin and Beaujouan, 2012;Office for National Statistics, 2016;Sigle-Rushton, 2008;Steele et al., 2005Steele et al., , 2006. ...
Theories predict that the timing of childbearing and number of children born are determined by multiple socio‐economic factors. Despite this, many methods cannot investigate the interrelationships between these determinants, including the direct and indirect influence that they have on fertility over the life course. Here we use the parametric g‐formula to examine the interdependent influences of time‐varying socio‐economic processes—education, employment status and partnership status—on fertility. To demonstrate this approach, we study a cohort of women who were born in the UK in 1970. Our results show that socio‐economic processes play an important role in determining fertility, not only directly but also indirectly. We show that increasing attendance in higher education has a largely direct effect on early childbearing up to age 25 years, resulting in a substantial increase in childlessness. However, childbearing at later ages is dominated by an indirect effect of education on fertility, via partnership status and employment status, that is twice as large as the direct effect. We also use the g‐formula to examine bias due to unobserved heterogeneity, and we demonstrate that our results appear to be robust. We conclude that the method provides a valuable tool for mediation analysis in studies of interdependent life course processes.
... For example, childhood health (Barker 1997;Case et al. 2005) and early life conditions (Campbell et al. 2014;Cohen et al. 2010;Duncan et al. 2010) have shown a strong correlation with adult health. Moreover, education, occupation, and partnership histories could influence the fertility trajectory, given that the number of children and the timing of childbirth vary with different levels of SES (Clark and Cummins 2009;Clark and Hamilton 2006;Dribe et al. 2014;Skirbekk 2008) and are mediated by the presence of a partner (O'Leary et al. 2010). ...
Understanding the association between fertility histories and health later in life is necessary in the context of ageing societies. Past literature has generally found a U-shaped relationship between parity, age at first birth, and several health-related outcomes. However, these findings differed to some extent depending on the country under analysis and on the measures of health considered. As such, using wave 3 (2008–2009) and 5 (2013) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), this work aimed to answer the question: “Are fertility histories associated with the presence of chronic conditions later in life in Europe?” The analysis included 11 European countries and compared results using two different measures of chronic conditions: self-reported chronic or long-term illness and chronic diseases diagnosed by a doctor. Results showed that age at first birth is more relevant than parity for health outcomes at older ages. Moreover, in socio-democratic and continental countries, the association between fertility and chronic conditions—in particular between age at first birth and long-term illnesses—is statistically significant among women, but not among men. Finally, the association between fertility history and health was similar when using self-reported measures and chronic diseases diagnosed by a doctor.
... There has also been a rise in solo living, particularly in mid and later life; and shifts in the timing of transition to adulthood, with a rise in the number of 25-34 year olds living with their parents.The proportion of births outside of marriage has increased dramatically from under one in ten births (8%) in 1971 to nearly one in two (47%) in 2012. The majority of the rise in extra marital fertility in the UK is associated with increased cohabitation(O'Leary et al., 2010) and currently around 30% of all births take place to a cohabiting couple(Crawford et al., 2013). The proportion of all families with dependent children that are 'cohabiting couple family' doubled from around 7% in 1996 to around 15% in 2013 (ONS, 2013d). ...
The relationship between demographic change and poverty has been the subject of intense scholarly debate for over two centuries. The evidence on the link between population change and economic growth is inconclusive. However, the association between demographic characteristics such as gender, age, disability, ethnicity and particular family structures and poverty is well-established. Lone parent families and single older pensioners are particularly at risk of poverty. However policy also needs to reflect the growth diversity of family forms, with increasing numbers of parents choosing to cohabit rather than marry, the growth of hidden families as adult children increasingly co-reside with their parents well into their 20s and 30s, and an increase in single men living alone in mid-life who have never partnered or had children.
... If such information is available, one may assume that births to unmarried parents occurred within unmarried cohabitation, which allows the sorting of births according to conjugal status. See O'Leary et al. (2010) ...
BACKGROUND The diffusion of cohabitation and, presumably, of childbearing within cohabitation, inspires interest in measuring the respective contribution of childbearing within marriage and within cohabitation to overall fertility. However, there is no consensus on a proper way to do so. OBJECTIVE Contribute to the development of tools for assessing the relative importance of marriage and cohabitation to overall fertility by developing period measures closely related to age-specific fertility rates and the total fertility rate. METHODS We introduce two measures: 1) the contribution of the conjugal state (living alone, living in a cohabiting union, being married) to age-specific fertility rates (CASFR) and 2) the contribution of the conjugal state to the TFR (CTFR). These measures are similar in construction to the marital (legitimate) fertility rates and marital (legitimate) TFR, but they are weighted by the proportion of women living alone, cohabiting, or being married at each age, so that their sum is the overall TFR. Taken together, they represent the fertility of the average woman of a synthetic cohort who moves across the various conjugal states (living alone, cohabiting, being married) over her life course. They provide "realistic" estimates of completed fertility within each conjugal state. CONCLUSION CASFRs provide a description of the fertility, over her life course, of a synthetic woman who would have spent her reproductive years living alone, cohabiting, and being married as the average woman of the synthetic cohort. CTFR provides a decomposition of the cumulative fertility of this synthetic woman Over her life course, she would have had exactly the number of children computed using the overall TFR, but CTFR details the proportion of these children she would have had while living alone, while cohabiting, and while being married. COMMENTS Despite being defined as a conditional ASR weighted by the age-specific proportion of women living alone, cohabiting, or being married, computing the CASFR does not require that one know the population distribution of women by conjugal status, as this quantity cancels out. As a consequence, CASFR and CTFR may be computed without this information, as the parity-specific ASFR may be computed without knowing the population distribution of women by parity.
... Its current rate is 12.8/1000 women in 2010, twice what it was in 1990 (Office for National Statistics, 2012). These figures demonstrate the continued and increasing trend towards older first-time motherhood that exists in the UK as it does in the rest of Europe (Braude, 2013;Martin and Preston, 2009;O'Leary et al., 2010). ...
The population attempting pregnancy and having babies is ageing. Gynaecological and obstetric complications worsen with age. Maternity services are struggling. Increasing rates of infertility and complications are not matched by the marvels in the laboratory. This paper argues that assisted reproduction treatment has had a damaging social impact. Despite its public acclaim, it helps few and fails many more. The assisted reproduction industry could take a new and revolutionary direction towards empowering men to experience pregnancy, producing babies from artificial gametes, with a final goal being the liberation of both women and men from the burdens and dangers of pregnancy through the development of artificial wombs. This paper seeks to give a brief explanation as to why women are having children older and discusses how reproduction technologies have contributed to this trend. It argues that reproduction technologies is not a panacea for this problem and has in fact contributed to it. We suggest that as a means of promoting reproduction equality between the sexes, science needs to extend the reproduction experience to men, as well as developing artificial gametes and wombs.
Gender revolution theories of fertility posit that when employed women have extensive child care and household responsibilities, they opt to reduce family size. This study examines how household gender inequality influences decisions to have children. Several possible mediators, including wellbeing, relationship quality, and changes in desired family size, are examined. Results from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey show that household inequality reduces the likelihood of third births when both parents work full‐time. This is mediated by relationship satisfaction: when men contribute more to household labour, their partners are more satisfied, which is associated with increased fertility .
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