Intergenerational Patterns of Family Formation

Anette E. Fasang, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Marcel Raab, Social Science Research Center Berlin

Research about parent effects on family behavior traditionally examines intergenerational transmission: whether children adopt the same family behavior as their parents. In this paper, we draw attention to intergenerational patterns of family formation that include empirical regularities of contrasting family formation behavior between parents and children. We use data from the Longitudinal Study of Generations (LSOG, N=461 parent-child dyads) and propose an innovative application of multichannel sequence analysis and cluster analysis to analyze holistic family formation trajectories between age 15 and age 40. We find three salient intergenerational patterns of family formation: strong transmission, moderated transmission, and intergenerational contrast. Multinomial logistic regression models support that educational upward mobility and parent-offspring conflict are strong predictors of moderated intergenerational transmission and intergenerational contrast in family formation.