Division of Labour, Fertility Intentions, and Childbearing in Estonia

Gender Revolution Theory offers a compelling hypothesis about the role of gender equality in contemporary fertility dynamics, suggesting that a more egalitarian division of paid and unpaid labour among couples will enhance childbearing. However, the empirical evidence supporting is weak. This study...

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Published in:Comparative population studies Vol. 50; pp. 57 - 94
Main Authors: Gortfelder, Mark, Puur, Allan, Klesment, Martin
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Wiesbaden Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB) 01.01.2025
Federal Institute for Population Research
Subjects:
Childbirth & labor
childcare
Couples
Division of labor
Egalitarianism
Employment
estonia
Estonian Fertility and Family Survey (FFS)
Estonian Gender and Generations Survey (GGS)
Fertility
Fruchtbarkeit
Gender inequality
Gender revolution
Housework
Postcommunist societies
Sexual division of labor
Socialism
Time
Women
Estonia
ISSN:1869-8980, 1869-8999, 1869-8999
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Gender Revolution Theory offers a compelling hypothesis about the role of gender equality in contemporary fertility dynamics, suggesting that a more egalitarian division of paid and unpaid labour among couples will enhance childbearing. However, the empirical evidence supporting is weak. This study focuses on the division of labour and asks if couples in which the woman works full-time while also doing most of the housework have lower fertility intentions and parity progression. The study is set in Estonia, which experienced an early transition to full-time female employment, but also a prolonged period with a lack of egalitarianism in household work during the state socialist regime and afterwards. We use two family and fertility surveys conducted in the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s, both with a register follow-up. Applying ordinal and logistic regression models, we analyse both fertility intentions at the time of and actual childbearing in the five years following the surveys. We find that neither the fertility intentions nor the fertility behaviour of full-time employed women is higher in couples with a more equal division of housework, compared with couples in which the woman does most of the housework This finding applies regardless of parity. The conclusions are robust to a number of sensitivity analyses. The results call into question the relevance of division of labour as a factor in explaining socialist and post-socialist fertility behaviour.
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ISSN:1869-8980
1869-8999
1869-8999
DOI:10.12765/CPoS-2025-05