(Grand)Parental Support and Adult Child’s Entry into Parenthood: Evidence from Central and Eastern European Countries

Elizabeth Wilkins, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
Roberta R. Rutigliano, University of the Basque Country

In recent decades, studies have emerged exploring the role of informal support from grandparents in the fertility decisions of adult children, complementing the rich literature on formal childcare and fertility. However, most existing studies analyse the transition to second and higher-order births while the transition to parenthood remains understudied. Moreover, most focus on Western Europe, while the role of grandparental support in Central and Eastern European contexts is largely unexplored. There is also a heavy focus on childcare rather than considering other forms of (grand)parental support, including emotional support. This paper aims to fill these gaps, exploring the relationship between would-be grandparental childcare and emotional support and adult children’s entry to parenthood in five Central and Eastern European countries: Bulgaria, Czechia, Lithuania, Poland and Russia. We use a novel two-step method developed by Rutigliano (2020) with data from waves 1 and 2 of the Generations and Gender Survey, and analyse these relationships for four dyads: adult daughters-(grand)mothers, adult daughters-(grand)fathers, adult sons-(grand)mothers, adult sons-(grand)fathers. We find a positive relationship between both would-be (grand)parental childcare support and emotional support and the probability of first birth for all four dyads, with the greatest effect for the adult daughter-(grand)mother dyad.

Keywords: Fertility, Older Adults and Intergenerational Relations

See extended abstract.