Dyadic Fertility Decisions in a Life Course Perspective

Extending previous work on fertility decisions from a couple perspective, we analyse meanwhile available longitudinal data from the German Family Panel (pairfam). Couples decide on fertility in different situations as they find themselves in different life course stages. For example, couples deciding on family formation lack the experiences, which couples deciding on a second or third child have already made. Such differences in conditions may affect not only fertility outcomes but also the decision making process itself. Using the first three waves of the pairfam data we find that the decision to found a family is made jointly and both partners hold some veto power. On the other hand, women appear to dominate decisions on higher parity births (i.e. to enlarge the family). But they do so not per se, but because they are (still) the ones more affected by the incurring housework caused by children. The project is conducted in cooperation with Gerrit Bauer (LMU Munich) and was supported by the the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Results from this project have so far been published in Advances in Life Course Research (2014).