Counting on Potential Grandparents? Adult Children's Entry Into Parenthood Across European Countries.

ABSTRACT: As populations age and longevity rises, the structure of the extended family is changing. Parents of young children are increasingly turning to the children's grandparents to provide childcare and help them reconcile work and family. This study is the first to investigate whether would-be grandparents' propensity to care for their grandchildren influences the adult children's transition to parenthood. Because grandparental childcare provision is not observable at the time of the transition to the first birth, I built a measure based on the characteristics of both actual grandparents and adult children to act as a proxy for the childcare that prospective grandparents are expected to provide in the future. Using data from the first two waves of the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in

SUBMITTER: Rutigliano R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7441078 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature