Parenthood, childlessness and mental health in times of falling fertility

Summary

Ingress: Finding a partner and having children are life-changing events and positively correlated with mental health. In the last decades, the proportion of childless individuals has increased. The potential consequences of these changes for the mental health of the population are unknown.  

Our overarching aim is to understand how mental health is linked with reproduction among men and women. Our specific aims are to understand: 

1. How mental health leads to selection into partnership and parenthood  

2. The effects of reproduction on mental health  

3. How patterns of partner selection influence mental health (assortative mating) 

First, mental health may influence the probability of having a partner, the desire to have children, and economic conditions. Mental health as a determinant of fertility is understudied. We investigate how mental diagnoses and broad vulnerabilities influences marriage and parenthood, and how this may have changed over time. Second, reproduction could influence mental health, but studies on the effects of parenthood have short follow-up time or are not causally informative. We therefore triangulating several methods for causal inference and to determine how effects of parenthood and grandparenthood may vary by individual characteristics. Third, having children is a couple level phenomenon, but most intergenerational studies do not account for the fact that partners are often similar. The composition of couples can have consequences for the children through the amount of risk and protective factors they experience. Such effects are largely unexplored. We will therefore assess the consequences of assortative mating on mental health. 

We use register data on the entire population of Norway that includes longitudinal information on kinship, mental health, education, and economic activity. In addition, we use survey and genomic data from ~230 000 individuals in The Nord-Trøndelag Health Study. We apply a toolbox of epidemiological, genetic, and econometric methods.  

This project will lead to an increased understanding of selection into parenthood and the causes of mental disorders. Of particular importance, we provide knowledge on the mental health of non-parents, a group that is often overlooked. 

Project participants 

Project leader: Fartein Ask Torvik, NIPH 

Start: 01.08.2023 

End: 31.07.2027 

Project owner: NIPH