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Religious Socialisation and Fertility: Transition to Third Birth in The Netherlands

Socialisation Religieuse et Fécondité: L’arrivée du Troisième Enfant aux Pays-Bas

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Abstract

Although previous studies have demonstrated that religious people in Europe have larger families, the role played by religious socialisation in the context of contemporary fertility behaviour has not yet been analysed in detail. This contribution specifically looks at the interrelation between religious socialisation and current religiosity and their impact on the transition to the third child for Dutch women. It is based on data of the first wave of the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (2002–2004) and uses event history analysis. The transitions to first, second and third birth are modelled jointly with a control for unobserved heterogeneity. The findings provide evidence for an impact of women’s current church attendance as well as religious socialisation measured by their fathers’ religious affiliation, when they were teenagers. A religious family background remains influential even when a woman has stopped attending church. The effects of religious indicators strengthen over cohorts. Moreover, the combined religious make-up of the respondent’s parents also significantly determines the progression to the third child.

Résumé

S’il est bien établi que les croyants en Europe ont plus d’enfants que les autres, le rôle de la socialisation religieuse dans le contexte de la fécondité contemporaine n’a pas encore été analysé à ce jour. Cette étude s’intéresse au lien entre la socialisation religieuse et la religiosité actuelle, et à leur impact sur la probabilité d’agrandissement de deux à trois enfants de la descendance des femmes néerlandaises. Les données exploitées sont celles de la première vague du Panel Néerlandais d’Etude de la Parenté (the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study, 2002–2004). A l’aide des techniques de l’analyse des biographies, les probabilités d’agrandissement de rang 1, rang 2 et rang 3 ont été modélisées de façon conjointe, en contrôlant l’hétérogénéité non observée. Les résultats mettent en évidence l’impact de la fréquentation actuelle de l’église par les femmes et de leur socialisation religieuse, mesurée par l’appartenance religieuse de leur père quand elles étaient adolescentes. Il apparaît que la religiosité du contexte familial exerce une influence, même quand la femme ne fréquente plus l’église, et que les effets des indicateurs de pratique religieuse se renforcent d’une génération à l’autre. Enfin, l’appartenance religieuse conjointe des parents de la femme détermine significativement la probabilité d’avoir un troisième enfant.

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Notes

  1. A few studies on fertility and union formation considered religious socialisation (e.g. Janssen and Hauser 1981; Lehrer 2004).

  2. Among the non-Christian religions in the Netherlands, the most numerous adherents are Muslims, comprising about 5.8% of the population in 2005, and Hindus who amount to about 0.6%. Both religions registered marked increases during the previous decades. For instance, in 1980, they had represented 1.7% and 0.2% of the Dutch population, respectively (Becker and de Hart 2006, p. 34).

  3. It is a well documented fact that the level of church attendance is overestimated in surveys (e.g. Hadaway et al. 1993; Marler and Hadaway 1999). The numbers are nevertheless useful for comparing denominations and tracking the general trend.

  4. The Dutch Reformed Church (Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk) was the main church that originated from the reformation in the sixteenth century. Two important secessions of conservative streams took place in the nineteenth century. Most of the secessionists confederated and founded the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland) in 1892, further denoted as Calvinists.

  5. More trustworthy estimates obtained with other methods report around 8% regular churchgoers among the Catholics (KASKI 2007) and 21% among adherents to the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, which unites large parts of the Dutch Reformed and the Calvinists (Becker and de Hart 2006, p. 32).

  6. The respondents were divided into three categories (young, middle and old) in the proportion 1:2:1. Young women were defined as those aged 16–23 at the birth of their first child, middle-aged women as those 24–29 and old women as those aged 30–41 years when they had their first child.

  7. The constructed time intervals are 0–1, 2, 3, 4 and 5+ years.

  8. The respondents were assigned to the following birth cohorts: 1937–1944, 1945–1954, 1955–1964 and 1965–1979.

  9. The levels of education were constructed according to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED). Completed or incomplete elementary school (ISCED 1), lower vocational and lower general schooling between ages 12–15 or 16, respectively (ISCED 2) were defined as low education. Intermediate education comprises completed intermediate general secondary, upper general secondary and intermediate vocational training between ages 15/16 and 17–20 (ISCED 3). High education refers to women who accomplished their higher vocational, university or post-graduate training taking place between ages 17/18 to 20–24 (ISCED 5). Being in education constitutes the forth category. Education, even though in principle time-varying, enters as a time-constant covariate, which should not be problematic as very few people complete their education after the birth of their second child (Hoem et al. 2001, p. 252).

  10. I differentiate between respondents who have 0, 1, 2 or 3 and more siblings.

  11. Union status comprises the following states: no union, cohabitation, first order marriage, higher order marriage.

  12. This finding is in line with those of Neuman (2007, p. 221) and Adsera (2007, p. 227) who report that differently to mother’s practice, father’s mass attendance when the respondent was age 12 had a positive effect on the latter’s current family size.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Michaela Kreyenfeld, Hill Kulu, Dimiter Philipov, Tomáš Sobotka, Arland Thornton and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on earlier drafts of the article. I am also grateful to Sylvia Trnka for language editing. The Netherlands Kinship Panel Study is funded by grant 480-10-009 from the Major Investments Fund of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and by the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI), Utrecht University, the University of Amsterdam and Tilburg University.

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    Caroline Berghammer

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Berghammer, C. Religious Socialisation and Fertility: Transition to Third Birth in The Netherlands. Eur J Population 25, 297–324 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-009-9185-y

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