Care and Career: Educational Enrolment and Couples’ Childbearing Behaviour in Sweden

This study deals with the complex interrelationship between the gendered division of labour, educational enrolment, earnings and childbearing. By using couple data for Swedish parents 1984-1999, it is explored whether the father‘s and the mother‘s educational enrolment and earnings are associated with the couple‘s propensities to have a second or a third child in different ways, and whether childbearing propensities, with reference to enrolment and earnings, has changed in recent decades. The empirical results show that couples where both are high-income earners, and couples where only the father is a student, have the highest second and third birth risks, while couples where the mother is a student have the lowest second and third birth risks. Most likely, these findings can be associated with the income-based Swedish parental leave insurance. As women still use most of the parental leave days, it is relatively more important for women than for men to attain a decent income before having a child than it is for men. In this way, the study supports the hypothesis that while fathers‘ breadwinner role has weakened, mothers‘ role as primary caretakers of small children still remains strong.