Partnership Context of First Births in Russia: The Enduring Significance of Marriage

Abstract

While cohabitation and non-marital childbearing have been increasing in Russia since 1990, the share of marital first births that are conceived prior to marriage has changed very little since the Soviet era. The prior findings on the stability of trends in premarital conceptions in Russia have been contradictory and inconclusive. This study aims to extend the existing empirical evidence on premarital conceptions in Russia and to contribute to the discussion on the persistence of marriage as the preferred partnership context for parenthood. We focus on births that occurred within the first two years of marriage, and compare the childbearing patterns of Russian women who married in different historical periods. For our investigation of fertility among marital cohorts who married during the Soviet era (1960–1991), we use individual-level data from the 1994 microcensus. For our examination of fertility among more recent marital cohorts (2000, 2011, and 2016), we draw on data from birth records in civil registers. We also use relevant complementary data sources. Our findings show that there has been a marked shift in the relationship between conception and marriage in Russia. Increasingly, conceptions have been occurring before marriage, and in the most recent marital cohorts, the level of premarital first conceptions has even surpassed the level of marital first conceptions. The average interval between conception and entry into marriage has also been lengthening. We describe this unique pattern of childbearing and discuss some potential explanations for the ongoing association between marriage and childbearing in Russia.

Patterns of Co‐Residential Relationships Across Cohorts in Post‐Socialist Countries: Less Time for Childbearing?

“…Finally, we do not consider whether unions are marital or non-marital, as this factor varies in importance to births over time and across our countries (Frejka, 2008;Thornton & Philipov, 2009). It may be that in some countries union timing and length did not change, but more time is spent in a non-marital union preceding marriage in which case it matters if childbearing remains confined to marriage or not (see, e.g., Andreev et al, 2022;Hărăguş, 2015). To account for such differences we would need to model how specific union type relates to births, whereas our interest here is union dynamics more generally and possible implications of union dynamics for fertility.…”