Fertility Plan Disagreement among Cohabiting Couples and Its Effect on Relationship Stability

Klára Capková, Masaryk University

Does fertility plan disagreement lead to the dissolution of cohabitation? This paper aims to examine the effect of disagreement in short-term fertility plans of cohabiting couples on the dynamics of their partnership. Using the first five waves of the PAIRFAM Study, we focus on childless cohabiting couples. The aim is to discover in which way the disagreement in the decision to have a first child operates with regard to partnership transitions. The current study employs discrete-time event-history analysis. Based on the dataset modified into couple-months, the model is equivalent to a multinominal logistic regression, and consists of two equations since the dependent variable comprises three categories; continuation of cohabitation, marriage entry, and union dissolution. Several models are estimated to assess the effects of socio-demographic factors, past partnership biography, relationship satisfaction and commitment, and family size changes. Couple perspective is adopted to adequately depict the sometimes-conflicting nature of family plans.