PopDigests

It has been proven that preschool attendance improves certain short-term cognitive outcomes of children, such as early literacy, early number concepts, and health. However, very little is known about the long-term effects of preschool.

In recent years, the number of ageing adults in societies has increased significantly. At the same time, even countries with generous social support systems have begun shifting care obligations away from the state, emphasizing the need for individual responsibility. The idea falls under the assumption that adult children will step in as the need for care arises. But what does this mean for individuals who, either voluntarily or involuntarily, do not have children in old age?

When tackling risky behaviour of adolescents, are mothers and fathers equally capable of influencing their child? While the literature has pointed to a mitigating effect of parental supervision on adolescent risky behaviour, studies thus far did not differentiate between fathers and mothers.

The role of income and employment on fertility patterns has already been extensively explored in the existing literature. However, empirical evidence for such effects is surprisingly scarce for Switzerland. In this recent study, Doris Hanappi, Valérie-Anne Ryser and Laura Bernardi examine the way perceived job quality is associated with the intention to have a child for men and women in Switzerland.

During the past 50 years, marital trends in Europe have changed significantly, particularly in France, where family formation has been postponed, the number of marriages has declined and cohabitation has increased. Simultaneously, for some time now, France has been a country of immigration, welcoming immigrants from a wide variety of countries and regions where partnership patterns are highly diverse. How are these two trends connected? In her study, Ariane Pailhé compares partnership dynamics between immigrants and the native French population.

Country differences in intergenerational relationships are not only due to economic, policy or housing contexts but also to a cultural tendency towards closer intergenerational ties. In a recent study, Cornelia Mureşan and Paul-Teodor Hărăguş investigated how norms of filial responsibility influence adult children to provide support to their ageing parents in several Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries as compared to Western Europe.

A wide range of factors have been identified in influencing parents’ decisions on shared leave, including gender ideologies towards parenting and care work. Masculinity is one of the driving forces in changing gender relations within families, meaning how fathers are positioned and their practices inside a household or a relationship. In this context, little attention has been paid to the extent to which masculinity is jointly constructed by both fathers and mothers, and how these constructions are linked to the use of parental leave.

How does a child’s birth month affect their chances of success in primary school? And to what extent is their success dependent on their socioeconomic background? In this study, Fabrizio Bernardi explores the chances of students to be successfully promoted after every grade in primary school in France. The analysis is based on the concept of compensatory advantage, which states that the lives of individuals from privileged socioeconomic backgrounds are less dependent on prior negative events.

In how much do immigrants and their descendants in Sweden differ from native Swedes in their marriage formation, divorce and re-marriage? In their paper, Gunnar Andersson, Ognjen Obućina and Kirk Scott demonstrated that there is a big variation among immigrant groups and between migrants and Swedish-born individuals, and that the country of origin matters when explaining this heterogeneity.

What happens to views and ideas about gendered representations and practices of fatherhood if a company allows new fathers to take one month of paid leave in a country with no statutory paternity leave? Isabel Valarino and Jacques-Antoine Gauthier analysed the implementation and use of a one-month paid paternity leave in the urban French-speaking context in Switzerland.