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Family formation, a process that includes union formation, fertility, and their timing and order, has become increasingly diverse and complex in Europe. We examine how the relationship between socio-economic background and family formation has changed over time in France, Italy, Romania, and Sweden, using first wave Generations and Gender Survey data. Competing Trajectories Analysis, a procedure which combines event-history analysis with sequence analysis, allows us to examine family formation as a process, capturing differences in both the timing of the start of family formation and the pathways that young adults follow. Regarding timing, socio-economic background differences in France and Sweden have remained relatively small, whereas in Italy and Romania higher parental education has become more strongly associated with postponement. Pathways tend to diverge by socio-economic background, particularly in Sweden and France. These results indicate that while family formation patterns have changed, they continue to be stratified by socio-economic background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how European women are historically bearing their first children later than ever before. In the United States and other countries, entry into parenthood is also seeing delays. Many experts argue that such fertility trends in developed countries are characterized by increasing, persistent, and arguably irreversible delays in childbearing in many socioeconomic conditions. Many of the informal age deadlines for childbearing are apparently being challenged and biological limits are being pushed. The article also presents information about the physiological aspects of late fertility and discusses the effect of new technologies on conception and pregnancy. Sweden's late and very late fertility is also examined.

We study the interrelationships between union-formation forms and fertility in Swedish and West German female cohorts born in 1949-1971. We apply simultaneous hazard models, permitting the presence of correlated unobserved heterogeneity. This method allows us to control for country-specific composition of the population with respect to several socio-economic variables, as well as with respect to unobserved factors jointly affecting childbearing and union formation behavior. Our results confirm that partnership formation and the transition to parenthood are partially interchangeable. Net of those selection effects, we find that the impact of being in a union on first birth is higher in Sweden than in Germany, in particular for cohabitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]