1. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Evidence from the First Two Surveys of the UK Millennium Cohort Denise D. Hawkes, Heather E. Joshi and Kelly Ward 15 th July 2008 Unequal Entry to Motherhood and Unequal Child Development:

2. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Outline of presentation  Motivation  Millennium Cohort Study  Unequal Entry to Motherhood, the past  Unequal Starts in Life, the beginning  Unequal Child Development, the consequence  Conclusions

3. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Motivation

4. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Millennium Cohort Study  The MCS is the fourth of the UKs national cohort studies.  1946 cohort, NCDS and BCS70  The MCS is a nationally-representative sample of 18,818 babies within 18,552 families  The MCS will follow cohort members through out their lives, designed as a multi-purpose, multi-disciplinary dataset to “lay the foundation for future follow-ups of the cohort (and) develop links with other data sources

5. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Millennium Cohort Study – how is it unique?  The cohort members were born in the UK between September 2000 and January 2002 and were living in selected UK wards at age 9 months  The sample was drawn to over-represent those who live in areas of high child poverty, areas of high concentrations of ethnic minorities and the Celtic countries of the UK

6. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Data collected so far SweepAge of Cohort Members 19 months 23 years 3 – data recently available 5 years (same as BSC70) 4 – currently in field7 years (same as NCDS)  And more to come.....

7. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Table 1 Age of mothers at first and all births

8. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk MCS descriptive statistics

9. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Unequal Entry to Motherhood, the past  Hawkes, D. (2008) The UK Millennium Cohort Study: the circumstances of early motherhood, in Edwards, R. (ed.) Researching Families and Communities: Social and Generational Change, Routledge, Abingdon, pp. 147-163

10. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Unequal Entry to Motherhood, the past cont.  Hawkes (2008) finds that the age at first child is associated with both antecedent and current disadvantage.  woman’s education  disadvantage in their own childhood  as indicated by the separation of their own parents, experienced life in care and having an unemployed father at the age of fourteen.

11. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Unequal Entry to Motherhood, the past cont.  Certain ethnic minority groups (especially Pakistani or Bangladeshi)  Being born outside the UK is surprisingly found to be associated with later motherhood for some of this sample (though not to Pakistanis and Bangladeshis).  Finally, higher unemployment, measured locally and nationally at the time of conception, is found to be associated with earlier motherhood

12. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Unequal Starts in Life, the beginning  Hawkes, D., Joshi, H. and Ward, K. (2004) Unequal entry to motherhood and unequal starts in life: evidence from the first survey of the UK Millennium Cohort, Working Paper 6, CLS Cohort Studies, London

13. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Unequal Starts in Life, the beginning cont.  Timing of motherhood is associated with:  Poverty  Being employed  Household Income  Receipt of means tested benefits  Family Life  Partner presence  Employed partner  Well being  Depression  Life satisfaction

14. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Unequal Child Development, the consequence  How much does this historic and present disadvantage translate into disadvantage for the next generation?

15. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Child Outcome Measures  The three indicators of child development are:  Bracken School Readiness  British Ability Scales (BAS) Naming Vocabulary  Total Difficulties Score of the Strengths and Difficulties Instrument

16. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Control variables  Developmental controls:  Age at assessment, female, low birth weight, multiple birth  Family Controls:  Maternal education, maternal employment, child care, ethnicity, English only spoken at home, partner, employed partner, household income, owner occupied housing, mother's depression at nine months, mother employed full time before nine months, region  Sample restricted to first births only

17. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Bracken School readiness (Bracken) CoeffientStandard Error Mother's age at ( first) birth 20-240.140.06** 25-290.300.06*** 30-340.410.06*** 35-390.350.08*** 40+0.500.22**

18. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk BAS Naming Vocabulary (BAS ) CoeffientStandard Error Mother's age at ( first) birth 20-240.060.05 25-290.230.05*** 30-340.300.06*** 35-390.280.06*** 40+0.240.15

19. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk SDQ Total Difficuties Score (SDQ) CoeffientStandard Error Mother's age at ( first) birth 20-24-0.060.06 25-29-0.220.06*** 30-34-0.220.06*** 35-39-0.260.07*** 40+-0.120.15

20. following lives from birth and through the adult years www.cls.ioe.ac.uk Conclusions  Age at motherhood is associated with past, current and intergenerational disadvantage  Implications for policies aimed at increasing the education and training of the 16-18 age group in terms of breaking this cycle of intergenerational disadvantage  Extension – to include age five measures and measures of parenting styles

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