%0 Thesis
%9 Master
%A Diffené, Franziska Leonie
%D 2022
%F theses_frw:3955
%P 50
%T The transition into motherhood from a life-course perspective: A comparison across first-generation immigrants in Germany
%U https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/3955/
%X Previous research has examined when and why immigrant women living in Germany become mothers, provided they came from former guest-worker countries. However, less is known about the fertility behavior of other groups of international immigrants in Germany. This study investigates the transition to motherhood across first-generation immigrant women from three different regions of origin who were childless before migrating to Germany in 1990 or later. The objective is to examine the extent to which immigrants from Central and Eastern European (CEE) or non-European countries might be more likely to have a first birth than Western European immigrants and what factors could explain these differences. Following the socialization and selection hypotheses of the life-course approach, I expected that CEE and non-European migrants had higher first-birth risks than Western European migrants as they self-selected into different socio-demographic characteristics and immigrated at different ages. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, I first employed discrete-time event-history models to estimate the effects of the region of origin on the predicted probability of having a first birth. Second, I used the Karlson/Holm/Breen method to test whether socio-demographic characteristics and the age at migration mediated the region of origin effects. Results suggest that, on average, CEE and non-European immigrants had higher first-birth risks partly because they were less educated and younger at the time of migration compared with Western European migrants. It can be concluded that immigrants’ transition to motherhood is related to their socialization context and selective socio-economic characteristics.