Out-of-union births in Russia, Estonia and France: cross-generation distinctions

Based on the harmonized data of the first wave of "Generations and Gender Survey" the comparative analysis of childbearing out of marriage and partner union in Estonia, Russia and France was carried out. Two hypotheses have been formulated. The first one suggests that probability of first childbirth outside union among Russian and Estonian women is equal in generations whose first reproductive events were during the common Soviet period. The second one applies to similarity of women’s behavior concerning the first birth outside union among Estonians and French women after 1991. The obtained results have shown that in the generations of women born in the 1950s-1960s in the three countries under consideration there were no significant distinctions in risks of out-of-union first birth. However, the analysis shows that Estonians from generations of the 1930s and 1940s had significantly less chance of having a child out of union, particularly in young ages under 20 years, than French and Russian women in the same cohorts. But the chance of women born during the 1970s to give birth to a child out of union in Estonia and in Russia is much higher, then in France. The observed increase of out-of-union births among Estonian women could be due to the big flow of Russians in the 1940s-1959s, and the significant differences in contraceptive practices between native Estonian and migrant Russian women in Estonia.