Family Life Events: Diversity in Transitions

First of all I want to know what events young adults experienced in the family domain already. In Fig.8.1a general bivariate overview of family life transitions as experienced by our respondents is shown. This descriptive figure shows that a substantial share of Turks and particular Moroccans (28 and 41% respectively) did not experience any of the four family life transitions I distinguished. This share is much lower for the Dutch majority group of whom by far the majority at least had one transition. Part of this is due to the somewhat younger age structure of the Moroccan group compared to the other groups so our analyses by age will be

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Fig. 8.1 Family life transitions experienced by second generation Turks and Moroccans and the Dutch majority group in the Netherlands (%) by origin (Source: TIES 2007, the Netherlands)

important to draw final conclusions. Between 20 (Turkish group) and 30 (Moroccan and Dutch group) percent of the young adults have left the parental home to live on ones own. Despite the fact that we do not know where they lived after leaving the parental house, the figures suggests that quite a substantial share of young adults do live without a partner outside of the parental home among all origin groups.

The predominant Dutch pattern of transition to adulthood in which young adults leave the parental home and cohabit with a partner afterwards while postponing marriage and family formation is also clear for the young adults of all three origins.

Nevertheless, leaving home followed by unmarried cohabitation is much more common among the Dutch majority group than it is for the second generation. Many more young Turks and to a lesser extend Moroccans have already entered a married union and partially already have had a first child as well. Around 24% of the Turkish and about 12% of the Moroccan second generation have already experienced the four main markers of family transition to adulthood.

These first findings are only giving a very general picture about the transition to adulthood in the family domain. In order to get a better insight into the diversity of experienced family life transitions among different age groups I compute a relatively simple measure of heterogeneity of status combination, the Theil entropy coefficient, for three age ‘cohorts’ separately (Fig.8.2). Of course one has to bear in mind that cross sectional data are used here so the data refer to all those who are currently aged 18–22, 23–27, and 28 and older and their respective distribution across the 11 distinguished positions (as shown in Fig. 8.1) in the transition to adulthood. The higher the coefficient the more diversity in states is found among

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18-22 23-27 28-+

Turkish Moroccan majority group

Fig. 8.2 Theil entropy coefficients for family life transitions, by age and origin (Source: TIES 2007, the Netherlands)

the particular group. Contrary to my hypothesis we do not find more diversity for the majority group than for the second generation. The data actually point to the contrary: at least as much or even more diversity is found for the second generation than is the case for the majority group, with the exception of the Moroccan second generation between 18 and 22 years for whom less diversity is found compared to the Turkish and majority group. At ages 23–27 the second generation clearly covers more diversity in family life transitions and in particular among the Turkish second generation this is the case. For those ages 28 and over Moroccan young adults show higher levels of diversity than the other two groups. However, again there is no clear second generation versus majority group divide as expected based on my hypothesis.

Thus far we have described family life trajectories without distinguishing by gender. However, previous studies have shown that the transition to adulthood is not the same for men and women. Throughout the life course women are often having more diverse statuses than is the case for men who still follow a more standard path. I therefore again calculate the level of heterogeneity for men and women of the three origin groups in the Netherlands. Figure8.3 shows the results of these Theil entropy coefficients. In line with my hypothesis women of the Moroccan second generation and majority group have more diverse status combinations than is case for men in these groups. For the Turkish second generation no difference in heterogeneity is found between men and women. The largest gender differences are found among the Moroccan second generation indicating that particularly for women family life transitions are experienced in a variety of ways where this is much less the case for men. Overall the findings do not indicate the hypothesized stronger diversity among second generation women compared to the majority group.

Though the heterogeneity among Turkish women is slightly higher this is not the case for Moroccan women compared to the majority group women.

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Fig. 8.3 Theil entropy coefficients for family life transitions, by gender and origin (Source: TIES 2007, the Netherlands)

Fig. 8.4 Percentage of young adults who experienced a specific event before age 25, by gender and origin (Source: TIES 2007, the Netherlands)

The remainder of the analyses is restricted to those who are currently between 25 and 35 years of age. As mentioned before I use retrospective information on the age at which transitions were experienced between the ages of 17 and 25. First of all the share of those who experienced a transition before age 25 are shown by group and gender (Fig. 8.4). There is obviously a clear difference in the share of young adults between each of the origin groups as well as between men and women (Fig.8.4).

The parental home was left by young adults before the age of 25 in the majority of cases. Only few remained in their parents’ house after 25 but many more men than women did not leave the parental house. For the second generation many more women than men had left the parental house by age 25. This gender difference was not found among young adults of the majority group. Unmarried cohabitation was much less common to have taken place before 25 years among most groups except

the Turkish. Again women are more likely to have cohabitated with an unmarried partner in all groups although gender differences in the majority group are small.

Marriage is most common before the age of 25 among Turkish women, Turkish men and Moroccan women. Hardly any young adult of the majority group and few men of the Moroccan second generation have entered a married union by age 25.

The same pattern between the groups and sexes holds when we look at childbearing before age 25. All in all these figures show that the second generation starts union formation earlier than is the case for the majority group and women more so then men. It is striking to see that Moroccan men in our sample seem to have postponed in particular union and family formation transitions.

The final step in the analyses is the sequence analyses of the three distinguished family life transitions. In total 195 individual sequences are found for the three family life transitions experienced between the ages of 17 and 25 years. About half of them are unique sequences and another 39 are shared by two persons another 15 by three persons in the sample. The ten most common sequences (covering half of the total sample) all start with leaving the parental home followed by no other transition. Only in 15% of all cases the first transition that is experienced is not leaving the parental house. These are predominantly young adults who start a cohabiting or married union in the parental house and only move out afterwards.

About half of this group belongs to the second generation the other half are majority Dutch young adults.

I apply optimal matching techniques to distinguish patterns that are most similar to one another which are in the end clustered in five different paths to adulthood for whom substantive interpretation of the clusters is introduced here. The first group of young adults are those who did not experience any transition before age 25.

This implies that they did not left the parental house, were not cohabiting with a partner and had not entered a marriage yet. These are the ones I have labelled as the “delayed independence”. Around 10% of the sample belongs to this group. The second group are those who left the parental home at a relatively young age and/or spend at least a substantial time living on themselves before making any other family life transitions. Only few of them marry before age 25. This group is characterised by “prolonged individualistic” behaviour and relates to about 50% of the young adults in the study. A third group are those who leave the parental home first and shortly afterwards either start a cohabiting and/or a married union. In any case each of the three transitions is made within a relatively short time span (of about 2 years).

This group is labelled “condensed transitions”. The fourth group is relatively similar to the previous one with the exception that the majority of people in this group make all three transitions at the same age. It means that they do not have a period of living on their own or unmarried cohabitation but directly move out of the parental home to enter a married union. This however only refers to three percent of my sample, and I refer to them as “coinciding transitions”. The majority of these young adults make all transitions young and definitely before the age of 24. Finally, I distinguish a group of “early family life”. The young people in this group (the final 10% of my sample) have left parental home before the age of 18 often start a cohabiting union

Table 8.2 Distribution over the five most common patterns of family life transitions, by origin and gender (in percentages)

Turkish Moroccan Majority group Dutch

Men Women Men Women Men Women

Delayed independence 14 6 25 11 6 5

Prolonged individualistic 41 37 52 43 59 55

Condensed transitions 36 36 15 31 26 24

Coinciding transitions 4 8 3 2 1 3

Early family life 4 13 6 13 9 14

Source: TIES (2007), the Netherlands

shortly after that and in case they do marry, this event also takes place at a young age. All transitions are commonly experienced before the age of 21.

The main interest in this paper is to study to what extend specific paths to adulthood are more common for the second generation compared to the majority group young adults in the Netherlands and whether routes of the latter group are more varied and dissimilar. I therefore compare the paths of each of the three origin groups and also distinguish between men and women (Table8.2). The bivariate find-ings as presented in this table are corroborated by multinominal logistic regressions that were carried out including the origin, gender, cohort, and educational level of the respondent (see Appendix Table 8.A.2). Among all origin groups the largest shares are found in the group labelled as “prolonged individualistic” (Table8.2).

These young adults are postponing family life commitments. Most of them do not experience any union or family formation event before the age of 25 and the few who did so mainly entered a cohabiting union shortly before or at age 25. Although the shares of Moroccan and particular Turkish second generation included in this group is somewhat smaller than for the Dutch, still sizable shares of more than a third of Turkish women to half of the Moroccan men are in the trajectory. Overall men are more likely to be in this group than women and this is in particular the case for the Moroccan second generation.

For both the Turkish and the majority group young adults the second most common paths is that of condensed transitions: more than a third and around a quarter of the respective groups is assigned to this cluster. Also Moroccan women are found in this trajectory where different transitions are experienced within a rather short time span before reaching the age of 25. This situation is much less common for Moroccan men who are clearly postponing family transitions as is clear from the large share (a quarter) who are in the ‘delayed independence’ cluster. Other young adults and in particular young adults of the majority group are much less common to postpone all transitions: they do leave home but postpone in particular union formation decisions. The group of “coinciding transitions” applies mainly to Turkish women who are within the same year experiencing all transitions. This is the typical traditional path to adulthood which however is hardly found among the Moroccan or the Dutch majority group anymore. Finally, among all origin groups I found a small percentage of young adults who are “early family life” builders.

This trajectory where all transitions are basically experienced before age 21 is much more common among women of all groups than it is among men.

As only a limited number of young adults did have a child before the age of 25, we did not include them in the sequence analyses directly. However, when we look at the patterns of childbearing among each of the distinguished clusters of young adults it becomes obvious that childbearing ages are highest among those who are delaying independence, followed by the groups of prolonged individualistic young adults, condensed movers, and coinciding movers. Those who belong to the early family life group are also the ones with youngest ages at childbearing. Young adults who are postponing other transitions are also postponing childbearing, they are the ones who are least likely to have had a first child whereas those who are movers (either condensed or coinciding) are much more likely to have had a first child already. Many of those who made early family transitions are also having a child at a young age. Nevertheless also among this group about half of the young adults did not have a first child yet which was often due to the fact that many of them were in a relationship at a young age but this partnership also ended at a young age.

One of the key determinants in shaping family life transitions of young adults has been their educational enrolment. In this paper duration in the educational system as such was hard to assess due to limited information on the moment of leaving the school system. I do, however, have detailed information on the educational level the young adult attended. For the Dutch case this relates almost directly to the number of years spend in education: the higher the educational level the longer the period one has to spend in education. Education clearly is of importance for the trajectory taken by the young adult of every origin. It has a consistent and clear impact on distinguishing between the early family life cluster and all other clusters. Those young adults who follow the early family life path in their transition to adulthood are overall lower educated than young adults in any of the other groups.

For the Turkish second generation we find a dichotomy between the two clusters that are more individualistically oriented (“delayed independence” and “prolonged individualistic”). Young adults belonging to these latter two clusters are higher educated that is the case for the other three clusters that are more family oriented.

For Moroccans we find that also those who are experiencing “condensed transitions”

are higher educated than those who are taking the trajectory of coinciding transitions and early family building. This latter pattern is also found for the Dutch majority group. Although we have to bear in mind that our sample size is limited it clearly points to the relevance of education for the trajectory followed in the family domain among all origin groups, which is in line with my hypothesis (H4).

Finally, I also tested whether belonging to the younger cohort implied that different trajectories into adulthood were chosen. I did not find differences between the two distinguished cohorts of young adults for the Moroccan and the majority group. For the Turkish second generation I did find that the younger cohort was somewhat more likely to be in the “delayed independence” and “condensed transitions” clusters. Contrary to my hypothesis (H4) I do not find clear differences by cohort. Given the relatively small numbers when distinguishing these cohorts by origin group again one should be careful with drawing fare reaching conclusions.