Paths to Adulthood: A Focus on the Children of Immigrants in the Netherlands
8.7 Conclusion and Discussion
In this paper I studied the diversity in the transition to adulthood and in particular the sequencing of major family life events in this phase, among young adults of the Turkish and Moroccan second generation and the majority group in the Netherlands.
I included different family life transitions: leaving the parental home, starting a cohabiting union, entering marriage and having a first child (latter not included in sequences due to data constraints), to look at heterogeneity, ordering and typical paths into adulthood. Contrary to expectations on de-standardization of the life course among majority group young adults I do not find more diversity in routes among this group compared to the second generation. Rather the contrary seems to be the case: majority group young adults are concentrated in a few specific paths to adulthood whereas the second generation is much more dispersed. The same holds when we look at the states that are experienced by young adults of different origin.
Again the transition to adulthood of the second generation seems as diverse on this point as is the case for the majority group. I do, however, find a clear confirmation for the expected difference in timing between the origin groups. The majority group seems overall to be more inclined to postpone transitions related to union and family formation. Although this is partially true for the second generation as well, still substantial shares of them opt for family life transitions at a younger age. Probably as a result of this difference in timing and in particular the delay of family life commitments of the Dutch majority group, I do indeed find that different transitions are more linked among the second generation.
Contrary to the theoretical idea of de-standardization of the life course my analyses do not show more heterogeneity in paths for the Dutch than for the second generation. Overall these findings suggest quite some variety in family life transitions experienced by young adults of different origins and at different ages.
The fact that we do find more diversity among the second generation could be related to the fact that in particular in these families the transition to adulthood is prone to changes. Whereas for the majority group a new ‘standardized’ pattern, in which cohabitation is included and marriage and childbearing are postponed this new standard is not as far spread among the second generation. This leads to high diversity within the second generation group at all ages: some still follow the path in which these transitions are experienced in the traditional standard order and at young ages, others have the same path as the majority group and some are taking a position in between these extremes.
The analyses showed that trajectories to adulthood for women of the second generation are different from that of women from the Dutch majority group. Young women of the second generation are more likely to have started union and family formation already and be in a more family oriented trajectory to adulthood. Also compared to men of the second generation these gender differences are clear.
Interestingly enough second generation men are similarly (or sometimes even more) opting for individualistic oriented trajectories as is found for the Dutch majority group men. The gender gap in heterogeneity in transitions, as well as, the main paths
into adulthood, could point to increasing polarisation in the transition to adulthood between young men and women of the second generation. Where Moroccan men predominantly postpone transitions this seems to be only the case for part of the women of this group and this gender gap is pretty similar for the Turkish second generation as well. One can question what implications this might have for finding a future partner (from the same or other ethnic group) and gender relations among couples.
At the same time I do find clear differences between the Turkish and Moroccan second generation. The latter group is overall taking more individualistic oriented paths compared to the Turkish second generation. The Moroccan second generation takes an intermediate position between the paths chosen by the majority group and the Turkish second generation. The Moroccan second generation seems in this sense to be in the process of de-standardization of their paths to adulthood. Whether this is related to different paths of acculturation, identification or other underlying factors can not be answered with this study. For the Turkish second generation my study pointed to high levels of heterogeneity compared to the other origin groups. This finding shows that diversity in family life transitions within this second generation group is very large. Whether this is a transitional phase or whether it may result in more polarization within this group (for men and women alike) of those following the traditional Turkish path to adulthood and those adapting different strategies, is an important question for future research. All in all, it shows that differences among the group of second generation young adults and their trajectories to adulthood should not be neglected by future studies.
Given the cross-sectional data of my study I can only take into account the current diversity and can not draw any conclusions on developments over time (as age and cohort effects can not be distinguished). At the same time the analyses on sequencing and the main clusters of trajectories, did not reveal any differences between cohorts as expected. This might be due to the fact that we have rather limited numbers in the two categories. Furthermore, it could be attributable to the relatively closeness of the cohorts (just 5 years categories): it might be only after distinguishing 10 year cohorts that differences indeed occur. As the young people in my sequence analyses are only 25–35 years of age they might not really be different cohorts but rather be socialized in the same period in time.
Education is found to be an important determinant for sequencing of events and paths into adulthood taken by young adults of all studied groups. My findings suggest that the second generation who is higher educated also postpones union and family formation choices compared to those with lower educational attainment as was found for the Dutch majority group. Taking more individual oriented life paths thus seems to be related to educational attainment. Whether this is the result of education as such, the incompatibility of combining education and family life or different attitudes and norms between those with different educational achievements is impossible to answer. Nevertheless, it is an important finding that education seems to determine the path to adulthood as taken by the second generation and the majority group alike.
Despite the new insights that were gained from this study on paths to adulthood several data limitation arose as well. Measurement of events was only available as a rough indicator (year). More detailed information on when exactly transitions took place is needed in order to determine exact sequencing within the year. Furthermore, due to the sample size and composition the typology of trajectories could only be based on a relatively small number of persons. This hampers the possibility of including many explanatory factors in the analyses and makes generalizations not always easy. These issues are hard to overcome as few data are available in which sufficient second generation young adults are included to do more advanced analyses. However, register data which are more and more available for analyses, could be a potential solution to these issues in the future. It would also allow including other domains of life in the analyses and studying the interaction between the private (family) and public domain of life in more detail. Furthermore, this study was limited to the Netherlands and more particular Amsterdam and Rotterdam. As the sociology of the life course rightly points to the relevance of studying individuals in time and place, it would be interesting to expand the scope to other cities, coun-tries and second generation origin groups. Nevertheless, this study has shown the usefulness of covering different events in the transition to adulthood as is suggested in the sociological life course approach. Taking this perspective sheds more light on how lives of young adults from different origins evolve in this important period of life.
8.A.1 Appendix
Table 8.A.1 Coding of family life course states for each year for the young adults in the sample
Leaving
State Home Cohabitation Marriage
1 LH Y N N
2 LHC Y Y N
3 LHCM Y Y Y
4 LHM Y N Y
5 C N Y N
6 CM N Y Y
7 M N N Y
8 0 N N N
Source: TIES (2007), the Netherlands
Table8.A.2Multinominallogitcoefficientsforpredictingclusteroffamilylifetransitions(refcategory:earlyfamilylifecluster) DelayedindependenceProlongedindividualisticCondensedtransitionsCoincidingtransitions BStd.errorBStd.errorBStd.errorBStd.error Intercept:326:667:476.500:538.526:234.999 Educationallevel:099***:031:118***.023:078***.024:044.042 Origin.ref:Dutchmajoritygroup Moroccan1:957***:468:484.354:374.379:749.769 Turkish1:415***:462:377.334:895**.3451:737**.639 Women1:428***:360:844**.270:661*.283:222.542 Cohort(ref.oldest):119:361:020.268:411.285:326.532 Source:TIES(2007),theNetherlands PseudoRsquare:.14 *p<.05;**p<.01;***p<.001
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