Family (In)stability after the birth of an unplanned child

Klara Capkova, Stockholm University

This paper focuses on couples’ disagreement on fertility plans, their subsequent fertility, and the consequences of the discrepancies between plans and outcomes. It targets the implications of experiencing (un)planned birth for the stability of cohabiting and married couples. We use the first six waves of the German panel study PAIRFAM and discrete-time event-history analysis. Information about couple´s (dis)agreement in fertility plans from a wave preceding the birth is used to construct an indicator of the (un)planned status of the child. Based on the dataset modified into couple-years, the model is equivalent to logistic regression with the family dissolution as the dependent variable. The results suggest that the unplanned status of children increases the risk of family dissolution, and that the effect is more pronounced among cohabiting couples.