Special Collection 3 - Article 9 | Pages 213–244  

Becoming a Mother in Hungary and Poland during State Socialism

By Livia Sz. Oláh, Ewa Frątczak

This article is part of the Special Collection 3 "Contemporary Research on European Fertility: Perspectives and Developments"

Abstract

In this paper, we study the transition to motherhood in the first co-residential union in the dual-earner context of state socialism, namely in Hungary and Poland between the late 1960s and the end of the 1980s. Our analyses are based on data extracted from the Polish and the Hungarian Fertility and Family Surveys of the early 1990s. We use the hazard regression method as our analytical tool.
Our results for Hungary indicate that women’s employment does not necessarily reduce the propensity to become a mother if the combination of labor-force participation and family life has been facilitated by policy measures. In Poland however, this was more difficult, and state support was somewhat less generous, thus part-time workers and housewives had substantially higher first-birth intensity than full-time employed women. Even so, we find indication for Poland, that as policy measures increasingly improved the conditions to combine employment and family responsibilities, the propensity to have the first child increased.
The timing of first birth varied greatly across educational levels. Highly educated women were more likely to postpone the transition to motherhood, which in turn resulted in their overall lower propensity to have the first child in both countries, but less so in Hungary than in Poland.

Author's Affiliation

• Livia Sz. Oláh - Stockholms Universitet, Sweden EMAIL
• Ewa Frątczak - Szkoła Główna Handlowa w Warszawie, Poland EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Introduction to the Special Collection on The new roles of women and men and implications for families and societies
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Economic uncertainty and first-birth intentions in Europe
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Should governments in Europe be more aggressive in pushing for gender equality to raise fertility? The second "YES"
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Volume 19 - Article 56

Sweden: Combining childbearing and gender equality
Volume 19 - Article 28

Gender and family stability: Dissolution of the first parental union in Sweden and Hungary
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