The Transitions project built on a previous EU-funded research project The Reconciliation Of Future Work And Family life which looked at the expectations and orientations of young adults, aged 18-30 in five European countries.

The Transitions Project aimed to build on and extend European research into adulthood and new parenthood, in the context of organisational changes.

The project aims were:

• To map the national contexts for understanding the experience of becoming parents and parenthood among young adults in 8 strategically selected countries

• To understand the impact of organizational context and organizational change on young adults who become parents

• To examine the transition to parenthood retrospectively and prospectively

• To understand how young adults negotiate motherhood and fatherhood and work-family boundaries

• To examine positive well-being - its dimensions and its relationship to different work-family strategies in this life course phase

• To examine the policy implications of the key foci of the study

• To disseminate the research findings to governments, employers and other stakeholders and to make recommendations

The project involved three research phases.

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Phase One

The first phase involved the contextual mapping of the national policy and demographic contexts and a state of the art literature review in which all eight countries participated. This was completed in 2003. Reports are available (details on the relevant pages).

Phase Two

The second phase consisted of organisational case studies (in the public and in the finance sector). Human Resource managers and Personnel managers were interviewed in each participating organisation. Focus groups of new and prospective parents, aged between 25 and 39, were conducted in each organisation. In addition a measure of individual and organisational wellbeing was constructed via a questionnaire. This phase was completed in 2004. A full and summary report is available.

A full report of Phase One and Phase Two of the project is available. Download the Executive Summary or contact c.purcell@mmu.ac.uk for the full report

Phase Three

The third phase consisted of in depth, biographical interview studies with young adults from the case study organisations who are new parents.

The three research phases were accompanied by a parallel dissemination activity, which established national and international frameworks for dissemination.

Results

Transitions has generated creative recommendations for policy and practice relating to negotiation of the work-family interface and well-being of workers, families and organisations. The Final Report, giving details of this (Executive Summary available here) is now available.

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