Title: Ideal ages for family formation among immigrants in Europe
Authors: Jennifer A. Holland and Helga de Valk
Journal: Advances in Life Course Research, 18(4): 257-69 DOI 10.1016/j.alcr.2013.08.002
Abstract: This paper investigates ideal ages for marriage and parenthood among immigrants from over 160 countries origins living in 25 European countries. Ideals regarding the timing of family formation are indicative of how individuals perceive the family life course and provide insight into the meaning attached to family-life transitions and aspirations. Using data from the European Social Survey (Round 3, 2006; N = 6,330) and a cross-classified multilevel modeling approach, we investigate associations between the influences of the dominant family formation timing patterns in countries of origin and destination, individual-level characteristics, and ideal ages. We make innovative use of a standard demographic measure, the singulate mean age of marriage, to measure family formation patterns. Results suggests that residential context influences are associated with the timing ideals of all migrants, but origin influences seem to be associated with the ideals of only the most recent migrants.
Presentations:
European Population Conference, Stockholm, Sweden (2012)
Dutch Demography Day, Utrecht, the Netherlands (2011)
EUROCORES (ESF) Cross-National and Multi-Level Analysis of Human Values, Institutions and Behaviour Programme (HumVIB) Final Conference, 2011
Support for this work comes from the European Research Council Starting Grant project “Families of migrant origin—a life course perspective” (project no. 263829).
Jennifer A. Holland 