This thesis investigates the pattern of parental educational homogamy and its implications for parenting practices and children’s early development in contemporary Britain. At the heart of the thesis lies an interest in the mechanisms behind the intergenerational transmission of educational success and, more specifically, the consequences for children of new patterns of parental resemblance in education. The thesis is composed of three empirical chapters, each of which is concerned with a different outcome: 1) trends in educational attainment and educational assortative mating amongst parental couples; 2) parents’ childrearing values and stimulation-oriented interactions with children; and 3) children’s early cognitive and behavioural skills. The first chapter combines data from four birth cohort studies from 1958, 1970, 1990 and 2000-01 while the second and third chapters rely exclusively on the latter study. The empirical analyses use Log-linear and Diagonal Reference models. With regard to trends in educational assortative mating, the thesis finds that the strength of homogamy increased between 1958 and 1970 to decrease thereafter and remain stable, at its lowest level, throughout the 1990s. Moreover, amongst recent cohorts of parental couples the percentage of unions where mothers are more educated than their male partners equalled that of unions exhibiting the opposite pattern. The findings concerning the dynamics of parenting in heterogamous couples suggest a pattern of female dominance in the attitudinal domain as fathers align with the views that can be expected on the basis of the mother’s level of education rather than their own; however, no significant adjustments between partners are observed in parenting behaviours. Lastly, the thesis finds a positive gradient in the association between parental education and children’s early cognitive and socio-emotional development but little or no support for the hypotheses of differential effects for sons and daughters or gender biases in parental preferences for children. That is, no significant interactions are observed between the gender of children and the impact of parents’ absolute and relative levels of education. Taken together, the findings of the thesis qualify concerns about the increase of educational assortative mating in industrialised societies and its potential consequences for the intergenerational reproduction of inequalities in education.

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The subject of this dissertation is trends in family formation among highly educated men and women in Sweden. The highly educated have typically differed from other educational groups in their patterns of childbearing. This has particularly been the case for highly educated women, who used to be in the minority among the highly educated and who were much more likely to be childless than other women. The goal of this dissertation is to understand how the expansion of higher education has transformed  the formation of childbearing unions among the highly educated group. The context for the dissertation is the dramatic expansion of higher education which has occurred in Sweden over the last half century. As the share of cohorts graduating from post-secondary education has grown, diversity among the highly educated has also increased. This dissertation draws upon rich Swedish administrative register data to answer questions about changes in the behavior of the highly educated group, as well as emerging stratification within the group. This dissertation consists of five studies and an introductory chapter. In Study 1, we examine changes in geographical distances between young couples and their parents. We find that among younger cohorts, generations live further apart. The expansion of higher education contributes to these distances, though the introduction of regional colleges has mediated the impact of educational expansion to some extent. In Study 2, we consider how effective colleges are as partner markets. We follow one birth cohort (1970), and examine the likelihood that they form a childbearing union with someone who attended the same university at the same time. We find that colleges are an important potential meeting place for childbearing partners, and examine how the likelihood of partnering with a fellow student is related to the college composition. In Study 3, I assess changes in partner choice among the highly educated, by comparing the likelihood that highly educated men and women born in 1940-2, 1950-2, 1960-2, and 1970-2 form a childbearing union, and whether they do so with a highly or a lower educated partner. I find that female graduates are much more likely to enter unions, and to “partner down”. Men’s likelihood of forming a childbearing union hasn’t changed across cohorts, but men from later cohorts are much more likely to find a highly educated partner than men from earlier cohorts. I show that partnership outcomes for graduates are related to social class background, university experience (degree length and institution type), and post-graduation income. In Study 4, we study unions with at least one highly educated partner, including men and women born in 1950-2, 1960-2, 1970-2, and 1980-2. We examine the extent to which educational (in)equality is mirrored in other measures of status such as social class background, income, and occupational prestige. We conclude that although the number of women “partnering down” in terms of education has increased dramatically, these unions are not necessarily characterized by female status-dominance more generally. In Study 5, I focus on highly educated men who do not form any childbearing union, studying men born in the years 1945-1974. I find that the consistent levels of childlessness among highly educated men may best be explained by changes in the composition of graduates in terms of field of study and post-graduation income. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript. Paper 5: Manuscript.</p>