Diverging Partnership Trajectories in Contemporary Spain: Educational Attainment and Gender Attitudes at Play

Anna Martínez Mendiola , University of the Basque Country
Roberta Rutigliano, University of the Basque Country
Anna Barbuscia, University of the Basque Country

This study examines how partnership trajectories influence the transition to parenthood and explores how these trajectories differ by educational attainment and gender role attitudes among women and men. The steady decline in fertility rates across Western countries has attracted considerable research attention. Emerging evidence highlights changes in partnership patterns, particularly the rise in singlehood, as key contributors to fertility decline. The trends are closely linked to the expansion of educational attainment and the diversification of gender role attitudes, which have reshaped the partner market and affected union formation. Nevertheless, empirical evidence on these dynamics remains scarce. This study uses data from the 2018 Spanish Fertility Survey, analysing information from 6,122 women and 1,023 men observed at the end of their reproductive years. Sequence analysis is applied to reconstruct partnership trajectories, followed by logistic and multinomial regression models to examine transitions to parenthood and partnership trajectories as functions of educational attainment and gender role attitudes. Consistent with prior research, remaining single strongly predicts childlessness. Our models reveal a positive educational gradient in permanent singlehood among women, although this association is not explained by gender role attitudes. In contrast, among men, educational attainment has no significant effect on remaining single, whereas gender attitudes do.

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 Presented in Session P3. Families, Fertility, and the Life Course 3