Although men’s employment has a consistently positive association with starting a family in Europe, this association has been less clear for women. Using harmonized couple-level data for the years 2004–2017, Angela Greulich and Michael S. Rendall highlight the positive role of women’s stable employment on the probability of a first birth in 24 European countries.
What is the link between couples’ employment and having a first child? A pan-European survey conducted in 24 countries, the EU Survey of Income and Living Conditions, makes it possible to address this vital question. Using this database, in a recent paper we investigated whether cohabiting couples (both married and unmarried) in which both partners have stable, full-time jobs, which they describe as following a “dual-earner” model, were more likely to have a first child than those in which only the man works, following a “male breadwinner” model (Greulich and Rendall 2026). We focused, in particular, on the role of the woman’s employment stability, by analyzing up to two continuous years of her employment history before she became pregnant with the couple’s first child.
Woman’s and male partner’s stable employment viewed jointly
In Figure 1, we present predicted probabilities of first birth by joint combinations of woman’s and male partner’s full-time, full-year employment (“FT employment”) in year t–2. These probabilities derive from regression models including controls for marital status (married versus cohabiting) age, year, and country.
The configuration in which the woman and her male partner are both FT employed has the highest first-birth propensity, whereas the opposite configuration, “neither FT employed”, has the lowest. The configurations where only one partner is FT employed are in-between: compared to both partners being FT employed, each of the two configurations in which the woman is not FT employed (categories 3 and 4 in Figure 1) is associated with a statistically significantly lower first-birth probability.
Woman’s stable employment across two years before becoming pregnant
In Figure 2, we show predicted probabilities according to whether the woman was FT employed in one or both of the two years preceding pregnancy. The first-birth probability is highest for women who were FT employed in both of the two years (first category), and lowest for women who were FT employed in neither of the two years (last category).
The first-birth probability is second highest for women who had just entered FT employment, and is slightly lower for women who had just exited FT employment. The latter configuration is statistically significantly different from the first-birth probability of women who were “FT employed in both years”. This pattern (highest first-birth probability for women in FT employment in both years) constitutes further evidence that for women in a couple, employment stability is positively associated with the transition to first birth.
Discussion
Across 24 European countries in the period 2004-2017, we find strong evidence that couples’ first-birth propensities are positively associated not only with the man’s, but also the woman’s, stable full-time employment. This is consistent with theoretical literature suggesting that the dual-earner couple is increasingly normative in Europe (Knight and Brinton, 2017). Studies in Northern Europe (e.g., Kristensen and Lappegård 2022) have previously shown consistently positive associations of employment with first birth for women as well as for men, although even there, according to Miettinen and Jalovaara (2020), this association may not hold for less-educated women.
Instead, across all education levels, we find that for women in a couple, stable full-time employment is the most likely circumstance for starting a family, and that this holds across Europe. Other studies of more recent periods have shown positive employment associations with first birth for women, in particular in Southern Europe (Scherer and Brini, 2023) and in Western Europe (Zhou and Kan, 2019; Schmitt, 2021). This has led scholars working in this field to conclude that gender differences in the positive role of employment for fertility are disappearing throughout Europe. Our study provides new evidence indicating that the woman’s employment stability has indeed become a critical precondition for starting a family, with stable employment now being at least as important for women as for men.
Note that to focus on the employment-fertility nexus, we excluded women who were students or in training at the start of exposure to first birth. Moreover, our analytic sample only included women observed for at least three waves and continuously partnered for at least two waves. This longer observation period allowed us to measure employment stability over 12 months and reduce potential endogeneity with conception and birth, but these restrictions make it more difficult to generalize our findings.
Policy implications
By re-evaluating the association between women’s employment and partnered first births in Europe, our study was able to generate a coherent picture of the importance of employment stability of both partners, both across Europe and across educational levels. We conclude that the era of the male-breadwinner model is increasingly a phenomenon of the past as couples across Europe prepare for family formation.
Low fertility in Europe and other high-income countries continues to be a major policy concern. In many European countries, however, a dual-earner norm co-exists with greater challenges for the woman than for the man in a couple to continue her employment trajectory once childbearing begins. Our finding of a strong positive association between women’s stable employment and first birth suggests that, besides a need for family policies encouraging gender-neutral work-life balance options (formal childcare, remunerated parental leave), economic policies facilitating the stable, long-term employment of both partners are also crucial.
References
Greulich, A., & Rendall. M.S. (2026). An ongoing gender revolution in Europe: Women’s stable employment as a precondition for partnered first births. Population Research and Policy Review 45:8.
Knight, C. R., & Brinton, M. C. (2017). One egalitarianism or several? Two decades of gender role attitude change in Europe. American Journal of Sociology, 122(5), 1485–1532.
Kristensen, A., & Lappegård, T. (2022). Unemployment and fertility: The relationship between individual and aggregated unemployment and fertility during 1994–2014 in Norway. Demographic Research, 46(35).
Miettinen, A., & Jalovaara, M. (2020). Unemployment delays first birth but not for all. Life stage and educational differences in the effects of employment uncertainty on first births. Advances in Life Course Research, 43, Article 100320.
Scherer, S., & Brini, E. (2023). Employment instability and childbirth over the last 20 years in Italy. European Journal of Population, 39, 31.
Schmitt, C. (2021). The impact of economic uncertainty, precarious employment, and risk attitudes on the transition to parenthood. Advances in Life Course Research, 47.
Zhou, M., & Kan, M.-Y. (2019). A new family equilibrium? Changing dynamics between the gender division of labor and fertility in Great Britain, 1991–2017. Demographic Research, 40, 1455–1500.