Parenthood, altruism, and the market: a critique of essentialist constructions of women’s nature in commercial surrogacy

Commercial surrogacy has become an increasingly popular path to parenthood around the world. Yet, critics have raised concerns about the practice’s implications for gender inequality. This paper critically assesses commercial surrogacy’s reliance on, and reinforcement of, common narratives about women’s natural disposition to sacrifice themselves for others. These narratives have historically served to justify disadvantages for women as workers, both within and outside the household. Their presence in commercial surrogacy agreements suggests that, even if we can characterise commercial surrogacy as an alternative (as opposed to traditional) method for family formation, the same social stereotypes that have historically entrenched women’s inequality in traditional families are still highly relevant for the practice’s functioning.

Marriage Intentions Among Cohabiters in Lithuania

Living together in one household without being married in modern society is one of the defining features characterizing the transformations of the modern family, mentioned alongside late-age marriage, late-age childbearing, or frequent divorces. Marriage is still a major life transformation, but the pressure to marry today is lighter than ever before and many young couples in Europe start family life from living together in one household and not being married. However, cohabitation has not a universal meaning and role in family formation process and couples cohabit for different reasons and motives. Existing research proves, that union formation pattern depends on socioeconomical and sociodemographic characteristics, it varies by country and changes by time. In the research literature, cohabitation diffusion process is mainly based on the two arguments: cultural value changes which leads to “less marriage” and economic restrains which leads to postponed marriage until economic stability. The aim of this article is to investigate the intentions of cohabitors to marry and the factors modelling these intentions in Lithuania. The empirical analysis is based on the current Family and Inequality Survey (2019) data set about 1970-1984 birth cohort who lived in an extramarital partnership at the time of the research. The data consists rich information on the partnership and fertility, but also social and economic standing. Analysis of the data shows that, most of the cohabiting individuals in the analyzed cohort in Lithuania still undecided about marriage and could not name their intentions in the future. Descriptive statistics suggests that more man than women plan to marry their partner in the future. In addition, cohabitors with the lowest education level do not intend to marry their partner more than any another education level group. The multinomial regression results suggest that factors predicting marriage in the future are sex, partnership satisfaction and education. That leads to assume that in Lithuania cohabitation is only a prelude to marriage and individuals satisfied with the quality of their relationship intends to marry rather than continuing cohabitation as an alternative to marriage. Cohabitation can be chosen as a prelude to marriage to check the strength of a relationship and to accumulate economic and social resources. On another hand, having one child has a negative effect on the marriage intentions among cohabitors.

Why People Emigrate to Work in Elder Care?

Emigration is one of the sorest problems in Lithuania. Emigrants from Lithuania most often fill the sector of unskilled labour in the target countries, one of which is elder care. Financial factors are considered the main motivation for emigration; however, migration is a complex phenomenon and requires a more nuanced investigation. The aim of this article is to analyse subjectively identified reasons of emigration from Lithuania to work in the elder care sector and motivation in choosing a particular country. The thematic data analysis of 13 semi-structured interviews revealed that emigration is motivated by an entirety of reasons: beside financial factors other „push“ (family, health) and „pull“ (knowledge about the country, family formation) factors are important. The move also is facilitated by the chain migration factors. The importance of the economic reasons for migration is revealed in cases of financial insecurity (loss of employment, threat of company bankruptcy, financial difficulties in the parents’ family etc.). Economic considerations become significant again, when comparing the job options and working conditions available to migrants. Work in the care sector for older people is seen as relatively easy, accessible and well paid. Other “push” factors were related to an unsatisfactory life situation, including stressful employment, and unsatisfying family relationships. The desire to get to know a foreign country, the opportunity to start a family or establish oneself there can work as „pull“ factors. The decision to emigrate was supported by the chain migration factors – encouragement, help and support of previously established immigrants. In some cases, it emerged as an independent factor of migration people emigrated, invited by relatives or acquaintances from abroad even though they did not initially plan to migrate. With the rapidly growing share of older people in Lithuania and the underdeveloped care services, the opportunity to retain potential emigrants by creating attractive working conditions for them in Lithuania, remains untapped. Policies should aim to improve the working conditions and opportunities in the care sector in Lithuania in order to encourage Lithuanians to stay in the country. In addition, regulations to better absorb (returning) migrants should be in place, given the ongoing movement between countries.

Educational Pairings and Fertility Across Europe: How Do the Low-Educated Fare?

Recent research suggests that the fertility-education relationship may be mediated by the educational attainment of the partner, especially among the tertiary-educated. However, there are no studies focusing on the couple-education-fertility nexus among couples who achieved only basic educational attainment, even though resource pooling theory predicts differences in family formation by couples’ joint levels of socio-economic resources. We address this research gap and investigate how educational pairings among married and cohabiting partners relate to second and third birth transitions across 22 European countries, using data from the EU-SILC (European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions) panel and discrete time event history models. Our findings show significantly lower second and third birth transition rates among homogamous low-educated couples compared to heterogamous couples with one low- and one medium or highly-educated partner in the Nordic countries, but not across the rest of Europe. However, couples with one or two low-educated partners have significantly lower second birth rates compared with couples with two highly-educated partners in all European regions.

Education, Income and Mobility: Experimental Impacts of Childhood Exposure to Progresa after 20 Years

In 1997, the Mexican government designed the conditional cash transfer program Progresa, which became the worldwide model of a new approach to social programs, simultaneously targeting human capital accumulation and poverty reduction. A large literature has documented the short and medium-term impacts of the Mexican program and its successors in other countries. Using Progresas experimental evaluation design originally rolled out in 1997-2000, and a tracking survey conducted 20 years later, this paper studies the differential long-term impacts of exposure to Progresa. We focus on two cohorts of children: i) those that during the period of differential exposure were in-utero or in the first years of life, and ii) those who during the period of differential exposure were transitioning from primary to secondary school. Results for the early childhood cohort, 18-20-year-old at endline, shows that differential exposure to Progresa during the early years led to positive impacts on educational attainment and labor income expectations. This constitutes unique long-term evidence on the returns of an at-scale intervention on investments in human capital during the first 1000 days of life. Results for the school cohort - in their early 30s at endline - show that the short-term impacts of differential exposure to Progresa on schooling were sustained in the long-run and manifested themselves in larger labor incomes, more geographical mobility including through international migration, and later family formation.