Expectations about Fertility and Field of Study among Adolescents: A Case of Self-selection?

In recent studies on the association between education and fertility, increased attention has been paid to the field of study. Women who studied in traditionally more “feminine” fields, like care, teaching, and health, were found to have their children earlier and to have more children than other women. A point of debate in this literature is on the causal direction of this relationship. Does the field of study change the attitudes towards family formation, or do young adults with stronger family-life attitudes self-select into educational fields that emphasize care, teaching, and health? Or do both field of study preferences and family-life attitudes arise before actual choices in these domains are made?We contribute to this debate by examining the relationship between fertility expectations and expected fields of study and occupation among 14-17 year-old adolescents. We use data collected in 2005 from 1500 Dutch adolescents and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to examine the associations between expected field of study and occupation and fertility expectations. Our results show that expectations concerning fertility and field of study are already interrelated during secondary education. Both female and male adolescents who expect to pursue studies in fields that focus on care and social interaction (like health care, teaching etc.) are less likely to expect to remain childless. This holds equally for girls and boys. In addition, girls who more strongly aspire to an occupation in which communication skills are important also expect to have more children. We did not find any relationship between expectations of pursuing a communicative field of study and occupation and expectations of earlier parenthood.In addition, among boys, we find that the greater their expectation of opting for an economics, a technical, or a communicative field of study, the less likely they were to expect to remain childless. Boys who expected to study in the economic field also expect to have their first child earlier, but boys expecting to pursue a technical course of studies expect to enter parenthood later. We also found that those who expect to pursue cultural studies are more likely to have a preference for no children, or if they do want children, to have them later in life.Overall, our findings suggest that the processes of elective affinity between the communicative fields of study and work on the one hand and fertility on the other hand are more or less comparable for boys and girls. With respect to the other domains, we find, apart from the gender differences in the relation between fields of study and childlessness, hardly or no gender differences in the expected timing of parenthood and the number of children. The genders do differ in their level of preference for communicative and economics-related fields of study and occupation, but if they do have the same preference, the association with fertility expectations is more or less similar

Adolescents' Expectations About the Timing of Family Life Events:Unraveling the Role of Value Transmission and Modeling

Intergenerational continuity in family behaviors partly results from socialization processes in the parental home. However, socialization is a multidimensional process. This article tests hypotheses about the relative importance of value transmission and modeling in explaining expectations of adolescence concerning the timing of leaving home, and entry into cohabitation, marriage, and parenthood. Structural equation modeling on multiactor data from over 1,000 parent–adolescent child couples in the Netherlands is used to test hypotheses. Results suggest that, in general, both value transmission and modeling are important predictors of adolescents’ expectations concerning the timing of major family events. Moreover, no differences between mothers and fathers and between boys and girls are observed in the strength of the intergenerational relationships studied

Op welke leeftijd lijken kinderen het meest op hun ouders? : Cultuurparticipatie tussen zes en achttien jaar

At what age do children resemble their parents the most? Participation in high culture between the ages of six and eighteen Differences in cultural participation are strongly associated with the cultural behaviour of the family of origin. This article analyses how the similarity in high culture participation between parents and their children varies with the age of the children. We use data from Dutch representative household surveys (AVO), containing information on both children and their parents in the same household. By pooling data from several years we are able to distinguish between the effects of age and cohort. The results show a maximum association between parents and their offspring when the children are ten years old. After that age the resemblance goes down. However, at age eighteen there still is a positive association between parents' and children's cultural participation.

The effects of parents’ lifestyle on their children's status attainment and lifestyle in the Netherlands

We examine the extent to which parents affect their adult children's status attainment through parental lifestyle during their offspring's childhood. We also consider whether parents can be said to have ‘passed on’ their lifestyle to their adult children. Reflecting the Bourdieusian distinction between economic and cultural capital, we characterize the economic and cultural aspects of both parents’ and children's lifestyles in order to better understand the pattern of lifestyle transmission and reproduction. Our paper does not try to explore cultural taste and consumption in an inductive fashion, rather it develops hypotheses from Bourdieu's theory and tests these in an analytical design through structural equation modeling (SEM). The data, collected in 2000, refer to a sample of 399 young Dutch adults aged between 20 and 40 who were interviewed about a broad range of their lifestyle characteristics, derived from Bourdieu's ‘Distinction’. Their parents reported retrospectively on the prevailing lifestyle of the parental home at the time their child was around 12 years of age. We conclude that parents pass their lifestyle on to their children. Children raised by parents who had a more strongly culturally oriented lifestyle have, as adults, a more strongly culturally oriented lifestyle themselves, and those raised by parents who had a lifestyle that was oriented more strongly towards luxury have as adults a more strongly luxury-oriented lifestyle. We also find that both the cultural and economic dimensions of parents’ lifestyle bring about relative advantage in terms of the education, occupation, and income of their adult children. As such, the cultural and economic dimensions of parents’ lifestyle are mechanisms by which parents pass on their social status to their children. We also find some indications that the cultural status dimension is more important than the economic dimension in the intergenerational transmission of social status

Does Faith Concordance Matter? A Comparison of Clients' Perceptions in Same Versus Interfaith Spiritual Care Encounters with Chaplains in Hospitals

In religiously pluralized societies, caregivers frequently care for patients or clients with a religious, spiritual, or secular orientation that differs from their own. Empirical studies exploring the implications of this faith diversity for spiritual care interactions between caregivers and clients are scarce. Some literature suggests that similarities in faith orientation between caregivers and clients relate to better professional caring relationships than encounters with dissimilar faith orientations, while other studies suggest that faith similarities do not relate, or relate only under certain conditions, to the way in which professional caring relationships are perceived. This study supports the second line of thought. Based on a survey among 209 clients and 45 chaplains in hospitals in the Netherlands, it shows that clients in faith-concordant encounters evaluate the spiritual care encounter just as positively as do clients in faith-discordant encounters. This is in line with broader trends of secularization and blurring of boundaries between the religious, spiritual, and secular domains