One of the dramatic recent changes in family life in Western nations has been the rise in non-marital childbearing. Much of this increase is attributable to the growth in cohabitation. But in some countries, notably the UK (and the USA) this is much less the case with significant proportions of...

This paper uses two British birth cohorts, born in 1958 and 1970. There are substantial inter-cohort shifts in timing and context of becoming a parent and gender differences in timing. We use common childhood measures for the two cohorts, pool the two data sets and fit common models. We then ask...