University of Michigan 412 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1399
September 3, 1998 (7)
Contact: Diane Swanbrow, (734) 647-4416, [email protected]
Still waiting for grandchildren? U-M research suggests it may be your own fault you don't have any.
EDITORS: Grandparents Day is Sunday, Sept. 13.
ANN ARBOR---If you're still waiting for adult children to settle down and start producing some grandchildren, University of Michigan research suggests you may have only yourself to blame.
Young men and women whose mothers always wanted them to get married and have large families tend to start having children sooner than their peers, according to the U-M study, presented last month at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
"Mothers' preferences have a strong impact on the birth of grandchildren," says Jennifer S. Barber, a sociologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research.
Using a unique set of data on 835 mother-child pairs who were followed for 31 years, Barber analyzed how a mother's preferences influenced the child's later behavior. Since the data set included multiple interviews with the children as well, the researchers were able to compare their attitudes and actual behavior to the hopes their mothers had for them.
If it were just up to you, the mothers were asked, what would be the ideal age for your son (or daughter) to get married? Mothers preferred an average marriage age of about 25 for sons, 24 for daughters.
If your son or daughter could have just the number of children you would like, they were also asked, how many would you want him or her to have? The average number of children wished for both sons and daughters was about two.
The mothers also were asked how many years of education they would like their sons and daughters to have, and whether they would prefer their daughters-in-law or daughters to work or to stay at home with future grandchildren.
Barber compared the children's stated preferences for themselves, their mothers' preferences for them, and their actual behavior, then controlled for a large number of factors, including the mother's marital and childbearing history, family incomes at various stages, parents' education, mother's religion, and whether the mother had worked herself when her son or daughter was younger.
Although adult children's own preferences were important determinants of when they had their first child, Barber found that the mothers' preferences influenced their behavior regardless of what adult sons and daughters themselves preferred.
She found that daughters whose mothers preferred that they marry at age 20 in fact married and had their first child over seven times faster than young women whose mothers preferred that they marry at age 30.
Sons whose mothers preferred that they marry at age 20 in fact married and had their first child more than twice as fast as young men whose mothers preferred that they marry at age 30.
Among the young men only, Barber found that those whose mothers preferred family-oriented behavior also had premarital first births sooner than their peers.
"Following their mothers' preferences may place these young men at higher risk of having a premarital first birth through earlier sexual relationships," she suggests.
Many factors not measured in the study also may strongly influence a young person's attitudes and behavior about marriage and childbearing, Barber emphasizes. One of these factors may be the preferences of prospective grandfathers, who were not included in the study.
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