Emerging Trends: Family Formation and Gender

Abstract

Family formation is a well‐studied topic in demography and the social sciences. Yet, open questions to be addressed by future research remain. Focusing on the childbearing side of family formation, we discuss how a gendered lens, which led researchers to concentrate on women's experiences, has shaped previous studies. We argue that future research can be advanced by (i) going beyond this perspective and addressing men and their experiences pertaining to work and family and by (ii) broadening research on couples in order to understand how his and her resources, values, and experiences interact in relating to family formation. Furthermore, we discuss (iii) the relevance of incorporating a larger array of macrolevel factors into studies on family formation, such as regulations affecting the practical and daily lives of families, or the cultural context of emotions and (iv) which methodological advances are needed to address the complexity of the studied processes.

Body mass index during early adulthood and first births: racial/ethnic and sex differences in the US NLSY79 cohort

“…While the central role of the presence of a sexual partner for childbearing is often obvious to lay people, demographic studies on fertility tend to examine fertility and union formation and duration dynamics separately, not least due to the theoretical and methodological complexities that integrating multiple life-course processes entails (Matysiak & Nitsche, 2016). Complicating this picture is variation in structural, economic, and/or cultural linkages between union formation and childbearing processes.…”