Multigenerational Perspectives on Pathways of Family Formation

Lisbeth Trille G. Loft, University of Copenhagen

Using data from The Danish Longitudinal Survey of Youth in conjunction with sequence analysis, I generated typological family formation pathways of two generations of Danish men and women. Within each generation four pathways of family formation were identified among men and among women. Although the family formation pathways were similar for men and women in each generation, there were some differences. Moving beyond the descriptive nature of the family formation pathways, I used multinomial regression analysis to predict the membership of each of the identified typologies within the youngest generation. Findings suggest that although the parents’ family formation behavior to some degree predicts their children’s patterns of forming a family, social mechanisms also operate independently through parental as well grandparental experiences of family dissolution and socioeconomic status.