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The purpose of this paper is to analyse how and whether young women’s strong and early preference for having children relates to the degree of occupational segregation of the careers they envisage for themselves and the careers they actually enter by the time they reach age 23.

Drawing on theories predicting that young women act to replicate gendered social stereotypes in their career choice and to anticipate careers they perceive to be reconcilable with future motherhood, the authors conduct quantitative analyses using panel data from the Transitions from Education to Employment Survey, a longitudinal survey of young people in Switzerland. OLS regression analyses how expressing a strong desire to have children at age 16 impacts: the proportion of women in the career engaged in at age 23 and the career anticipated age 16, relative to women not expressing this strong preference. Logistic regression examines whether selection into wanting children could be held responsible for the results. Finally the authors explore how initial expectations and later outcomes relate to each other.

Women who express a strong interest in having children (Kinderwunsch) at age 16 anticipate and enter occupations with a substantially higher proportion of women. Differences in objective labour-market characteristics, such as academic attainment, ability and psychosocial factors, namely self-efficacy, are not related to having a strong desire for children at an early age. Family factors have multifaceted effects.

This research uses data from a cohort who were age 16 in 2000. The rapidly changing social context of Switzerland necessitates updating this analysis at regular intervals across cohorts.

Discussion is required to expand young women’s understandings of the implications of different career choices and to broaden the range of options that they consider and to which employers provide access.

Wanting to have children is one of the factors that fuels occupational gender segregation. Although women might envisage that more gender-segregated occupations would allow them to combine work and family life, this may not be the case in reality.

This paper explores the important but previously under-explored relationship between early fertility preferences and occupational entry for women.

This research aims to illustrate the differential treatment of children and pensioners in Russia and to explain why this has not led to age group conflict through an illustration of age group interdependency.

Age group conflict is revealed through analysis of the government's policies to age groups and expenditure preferences. Interdependency is analysed by the calculation of poverty rates and contribution of age specific benefits, using nationally representative sample survey data.

The Russian government treated pensioners preferentially to children, even though children were at higher risk of poverty. However, within each age group poverty rates are mediated by household structures. Pensioners who live with children face higher poverty rates than the average for pensioners and those who co‐reside with lone mothers face the highest poverty rates of all pensioners, while their pension contribution to the household is of vital significance. Children living with one grandparent face higher poverty rates than average, whereas and those living with two grandparents face lower poverty rates.

The structure of intergenerational relationships and financial solidarity between generations provide essential context for understanding individual welfare in Russia.

Children's downgraded status in Russian society needs to be urgently addressed. Lone mothers, their children and their parents face the highest poverty rates and need of support. Amongst pensioners, women pensioners are particularly at risk.

The originality is in using two opposing perspectives on relations between age groups to show that preferential treatment of pensioners coexists with a high degree of financial linkage between generations.