Introduction

As the average age of the birth of the first child has increased significantly for women in most European countries, and the transition period between youth and adulthood for many has been prolonged, the transition to motherhood must be seen in relation to other life course trajectories and discussed with reference to social class and educational level, as well as institutional arrangements such as welfare provision, workplace regulations and systems of education in national contexts. This chapter therefore examines and compares different types of trajectories and transitions to motherhood. It takes a biographical case approach and analyses selected cases of mothers from four of the seven countries in the study. In order to give ‘thick descriptions’ (Geertz 2000 [1973]) of individual cases many layers of empirical context are brought to bear on the analysis.

Transition to motherhood in context

Women's average age at birth of the first child varied between the seven countries. Figures from 1999 show that Bulgaria has the lowest age, at approximately 25 years, whereas the Netherlands and Sweden have an average age at nearly 30 (Fagnani et al, 2004, pp 113-14). The tendency for European women to become mothers relatively late in the life course compared to a few decades ago must be seen in relation to the extended period of education that has become common in most countries. There are still persistent class divisions with respect to length and level of higher education: middle-class young people have more education than young people of working-class background. Women with little or no higher education tend to become mothers earlier in the life course. This is a trend across all countries (Fagnani et al, 2004, pp 113-14).

The transition to motherhood typically follows a period of cohabitation and/or marriage and finding a house or a flat in which to ‘settle down’ and establish a family. In some countries, particularly in Southern and Eastern Europe, marriage and parenthood often happen while living in the parental home before the young couple is able to move to independent housing (Kovacheva, 2000; Roberts, 2009).

In this chapter we have chosen to focus on cases from four countries only. These are selected with reference to the discussion of historical context in Chapter Two. The layers of context in which individual lives unfold need to be understood within a comparative macro-level framework. The four countries cover the main dividing lines outlined in Chapter Two: the former Eastern bloc is represented by Bulgaria, a Scandinavian social democratic system represented by Norway, a neoliberal government by the UK and a new Southern European democracy by Portugal. Discussion of and comparisons in the transition to motherhood follow the framework provided by a life course perspective, thus the timing and scheduling of motherhood in relation to other life course phases and transitions is described first. Workplace differences in terms of private or public sector employment have been discussed elsewhere (Lewis et al, 2009) and will not be the focus of the following discussion.