Family Configurations and Leaving the Parental Home in Finland

Katrin Schwanitz , University of Turku

Previous research has demonstrated the diverse effects of family stability and configurations on the timing of leaving the parental home. Young adults from non-intact families, particularly those from single-parent and stepfamilies, tend to leave home earlier than peers from intact families. A limitation of such studies is family configurations being often measured crudely as time-constant characteristics—such as whether a respondent’s parents separated before age 15. To address this, I examine how dynamic changes in family configurations during childhood and adolescence influence the likelihood of leaving home. Using Finnish register data for the 1992 birth cohort (N = 62,189), I conduct a sequence analysis to identify family configuration trajectories. Then, using a discrete-time model, I estimate the effect of these trajectories on the probability of leaving home. As a next step, I propose applying multi-state modeling to jointly capture family transitions and the timing of home-leaving within a unified framework. Preliminary results suggest that dynamic configurations—particularly those involving step-parents and siblings (Cluster 5)—accelerate home-leaving. In contrast, stable configurations, such as remaining with two parents and either no siblings (Cluster 6) or siblings arriving later (Cluster 1), delay this transition. KHB decomposition reveals that part of the effect is explained by household income, especially in Cluster 5 (42.6%). Income explains less in Clusters 1 and 6, suggesting other mechanisms—such as family norms or emotional stability—may be influential. These findings highlight the need to distinguish between structural family changes and the socio-economic conditions that shape young people’s pathways out of the parental home.

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 Presented in Session 106. Flash Session Becoming an Adult in the 21st Century