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Grandparental Effects on Fertility Vary by Lineage in the United Kingdom

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Abstract

Grandparental presence is known to correlate with the number of grandchildren born, and this effect may vary according to grandparental sex and lineage. However, existing studies of grandparental effects on fertility mostly concern traditional subsistence societies, while evidence from contemporary developed societies is both scarce and mixed. Here, we explore how grandparents affect the transition to second and subsequent children in the contemporary United Kingdom. The longitudinal Millennium Cohort Study (n = 10,295 families) was used to study the association between grandparental investment and parents’ probability of having a new child within 4.5 years. Results show that contact with paternal grandparents is associated with higher probability of parents having a second child. In contrast, contact with maternal grandparents is associated with lower probability of having a third or subsequent child. Kin may have opposite effects on fertility even in contemporary societies, which may explain the lack of consistent effects of grandparental investment on fertility in previous studies.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the Academy of Finland (grants no. 250620 and 266898) and Alli Paasikivi foundation. We are grateful to The Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Institute of Education for the use of these data and to the UK Data Archive and Economic and Social Data Service for making them available. However, those organizations bear no responsibility for the analysis or interpretation of these data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Helsinki, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Antti O. Tanskanen, Markus Jokela & Mirkka Danielsbacka

  2. Väestöliitto, Population Research Institute, Helsinki, Finland

    Anna Rotkirch

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  1. Antti O. Tanskanen
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  2. Markus Jokela
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  3. Mirkka Danielsbacka
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  4. Anna Rotkirch
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Correspondence to Antti O. Tanskanen.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 6 Predicting the birth of another child by children’s, parents’, and grandparents’ characteristics
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Tanskanen, A.O., Jokela, M., Danielsbacka, M. et al. Grandparental Effects on Fertility Vary by Lineage in the United Kingdom. Hum Nat 25, 269–284 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-014-9200-9

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