Objective: This analysis tests the association between parental divorce and adult children’s gender role attitudes.

Background: After parental divorce, mothers may increase gainful employment and fathers their time in housework. These new roles may influence children’s views on gender equality.

Method: Data from two waves of the Swedish Young Adult Panel Study (YAPS), conducted in 1999 and 2003, based on a nationally representative sample of 2,520 respondents aged 22, 26, 30, and 34 years, are used for analyses. Childhood family type, i.e. intact family, single mother, single father, and mother and stepfather, are measured with retrospective questions. Attitudes towards gender equality are examined in the public sphere of work, the private sphere of the family, and a combined sphere measure.

Results: Family type in childhood is only weakly associated with young adult gender role attitudes. One exception is young adults from single father families (versus intact family), who express more modern private sphere gender role attitudes. Moreover, growing up with a mother and stepfather is more positively associated with women’s than men’s modern gender role attitudes.

Conclusion: Parental family disruption per se adds little to our understanding of what shapes gender role attitudes in adulthood but results suggest interesting interaction effects between post-divorce family type, parent’s gender, and child’s gender.

This chapter traces the changes in family diversity within the social, cultural and legal context of the Swedish welfare state. We focus on three distinctive features, deeply rooted in Swedish law and policy that have shaped family law, discourses and practices of doing a family: (1) the framing of gender equality; (2) the construction and privileging of biological fatherhood; and (3) the mother/father binary in the heteronormative family. The gender equality framework has allowed for agency and choice in the doing of family. The latter two have impeded LGBTQA+ couples and single women from forming families through access to MAR and ultimately from achieving the full legal recognition of their parenthood. Throughout the chapter, we reveal the complexities, contradictions and ambivalent positions in Swedish policy and law by tracing the barriers that had to be overcome and the challenges that remain for the recognition of diverse family forms.

The European Union has faced substantial demographic challenges in recent times and will continue to do so in the future. This paper analyses why and how demographic discourses were hijacked by illiberal, right-wing, and conservative forces. Looking at Twitter posts of members and political parties of the European Parliament from 2015 to 2021, it explores i) who are the main actors interpreting demographic trends; ii) what issues they discuss, and which explanatory frameworks they use. Critical discourse analysis is the analytical tool applied. This study adds to current research and presents the first quantitative analysis of historical Twitter data in the field of demographic discourses. The key findings of the Twitter analysis show that EU institutions are aware that demographic change is primarily driven by the ageing population, migration, and low birth rates. While there is consensus across EU actors that the ageing population is a major demographic challenge, other trends remain disputed or vaguely mentioned.

Die EU stand in jüngster Zeit vor erheblichen demografischen Herausforderungen und dies wird sich auch in Zukunft kaum ändern. Der Beitrag analysiert daher, warum und wie demografische Diskurse von illiberalen, rechten und konservativen Kräften übernommen wurden. Anhand von Twitter-Postings von Mitgliedern und politischen Parteien des Europäischen Parlaments zwischen 2015 und 2021 wird untersucht, i) wer die Hauptakteur*innen in Hinblick auf die Interpretation demografischer Trends sind, ii) welche Themen sie diskutieren und welche Erklärungsrahmen sie verwenden. Eine kritische Diskursanalyse dient dabei als analytisches Werkzeug. Somit ergänzt die vorliegende Studie den aktuellen Forschungsstand und präsentiert die erste quantitative Analyse historischer Twitter-Daten im Bereich demografiepolitischer Diskurse. Dabei zeigen die wichtigsten Ergebnisse der Twitter-Analyse: Die EU-Institutionen sind sich bewusst, dass der demografische Wandel in erster Linie durch die Bevölkerungsalterung, Migration und niedrige Geburtenraten verursacht wird. Zwar besteht unter allen EU-Akteur*innen Einigkeit darüber, dass die Bevölkerungsalterung eine große demografische Herausforderung darstellt, andere Trends hingegen bleiben nach wie vor umstritten oder werden nur vage erwähnt.

BACKGROUNDThis is the introduction to a special collection of articles produced within a large-scale collaborative research project, FamiliesAndSocieties, funded by the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme in 2013-2017.OBJECTIVEThe special collection addresses (1) the gendered outcomes of employment for fertility, well-being, and partnership stability, and (2) the new role of men in various socioeconomic positions and its implications for family life.METHODSInternational micro-level datasets (ESS, GGS) are analyzed in two comparative studies, while four country-case studies rely on country-specific datasets. The Swedish study also involves analyses of interview narratives of parental couples.CONTRIBUTIONThe articles highlight the evolving importance of economic uncertainty in fertility decisions and well-being, especially as related to limited changes in the role of breadwinner for men, and the role of policy context for women, including regarding links between women's employment and divorce. The results indicate that women have entered the public sphere to stay, but this only strengthens families if accompanied by relevant policy support. Renewed ideals of mothers being the primary carers of their children are found to hinder the realization of new fatherhood aspirations, while a clear socioeconomic gradient in men's family involvement in both first and post-divorce relationships may further enhance social inequalities.

Sweden is among the countries with the highest share of single households in Europe, but not all are truly partnerless. We examine the potential vulnerability of individuals in living-apart-together relationships at age 30 and above, analyzing data from the Swedish GGS. We apply multinomial logistic regression. The results show that individuals engaging in LAT occupy an intermediate position in terms of socioeconomic resources (homeownership and economic situation), being less advantaged than co-residents but better-off than singles, especially men. We find no association between ill-health and living in a LAT arrangement. Having previous family experiences (unions with or without children) is positively associated with LAT, but childhood family composition does not matter. The majority of LAT individuals claim to be constrained to living-apart-together rather than LAT being their preferred alternative. Women and the elderly (aged 70+) are, however, more likely to engage in LAT by choice and appreciate their non-residential partnerships.

This paper examines the childbearing behaviour of Polish migrant women and their descendants in Sweden. Also considering stayers in the country of origin, we rely on a country-of-origin and country-of-destination approach in a careful examination regarding the relevance of three hypotheses on migrant fertility: the socialisation, selection, and adaptation hypotheses. We analyse the transitions to first and second births based on a piecewise exponential model, using Swedish register data and the Polish Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) first wave. The results support the socialisation hypothesis, as the Polish stayers and the first-generation Polish migrants have their first child at younger ages and are less likely to remain childless than the other groups but are also more likely to not proceed to a second child, unlike the Swedish natives and the second generation. We find partial support for the selection hypothesis. Descriptively, we observe signs of selection into migration based on education, cohort, and marital status. Additionally, our study shows that the impact of marriage varies between stayers and migrants, in the first-birth transition, suggesting selection into migration when it comes to unobserved characteristics as well. The adaptation hypothesis is also supported, as the fertility behaviour of the second generation more closely resembles that of the Swedish natives than that of the first generation and differs more from that of the Polish stayers in terms of both quantum and timing of the first and second births.

This editorial seeks to define fragile pronatalism by highlighting why pronatalism in the examined Central and Eastern European post‐socialist countries should be considered fragile. Moreover, it aims to map desirable future changes in fertility policies in the region. Following a brief presentation of the articles contained in this thematic issue, our concluding thoughts complete this editorial.

Co-residential partnerships are a pre-condition for childbearing and less time is spent in these unions when there is diffi-culty finding partners, a delay in union formation, and partnership instability. Our study explores patterns in co-residential partnerships across birth cohorts in 11 post-socialist countries to assess changes in the number of years spent in these partnerships and the patterns underlying any trend. Using the Harmonized Histories dataset, based on partnership data from generations and gender surveys, we calculate changes in co-residential union trends. In about half of the countries, the share of women who have not entered a co-residential union by age 30 increased, whereas the proportion still in their first union by this age decreased universally. The latter trend, reflecting union instability, pre-dates the transition from socialism. Delays in starting the first union were seen in only a few countries immediately after the transition began but more countries experienced union postponement in coming-of-age cohorts in the 2000s. A declining median age at first union in the former Soviet republics before and immediately after the transition from socialism balances the impact of increased union instability. Overall, the number of years spent in a co-residential union before age 30 declined across the Central and South-Eastern European countries, especially in Hungary. Union dynamics may have contributed to declining fertility in these countries. In contrast, little or no change in time spent in unions in the post-Soviet countries indicates that union dynamics were less likely to have influenced these women's fertility behavior.

Post-industrialization brought along new social risks connected to changing labour markets and the individualization of families. These and emerging demographic challenges paralleled by changing gender roles require new strategies of welfare states to handle. Sweden has long pursued a social investment strategy and aligned its family policies to promote commodification, de-familialization, de-gendering of employment and care, and social and gender equality. The resulting high female labour force participation rates, high share of fathers’ care engagement, and comparatively high fertility indicate that Sweden has met the new challenges quite successfully. The chapter delineates the challenges faced by Europe’s welfare states and the core features of the Swedish family policies as a way to tackle new social risks.

The chapter addresses the complex interplay between the new roles of women and men and the diversity of family life courses (focusing on heterosexual individuals) in advanced societies, most specifically Europe and the US, from the 1960s, onwards. The multiple equilibria framework and the gender revolution theory serve as the point of departure. Considering labor market changes as the main drivers of family- and gender role changes, the chapter focuses on the development from the male breadwinner-female homemaker model to families with women as secondary earners, to dual-career families and more recently to the female primary earner or breadwinner-mother model, along with the slow and delayed transition of the male gender role from primary family provider to involved, caring men and the new father. The review demonstrates gender role changes being closely intertwined with the de-standardization of family biographies leading to a growing diversity of relationships over the life course as well as increasingly complex family compositions and household structures. Every stage of the family life course relates to a range of options, starting with partnership formation (cohabitation, marriage, LAT) if at all, through becoming a parent (when, how many times, in which family type, biological or stepparent) or not, to partnership dissolution (divorce / separation) and family reconstitution, shaping and shaped by altering gender roles. Diverse policy and cultural contexts (norms, values, attitudes, perceptions – and multi-ethnic families) facilitate or hinder family and gender-role transitions, impinging societal development.