Across Western countries, men’s retirement decisions are increasingly being linked to their family circumstances. At the same time, postponed childbearing and increasing family complexity, such as separations and repartnering, have led to greater possibilities for men to have children later in lives and to have young children and young grandchildren during the same period of their life. This study investigates whether having children later in life and potentially young grandchildren at the same time, is associated with retirement timing in Sweden among men born 1940–1956. Using role theory, the study first examines the retirement timing of men who have children after age 45 compared with men who have children earlier in life and childless men. Thereafter, it examines the retirement timing among men who have either young children (aged 0–3) or young grandchildren (aged 0–3) or both, compared with other fathers/grandfathers and childless men. Event-history analyses based on full-population register data show that men who had a child after age 45 (except ages 66–70) retire later compared with men who only had children at age 45 or earlier. The analyses also reveal that it is especially men with young children (without young grandchildren) who retire latest. Men with young children and grandchildren retire instead earliest. Concluding, late fatherhood and, in particular, having young children is important for men’s retirement timing as it leads to postponed retirement, possibly due to the traditional provider role among fathers, whereas having both young children and young grandchildren early-set retirement instead, potentially due to role overload.

In many Western countries, divorce among older age groups has slowly increased. One potential explanation is the increase in the diversity of family structures, such as a blend of joint children, stepchildren and stepgrandchildren. We investigate the association between multigenerational family complexity and late-life divorce in Sweden (60 +). Multigenerational family complexity includes a couple’s joint children/grandchildren and any children/grandchildren to whom one of the partners is a parent/grandparent, i.e. when the female partner, male partner or both partners have children/grandchildren from previous unions. Using Swedish register data, we find that couples with step relationships are more likely to divorce than those with only biological ties, that couples with only joint children or grandchildren have the lowest late-life divorce risk, and that couples with two sets of stepchildren face a higher risk than those with one. We also find that joint children in stepfamilies lower divorce risk among couples where the female partner has children from previous unions and for couples with both joint and step grandchildren, regardless of the stepchild’s parental lineage. Lineage patterns of family complexity in the third generation operate somewhat differently than those in the second generation do. We provide novel insights into how biological and stepties as well as maternal and paternal lineages across generations are related to divorce risk later in life.

Approximately one-third of all older adults in Sweden report periods with depressive symptoms. The study aims to find explanations for older partnered individuals’ depressive symptoms by focusing on their gender attitudes, household division of labor and conformity to younger partnered individuals’ commonly held gender attitudes and household division of labor. Analyses are based on a subsample (n respondents 1764) from the Swedish Generations and Gender Survey (2012/2013) including individuals aged 60–80. The analytical strategy is logistic regression. The findings show that individuals with traditional gender attitudes are more likely to report a high level of depressive symptoms than individuals with transitional (i.e. attitudes in between traditional and egalitarian attitudes) and individuals with egalitarian gender attitudes. Lower conformity to commonly held gender attitudes is also associated with a high level of depressive symptoms. However, neither the household division of labor nor conformity to common household division was associated with depressive symptoms. In later life, gender attitudes thus seem more important for depressive symptoms than the actual household division of labor. It may be that attitudes are more important than behavior among older couples, and a reason for this may be that behavior is likely more restricted by practical circumstances.

Objective: This study investigated the association between individuals' economic situation and divorce among the population aged 60+ in Sweden, with a focus on the role of gender and potential changes across cohorts.

Background: Previous research on divorce has mainly considered individuals of working age or all ages combined, although late-life divorce is increasing in several Western countries. Economic considerations regarding divorce may differ for older members of the population, who often have a more restricted economic situation and fewer possibilities to respond to the consequences of a dissolution.

Method: Using Swedish population registers, this study investigated late-life divorce among cohorts born 1930–1956. Discrete-time event-history analysis was employed to study the relationship between income (recent and accumulated individual income, and spouses combined income levels) and divorce across gender and cohorts.

Results: For women, the results showed a shifting pattern from a positive to a slightly negative gradient of the two individual income measures for divorce. Men had an increasingly negative income gradient in divorce across cohorts. The results for combined income levels for couples corroborate these patterns. Late-life divorce has become increasingly linked to low income over cohorts.

Conclusion: The novel findings for older individuals mirror previous findings on trends in the general population, although those studies used other socioeconomic measures. As the association between income and divorce becomes increasingly negative among older women and men, and as the divorce rate increases, there is a growing need to understand different aspects of couple dynamics in later life.

Since the mid-1990s, the vast majority of fathers in Sweden have used parental leave, albeit for shorter durations than mothers. One major reason for fathers’ uptake of parental leave is the first reserved month, often called the daddy’s month, introduced in 1995. The reserved month is based on a “use it or lose it” principle, meaning that the month of leave is forfeited if not used by the designated parent. Since the 1990s, two additional reserved months have been introduced to each parent, resulting in a steady increase in fathers’ uptake of parental leave. Nevertheless, some fathers still do not make use of it. We investigate which fathers do not use parental leave and whether this has changed over time. The analysis is conducted with administrative register data of all fathers to children born in Sweden during the years 1994-2017. We especially pay attention to differences between fathers with different earnings, but also the association between the father’s uptake of parental leave and the mother’s earnings. We find that it is more common among fathers with the lowest and highest earnings not to use parental leave compared to other fathers. Over time, this U-shaped pattern has become increasingly clear. This pattern is not visible when considering the mother’s earnings, however. Instead, the likelihood of fathers not using any parental leave decreases when the mother’s income increases, and this pattern persists over time. The patterns of leave use are discussed in relation to the development of the parental leave insurance in Sweden.

Despite steady economic and social development in Bangladesh, women are in an underprivileged situation in many ways. This study explores the association between the use of information and communication technology (ICT) and women’s empowerment in Bangladesh. This study employs ordinary least squares regression, the ordered logit model, and the multinomial logit model, using Financial Inclusion Insights (2017) Survey data, to investigate the relationship between mobile phone use and women’s empowerment. The study’s main result indicates that mobile phone use facilitates women’s empowerment in general, but the impact needs to be considered for different groups of women. Housewives who are restricted within the household are impacted less than non-housewives by mobile phone use, contrary to our expectations. Also heads of households and spouses of heads of households, who are in very different positions in a patriarchal family structure, are similarly impacted by mobile phone use. This result implies that ICT only affects the empowerment of women who are not restricted to the household, and we conclude that ICT access alone is not enough to ensure women’s awareness about their rights.

Research on determinants of fathers’ parental leave use often focuses on fathers’ characteristics but leave out that decisions are negotiated with the mother. This study asks how fathers’ and mothers’ characteristics as well as their combination are associated with fathers’ leave use in Sweden, a country where parental leave sharing is encouraged. The results indicate that both fathers’ and mothers’ income and education matter for how long leave the father takes, albeit in gendered ways. Fathers with the lowest income tend not to use leave but if the mother also have no (or low) income, he will use long leave. Among middle-income fathers, a short leave is most common but if the mother has high income, they will instead use a long leave. Fathers’ and mothers’ tertiary education are positively associated with leave and two tertiary educations lead to a long leave rather than a short leave.

Objective: This study examines the extent to which the experience of parenthood worries among Finnish firsttime parents predicts the probability of a second birth, and whether the associations differ according to the parent's gender or the sufficiency of spousal support in parenting. Background: First-time parents' withdrawal from having a second child has been connected to declining fertility rates in Finland and many other high -income countries; consequently, more understanding is needed about why parents potentially refrain from subsequent childbearing. Method: We utilize longitudinal survey data collected from Finnish parents ( N = 544) in three waves (2016- 2020). Results: The results show that experiencing parenthood worries significantly predicts the probability of a second birth. Specifically, the accumulation of parenthood worries predicted a lower probability of a second birth, and each additional worry decreased the probability significantly more for fathers compared to mothers. Although we found no gender differences regarding the associations between specific parenthood worries and the probability of a second birth, our results showed that fathers who worried about loneliness or having sole responsibility for parenting were less likely to have a second child than fathers with no such worries. In terms of the sufficiency of spousal support in parenting, we found, first, that among parents who received insufficient spousal support, those who worried about their parenting skills adequacy had a lower probability of a second birth than those with no such worries. Second, among parents with sufficient spousal support, worrying about their own ability to cope was associated with decreased probability of a second birth compared to those who did not experience such worry. Conclusion: Our findings provide new insights into the potential influence of parenthood worries experienced by first-time parents and the role of spousal support in subsequent childbearing.

Increased gender equality in the labor market and the home are both cited as stabilizers to income inequality between households, but shifts in the economic organization of families over the life course instead appear to amplify household income inequality. Using the case of Sweden, where men have taken longer parental leave in recent years and the age at parenthood continues to advance, we analyze between-family income inequality for couples with a young child. Based on income data from population registers, we decompose how changes in family dynamics, pre- and postparenthood, contributed to income inequality in families with children between the years 1995 and 2018. Analyses show no evidence that assortative mating has increased and that a minor decline in inequality between couples over this 24-year period resulted from two opposing trends: Dis-equalizing changes related to women's postbirth income advancements were eclipsed by equalizing changes related to the postponement of parenthood. Postbirth income trends reveal how between-family inequality increased through women's income development and decreased through men's. Our findings confirm the importance of family processes to household inequality and show the complex effects of both changes in the timing of parenthood and improved gender equality.