Who makes the decision to have children? Couples' childbearing intentions and actual childbearing.

This study investigates how the childbearing intentions of women and men in couples affect actual childbearing over the following years with the aim to explore whether women's or men's intentions may be more important. The study is set in Sweden, a country known for ranking high in terms of gender equality and a country with relatively high fertility. We use the Young Adult Panel Study (YAPS), which gives information about both partners' long-term childbearing intentions in 2009, and follow these couples for five years with register data on childbearing. In 30 percent of the couples, both partners intended to have a child, and out of these about three quarters have a child. The results show that, in general, both partners need to intend to have a child for the couple to do so but that women's intentions tend to have more influence over the decision to have a second or third child. This phenomenon is interpreted as decision-making in relation to the cost and utility of children for women and men.

Agency and capabilities to achieve a work-life balance: a comparison of Sweden and Hungary.

This study develops a conceptual framework with a capabilities and agency approach for analyzing work­life balance (WLB) applied in two societies (Hungary and Sweden), which have different working time regimes, levels of precarious employment, and gender equality discourses and norms. Inspired by Amartya Sen, we present a model illustrating how agency freedom for WLB depends on multiple resources at the individual, work organizational, institutional, and normative/societal levels. Using a unique qualitative survey conducted in two cities, Budapest and Stockholm, we analyze how mothers and fathers subjectively experience the tensions between family and work demands, and their possibilities for alternative choices (agency freedom). We find similarities in these tensions involving time pressure and time poverty, cutting across gender and education. Our Hungarian parents, nevertheless, experience greater agency inequalities for WLB, which reflect weaker institutional resources (conversion factors) as well as cultural/societal norms that act as constraints for WLB claims in the workplace and household. Our study reveals that Swedish parents, both men and women, express a strong sense of entitlement to exercise rights to care.