Linked lives: intergenerational transmission of labour-market pathways between parent dyads and children.

While a vast number of studies confirm the transmission of labour-market disadvantages from one generation to the next, less is known about how parents' interconnected labour-market pathways co-evolve and shape the opportunities and obstacles for their children's future careers. This study uses a multidimensional view of intergenerational transmission by describing the most typical pathways of parents' occupational careers and assesses how these patterns are associated with their children's labour-market outcomes. Drawing on Swedish longitudinal register data, we used multichannel sequence analysis to follow a cohort of people born in 1985 (n = 72,409) and their parents across 26 years. We identified four parental earning models, differentiating between (1) dual earners with high wages, (2) dual earners with low-wage, (3) one-and-a-half-earners and (4) mother as the main breadwinner. Regression analysis shows strong intergenerational transmission among the most advantageous trajectories, with education as a key determinant for young people to become less dependent on family resources. This study stresses the importance of intra-couple perspectives in life course research to understand how inequalities are shaped and preserved across generations.

Does Anyone Suffer From Teenage Motherhood? Mental Health Effects of Teen Motherhood in Great Britain Are Small and Homogeneous.

Teen mothers experience disadvantage across a wide range of outcomes. However, previous research is equivocal with respect to possible long-term mental health consequences of teen motherhood and has not adequately considered the possibility that effects on mental health may be heterogeneous. Drawing on data from the 1970 British Birth Cohort Study, this article applies a novel statistical machine-learning approach-Bayesian Additive Regression Trees-to estimate the effects of teen motherhood on mental health outcomes at ages 30, 34, and 42. We extend previous work by estimating not only sample-average effects but also individual-specific estimates. Our results show that sample-average mental health effects of teen motherhood are substantively small at all time points, apart from age 30 comparisons to women who first became mothers at age 25‒30. Moreover, we find that these effects are largely homogeneous for all women in the sample-indicating that there are no subgroups in the data who experience important detrimental mental health consequences. We conclude that there are likely no mental health benefits to policy and interventions that aim to prevent teen motherhood.

Transformation, disruption or cumulative disadvantage? Labor market and education trajectories of young mothers in Australia.

Young motherhood is often framed as detrimental to the life chances of young women with research showing negative impacts on education and labor market outcomes. At the same time, qualitative research reports narratives of motherhood as a transformative experience, providing motivation for a fresh start and moving young women away from previously unstable life pathways. These scenarios appear contradictory, however outcomes might vary for different groups of women depending on their pre-birth trajectories. We investigate the effects of early parenthood using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. We employ a sequence based approach to compare labor market- and educational precarity of young mothers and non-parenting peers. We employ a novel sequence matching technique creating a comparison group of non-parenting young women, based on similarities in early labor market trajectories. We find that young mothers have higher levels of precarity in their pre-birth trajectories. Moreover, our results show that becoming a young mother is connected to an average increase in labor market and educational precarity post birth, which supports the hypothesis of cumulative disadvantage. However, only mothers with the least precarious trajectories prior to birth experience this development, whereas young women already on highly precarious paths see a decrease in precarity over time. Although our results do not support cumulative disadvantage for the most disadvantaged women, neither does it support the idea of parenthood as a transformative event. Our results point to the importance of understanding heterogeneity in the outcomes of young mothers.

Not all the same: Swedish teenage mothers' and fathers' selection into early family formation trajectories.

Previous research has focused on teenage parenthood as a single outcome, and has overlooked the wider family formation trajectory in which it is situated. In this paper, using Swedish register data and sequence analysis tools, we explore the diversity in timing and ordering of childbearing and (re)partnering events among teenage parents. We identify trajectory clusters of traditional family patterns, modern family patterns, single parenthood and re-partnering patterns. We also examine the role of resources in the family of origin for the probability of following the different types of family formation trajectories among teenage parents. Where economic resources in the family of origin is related to the type of trajectory teenage fathers follow, family structure is of greater importance for teenage mothers. The family formation trajectories of teenage parents display substantial heterogeneity, which contradicts a view that a person who has a child early in life suddenly has their life's script written.