Increasingly children whose parents no longer live together are living in two households, alternating between family contexts. A growing literature documents strong, descriptive heterogeneities in children’s wellbeing across living arrangements. We combine longitudinal survey and administrative population data on 6000 Danish children born in 1995 to study how children’s emotional and behavioral problems change following parental union dissolution. Extending the existing, predominantly descriptive literature, we use several panel regression strategies that aim to control for unobservable confounding together with repeated measurement of the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire to study children’s problems increase after parental union dissolution and examine heterogeneity across post-dissolution living arrangements. We find a substantial increase in emotional and behavioral problems following union dissolution, but only little evidence for substantial heterogeneity existing across post-dissolution family constellations and living arrangements. Our findings indicate that not only there is casual effect of parental union dissolution on children’s long-term wellbeing, but also that existing descriptive findings on differences across living arrangements likely are due to selection.

The aim of this article is to explore the circumstances leading employers to discriminate by gender and parenthood, contributing to the broader aim at increasing our understanding about the mechanisms underlying gender inequality in the labor market. Previous Swedish (and many international) studies show that employers are about equally likely to hire men and women. These results tend to refer, however, to data based on aggregates of branches, occupations and sectors. Statistical power is commonly low when results are broken down by segments. Studies showing no employer discrimination at the aggregate level may thus hide discrimination in certain segments. There are reasons to expect discrimination by gender and parenthood to vary depending on context and we explore this by relating variation in employer behavior to variation in demographic (gender) composition and qualification level in the occupation applied for. In this study, a large-scale experimental correspondence test design is employed, and non-authentic applications—with gender and parenthood randomly assigned to job applications—are sent to job openings in the Swedish labor market, including information on a total of 6,755 job applications in 15 occupations. The results show no indication of discrimination based on gender or parenthood in this early step of the recruitment process, and this is regardless of whether the occupation is dominated by either gender or is gender balanced.

Biased practices by employers have been suggested as one possible cause for the observed gender disparities in labor market outcomes. While US-based laboratory experiments show a clear motherhood penalty in recruitment, European laboratory experiments on the topic are to our knowledge lacking. We conducted a laboratory experiment with 228 university students to study a potential gender bias in the evaluation of (fictitious) job candidates for an accounting manager position, and how recruitment decisions are made. We explore two dimensions of decision-making, that is, evaluators’ individual ratings and collectively made ratings. The results show a statistically significant gender bias in job applicant ratings in favor of female applicants. Thus, female job applicants are more often than male applicants rated as the top candidates, regardless of their parental status. Also, we find no motherhood penalty in the applicant ratings. Moreover, there is a statistically significant pro-female bias in applicant ratings made by female evaluators individually and by all-female evaluation groups.

A common assumption in comparative family policy studies is that employers statistically discriminate against women in countries with dual-earner family policy models. The empirical evidence cited in support of this assumption has exclusively been observational data, which should not be relied on to identify employer discrimination. In contrast, we investigate whether employers discriminate against women in Sweden—frequently viewed as epitomizing the dual-earner family policy model—using field experiment data. We find no evidence supporting the notion that Swedish employers statistically discriminate against women. 

Advanced labor markets are typically stratified by origin with a majority ethnic group occupying more desirable (high-skilled) positions and subordinated ethnic minorities occupying less desirable (low-skilled) positions. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether employer recruitment choices reinforce these patterns. This would be the case if employers were more reluctant to hire subordinate minority job applicants for high-skilled positions than for low-skilled occupations. We use experimental correspondence audit data derived from 6407 job applications sent to job openings in the Swedish labor market, where the ‘foreignness’ of the job applicants has been randomly assigned to otherwise equally merited job applications. We find that negative discrimination of job applicants with ‘foreign’ names is very similar in the high-skilled and low-skilled segments of the labor market. There is no significant relative ethnic difference in chances of callbacks by skill level. Because baseline callback rates are higher in high-skilled occupations, discrimination however translates into a significantly larger percentage unit callback difference between ‘natives’ and ‘foreigners’ in these occupations, in particular between male job applicants. That is, the number of (male) ‘foreign’ job seekers subject to ethnic discrimination in terms of actually being denied a job chance is higher in the highly skilled segment, but the effects on the relative scale do not suggest this to be driven by employers being particularly less welcoming of ‘foreigners’ in this segment.

We know that parenthood has different consequences for men’s and women’s careers. Still, the research remains inconclusive on the question of whether this is mainly a consequence of a fatherhood premium, a motherhood penalty, or both. A common assumption is that women fall behind in terms of pay when they become mothers.

Based on longitudinal data from the Swedish Level of Living Survey (LNU), and individual fixed-effects models, we examine the support for this assumption by mapping the size of parenthood effects on wages during the years 1968–2010. During this period, Swedish women’s labor supply increased dramatically, dual-earner family policies were institutionalized, and society’s norms on the gendered division of labor changed. We describe the development of parenthood effects on wages during this transformative period.

Our results indicate that both genders benefit from a gross parenthood premium, both at the beginning of the period and in recent years, but the size of this premium is larger for men. Individual fixed-effects models indicate that the wage premium is mainly the result of parents’ increased labor market investments. Controlling for these, women suffer from a small motherhood penalty early in the period under study whereas parenthood is unrelated to women’s wages in later years and to men’s wages throughout the period. Neither for men nor for women do we find a statistically significant period change in the parenthood effects. Instead, patterns are remarkably stable over time given the radical changes in family policies and norms that took place during the period examined.

Father involvement and joint physical custody in post-separation families are increasingly common. In Sweden, 35 percent of the children of separated parents live equally much with both parents. Since parenthood is gendered, the associations between child living arrangement and parental health may vary between women and men. This study analyzes the association between children's living arrangement and mental health of parents, and how this interacts with material and social circumstances. Drawing on The Swedish Survey of Living Conditions (ULF) 2008-2013, the association between child living arrangements and mental health (worry/anxiety) of parents in five family structures: two biological parents, reconstituted with joint or main/sole custody arrangements, single with joint physical custody, and single with main or sole custody, were analyzed. Data on 9,225 mothers and fathers with resident children aged 0-17 were analyzed by logistic regressions for average marginal effects adjusting for socio-demographic, socio-economic and social factors. Analyses of interaction effects were made using the synergy index. Substantial family type differences were found in mental health between two biological parent family and all other family types for mothers, and two biological parent family and single parents for fathers. For the single mothers, the higher risk for worry and anxiety was still found following controls for socioeconomic factors. For fathers, the only differences that remained following control for socioeconomic factors was that of single fathers with children in joint physical custody. Interaction effects were found for the combination of single motherhood and non-employment, indicating a higher risk of mental health problems for single mothers (both with joint and sole custody), than would be expected from a simple addition of these exposures, suggesting that this is a vulnerable group. The results indicate that joint custody is associated with higher risk for worry and anxiety for the parents, especially for mothers both re-partnered and single, but also for single fathers.

Parental time with children is important for children’s developmental outcomes. Family type may affect the amount of time parents can and will invest in children. Using time-use panel data obtained from two waves of the Danish Time Use Survey, linked with administrative records, the study shows that parental family type had a substantial impact on the time parents spent with children. When controlling for constant unobserved individual traits, likely to affect both time-use and family type, differences in time-use increase, indicating positive selection into nonintact family types. Single parents and parents in reconstituted families spent less time on developmental activities, such as talking, reading and playing with the child, whereas parents living in reconstituted families also spent less time on non-developmental activities, such as transporting the child or performing basic childcare. Based on our findings, there are indications that cross-sectional results showing little difference in parents’ involvement in children across family types partly emanate from differential selection in family types.

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

Background: After parental divorce, mothers may increase gainful employment and fathers increase 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 2,491 respondents aged 22, 26, 30, and 34 years, are used for analyses. Maternal employment and 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: Maternal full-time employment (versus non- or part-time employment) is associated with more modern private and combined sphere gender role attitudes, whereas 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. Mothers’ full-time employment and 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 adds little, maternal full-time employment adds more, to our understanding of what shapes gender role attitudes in adulthood

Adolescents are increasingly living in two households, alternating between family contexts. It is timely to consider how these contexts may affect adolescent’s psychological wellbeing. We use data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU), England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, including data on occurrence and extent of dual-household residency, to correlate 15 family types with adolescent’s internalizing problems, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. Analyses show that (i) adolescents in intact families exhibit better wellbeing than peers in different types of dissolved families, (ii) adolescents in reconstituted families exhibit less wellbeing than adolescents living with a single parent only, (iii) living in two households, where both parents are single or either of them is repartnered, is not associated with better wellbeing than living with a single parent only, (iv) adolescents in alternate living generally seem to do as well as their peers in intact families, but (v) there is a tendency that alternate living in a symmetrical family context, i.e., where both parents are either single or living with a new partner, is more positive for the adolescent than if one parent is in a new relationship and the other is not.