Volume 37 - Article 14 | Pages 414–454
Supportive families versus support from families: The decision to have a child in the Netherlands
By Susan Schaffnit, Rebecca Sear
Abstract
Background: Support from families can reduce costs of reproduction and may therefore be associated with higher fertility for men and women. Family supportiveness, however, varies both between families – some families are more supportive than others – and within families over time – as the needs of recipients and the abilities of support givers change. Distinguishing the effects of time-invariant between-family supportiveness and time-varying within-family supportiveness on fertility can help contribute to an understanding of how family support influences fertility.
Objective: We distinguish 'between' and 'within' families for several types of support shared between parents and adult children and test whether between- and within-family variation in support associates with birth timings.
Methods: We use seven years of annually collected LISS panel data from the Netherlands on 2,288 reproductive-aged men and women to investigate the timing of first and subsequent births.
Results: We find between-family support is more often associated with fertility than is within-family support, particularly for first births and for women. Emotional support is generally associated with earlier first births for both men and women, while results for financial and reciprocal emotional support are mixed. There is some indication that the latter kind of support positively predicts births for men and negatively for women.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that feeling supported may be more important than actual support in reproductive decision-making in this high-income setting.
Contribution: We apply a method novel to human demography to address both a conceptual and methodological issue in studies of families and fertility.
Author's Affiliation
- Susan Schaffnit - University of California, Santa Barbara, United States of America EMAIL
- Rebecca Sear - London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom EMAIL
Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research
Earning their keep? Fostering, children's education, and work in north-western Tanzania
Volume 41 - Article 10
Does grandparental help mediate the relationship between kin presence and fertility?
Volume 34 - Article 17
Does the kin orientation of a British woman’s social network influence her entry into motherhood?
Volume 28 - Article 11
Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research
Advanced or postponed motherhood? Migrants’ and natives’ gap between ideal and actual age at first birth in Spain
Volume 49 - Article 22
| Keywords:
actual age at first birth,
age at arrival,
fertility,
ideal age at first birth,
international migration,
motherhood,
Spain
Describing the Dutch Social Networks and Fertility Study and how to process it
Volume 49 - Article 19
| Keywords:
fertility,
Netherlands,
personal networks,
social influence
Joint physical custody of children in Europe: A growing phenomenon
Volume 49 - Article 18
| Keywords:
child custody,
family,
family change,
shared residence
Partial fertility recuperation in Spain two years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic
Volume 49 - Article 17
| Keywords:
COVID-19,
fertility,
recuperation,
Spain
Separation as an accelerator of housing inequalities: Parents’ and children’s post-separation housing careers in Sweden
Volume 49 - Article 4
| Keywords:
divorce,
family,
housing,
income inequality,
neighborhood,
parental separation,
residential mobility,
stratification
Cited References: 60
Download to Citation Manager
PubMed
Google Scholar