In this paper we compare Italy and Poland, two countries where the country-specific obstacles to work and family reconciliation are similarly strong, but which differ in terms of the history of women’s labour force participation and of household living standards. We adopt a life course...

This paper provides an overview of developments in fertility, family policy models, and intensity of work-family tensions in the CEE region in the 1990s and 2000s. It hypothesises that the intensification of work-family incongruities in the 1990s might have been an important determinant of the...

The paper investigates whether self-employment, which generally offers greater flexibility with respect to the hours and place of work, is chosen by women in order to achieve a better balance between paid work and family. The empirical research on this topic has provided conflicting evidence....

The country-specific conditions for work and family reconciliation have been theoretically and empirically acknowledged to constitute important determinants of fertility and women’s employment. So far, however, there have been very few attempts to quantify these conditions into a single...

In the recent decade demographers turned their attention to investigating the effects of children on self-rated happiness or life satisfaction. The underlying idea of this strand of research is to find out whether it pays off to individuals to become parents in terms of their subjective...

This paper aims to provide deeper insight into women’s fertility and employment decisions through the exploration of women’s values and beliefs. For our research, we selected Poland, where quantitative studies continuously point to a strong determination among mothers to participate in...

This goal of this study is to add to our understanding of the impact of women’s human capital accumulation on the timing of first births. Applying intensity regression to national retrospective data, we examined the transition to motherhood in Italy and Poland. These countries share several...

This article opens with a review of the main trends in family-related behaviour, i.e. fertility decline and changes in fertility patterns, a decreasing propensity to marry, postponement of marriage, and a slowly increasing frequency of divorces and separations. The analysis takes into account...

This article provides insights into employment decisions of mothers and mothers-to-be in a post-socialist Poland around the entry to the EU. Previous studies for this country continuously pointed to a strong determination among mothers to be employed during the economic transformation, despite...