Trends in Unpartnered Childbearing
Martina Štípková Saturday, 30 July 2016
Single motherhood is known to have negative consequences on the wellbeing and life chances of mothers and their children. It appears as a consequence of parental dissolution or birth to an unpartnered woman. There are studies of divorce and union separation in the Czech Republic but less is known about women who bear their children outside unions. The goal of the paper is to determine if the proportion of mothers who bear children without having a partner changes in time and if there is a change in the socio-demographic characteristics of mothers. As the data on unpartnered childbearing are limited, the paper also aims to map the available data sources and their possibilities and limitations.
Two data sources are used to measure births to unpartnered mothers, the birth register (BR) and the Labour Force Survey (LFS). BR data include mothers of liveborn infants in 2007–2014 (n = 886,467) but do not contain a direct measure of family arrangement. Single mothers are defined as those who did not provide information about newborn’s father. The LFS dataset is limited to households with a member under one year of age interviewed in 1993–2010 (n = 8,172). Single motherhood is defined as an absence of mother’s partner in the household. Results about single motherhood are reported for all households and for those headed by one of the infant’s parents.
Single motherhood is known to have negative consequences on the wellbeing and life chances of mothers and their children. It appears as a consequence of parental dissolution or birth to an unpartnered woman. There are studies of divorce and union separation in the Czech Republic but less is known about women who bear their children outside unions. The goal of the paper is to determine if the proportion of mothers who bear children without having a partner changes in time and if there is a change in the socio-demographic characteristics of mothers. As the data on unpartnered childbearing are limited, the paper also aims to map the available data sources and their possibilities and limitations.
Two data sources are used to measure births to unpartnered mothers, the birth register (BR) and the Labour Force Survey (LFS). BR data include mothers of liveborn infants in 2007–2014 (n = 886,467) but do not contain a direct measure of family arrangement. Single mothers are defined as those who did not provide information about newborn’s father. The LFS dataset is limited to households with a member under one year of age interviewed in 1993–2010 (n = 8,172). Single motherhood is defined as an absence of mother’s partner in the household. Results about single motherhood are reported for all households and for those headed by one of the infant’s parents.