Today, most highly educated immigrants to Europe are women. Many of them are in their childbearing years and have children after arrival. However, in contrast to their male partners, they often struggle to align their professional aspirations with traditional expectations of their parental role that may exist in their country of residence. Little is known about whether such misalignment affects highly educated immigrant women in particular. 

This study contributes to closing this gap, investigating how gender and education intersect in affecting the socio-emotional life upon entering parenthood after immigration. We use probability-based panel data of immigrants to Switzerland, a high-income country in which traditional family arrangements and labour market penalties among mothers persist. Using fixed-effects panel regression, we examine changes in immigrants’ satisfaction with the decision to migrate, attachment to Switzerland, and general life satisfaction after experiencing first-time parenthood.

Results indicate notable declines in moving satisfaction among highly educated immigrant women after entering parenthood, while emotional attachment and general life satisfaction hardly change. In contrast, highly educated immigrant men benefit, experiencing increased attachment. For less-educated immigrant men, we find marked declines in all three indicators upon entering fatherhood, highlighting their double burden of fulfilling the male breadwinner role under more financial pressure. 

We observe similar tendencies among less-educated immigrant women. The findings highlight the relevance of intersectional approaches when examining the migration-family formation nexus, and call for further research on immigrant family’s emigration behaviour, whose departure would also mean the departure of the next generation.

Andreas Genoni is a postdoctoral researcher at the Migration & Mobility research unit at the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB) in Germany. His research mainly focuses on international migration and its consequences for individuals, drawing on European longitudinal data. He is particularly interested in understanding the mechanisms that contribute to mismatches between immigrants' perceptions of their own integration and their social reality, also known as the integration paradox. He also studies the potential consequences that result from this paradox, including out-migration.