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Does Parental Investment Shape Adult Children’s Fertility Intentions? Findings From a German Family Panel

Parents can play an important role in the childbearing plans of adult children. However, studies testing whether changes in parental investment are associated with subsequent changes in fertility intentions over time are lacking. We investigated whether parental investment, measured as contact frequ...

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Autores principales: Tanskanen, Antti O., Danielsbacka, Mirkka
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8253365/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34222412
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.693119
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author Tanskanen, Antti O.
Danielsbacka, Mirkka
author_facet Tanskanen, Antti O.
Danielsbacka, Mirkka
author_sort Tanskanen, Antti O.
collection PubMed
description Parents can play an important role in the childbearing plans of adult children. However, studies testing whether changes in parental investment are associated with subsequent changes in fertility intentions over time are lacking. We investigated whether parental investment, measured as contact frequency, emotional closeness, financial support, and childcare, is associated with adult children’s intentions to have a first and a second, or subsequent, child within the next 2 years. These associations were studied in four different parent-adult child dyads based on the sex of parents and adult children (i.e, mother-daughter, mother-son, father-daughter, father-son). The participants are from the German Family Panel, which is a longitudinal survey of younger and middle-aged adults with eight follow-up waves. We exploited within-person (or fixed-effect) regression models, which concentrated an individual’s variation over time (i.e., whether changes in parental investment frequencies are associated with subsequent changes in adult children’s fertility intentions). It was detected that increased emotional closeness between fathers and daughters was associated with increased adult daughter’s intentions to have a first child but father-daughter contact decreased daughter’s intentions to have another child, and maternal financial support decreased son’s intentions to have a first child. Overall, statistically nonsignificant associations outweighed significant ones. Although it is often assumed that parental investment is an important factor influencing the childbearing decisions of adult children, the present findings indicate that parental investment may not increase adult children’s intentions to have a/another child in Germany.
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spelling pubmed-82533652021-07-03 Does Parental Investment Shape Adult Children’s Fertility Intentions? Findings From a German Family Panel Tanskanen, Antti O. Danielsbacka, Mirkka Front Sociol Sociology Parents can play an important role in the childbearing plans of adult children. However, studies testing whether changes in parental investment are associated with subsequent changes in fertility intentions over time are lacking. We investigated whether parental investment, measured as contact frequency, emotional closeness, financial support, and childcare, is associated with adult children’s intentions to have a first and a second, or subsequent, child within the next 2 years. These associations were studied in four different parent-adult child dyads based on the sex of parents and adult children (i.e, mother-daughter, mother-son, father-daughter, father-son). The participants are from the German Family Panel, which is a longitudinal survey of younger and middle-aged adults with eight follow-up waves. We exploited within-person (or fixed-effect) regression models, which concentrated an individual’s variation over time (i.e., whether changes in parental investment frequencies are associated with subsequent changes in adult children’s fertility intentions). It was detected that increased emotional closeness between fathers and daughters was associated with increased adult daughter’s intentions to have a first child but father-daughter contact decreased daughter’s intentions to have another child, and maternal financial support decreased son’s intentions to have a first child. Overall, statistically nonsignificant associations outweighed significant ones. Although it is often assumed that parental investment is an important factor influencing the childbearing decisions of adult children, the present findings indicate that parental investment may not increase adult children’s intentions to have a/another child in Germany. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-06-18 /pmc/articles/PMC8253365/ /pubmed/34222412 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.693119 Text en Copyright © 2021 Tanskanen and Danielsbacka. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Sociology
Tanskanen, Antti O.
Danielsbacka, Mirkka
Does Parental Investment Shape Adult Children’s Fertility Intentions? Findings From a German Family Panel
title Does Parental Investment Shape Adult Children’s Fertility Intentions? Findings From a German Family Panel
title_full Does Parental Investment Shape Adult Children’s Fertility Intentions? Findings From a German Family Panel
title_fullStr Does Parental Investment Shape Adult Children’s Fertility Intentions? Findings From a German Family Panel
title_full_unstemmed Does Parental Investment Shape Adult Children’s Fertility Intentions? Findings From a German Family Panel
title_short Does Parental Investment Shape Adult Children’s Fertility Intentions? Findings From a German Family Panel
title_sort does parental investment shape adult children’s fertility intentions? findings from a german family panel
topic Sociology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8253365/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34222412
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.693119
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