Domestic gender equality and childbearing: first, second and third births in Sweden

Eva Bernhardt, Stockholm University
Fran Goldscheider, Brown University

In this paper we will investigate how gender role attitudes and equal sharing of home tasks affect childbearing in Sweden, one of the most gender-equal societies in the world. In an earlier study, using information on egalitarian attitudes in the first wave of the Young Adult Panel Study, YAPS, in 1999, combined with actual sharing of home tasks in the second wave in 2003, we have shown that it seems to be 'inconsistency' between ideals and reality which significantly reduces the likelihood of a second birth. In this paper we will pursue this analysis by investigating the transition to a first, second and third birth in the period 2003-2006 among co-residential couples at the time of the 2003 YAPS survey, using the same combined attitude-behaviour measure as our main explanatory variable.