Interpersonal relationships of support have been found to be an important factor in individual fertility intentions in Central and Eastern European countries. The foundations of this positive influence have not been well explored to date, however. We present a theoretical discussion on...

Models on the impact of social networks on reproductive behavior primarily address processes of interpersonal influence on fertility related values and utility perceptions and consider aspects of social support and social capital only to a small extend. On the basis of an exchange theoretical...

Extending recent research on parental gender preferences in the Nordic countries, this study uses unique register data from Finland and Sweden (1971-1999) that provide us with the opportunity to compare childbearing dynamics and possible underlying sex preferences among natives and national...

Research about fertility has focused in the main on studying separately the influences of communication networks and social capital on reproductive behavior, but it has rarely tried to integrate both network properties theoretically or analytically. We therefore discuss a general model of...

Empirical research investigating gender preferences for children and their implications for fertility decisions in advanced industrial societies is relatively scarce. Recent studies on this matter have presented ambiguous evidence regarding the existence as well as the direction such preferences...

Eine zentrale Rolle in der aktuellen Diskussion um eine bessere Vereinbarkeit von Familie und Beruf spielt die Versorgung mit bedarfsgerechter Kinderbetreuung. Eine umfassendes Angebot an Betreuungsplätzen fördert jedoch nicht nur die Müttererwerbstätigkeit, sondern könnte sich auch positiv...

Der Artikel untersucht die Bedeutung regionaler Einflussfaktoren auf der Kreisebene für den Prozess der Familiengründung westdeutscher Frauen in den 1980er und 1990er Jahren. Als theoretischer Rahmen wird ein Mehrebenenmodell soziologischer Erklärung vorgeschlagen. Die empirische Analyse des...

In this paper, a multilevel approach is used to investigate whether and how regional social contexts influence first and second birth probabilities of women living in western Germany during the 1980s and 1990s. In the theoretical part it is argued that regional opportunity structures as well as...

This article investigates the role of women´s residential district in the process of family formation in western Germany during the 1980s and 1990s. Our analysis of the transition to first marriage and motherhood is based on the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), which we merge with a rich...

We link population register data to information on regional child care characteristics in order to estimate the influence of the latter on second and third birth intensities of Swedish couples in 1997-98. Our analysis allows us to distinguish interactions and specific effects of different...