Postindustrial Fertility Ideals, Intentions, and Gender Inequality: A Comparative Qualitative Analysis

Housework, Gender Role Attitudes, and Couples' Fertility Intentions: Reconsidering Men's Roles in Gender Theories of Family Change

“…As for women, we find that like men, their housework hours do not have significant effects on consensus for at least one more child. Their more egalitarian gender role attitudes tend to reduce the odds of at least one partner intending more children; this latter finding is consistent with gender equity theory because women who are more supportive of women's roles in the paid workforce may have lower fertility intentions, due to perceived work-family conflict (Brinton et al 2018). Therefore, there is gender asymmetry in the effects of egalitarian gender roles, which suggests that the gender revolution has not yet fully reached its second stage in the context under consideration.…”

“…Women in the childbearing and childrearing ages find it difficult to combine work and family, pay a “motherhood penalty” in the labor market (Budig and Hodges ; Gangl and Ziefle ; Härkönen, Manzoni, and Bihagen ), and often do not attain their fertility ideals or realize their fertility intentions (Adsera ; Brinton et al. ; Hagewen and Morgan ; Engelhardt, Kögel, Prskawetz ; Torr and Short ). Gender equity theory suggests that in light of the work‐family conflict they experience or anticipate experiencing, women are unwilling to bear (additional) children.…”

“…Gender equity theory suggests that due to asymmetry between the relative equality of opportunities that women enjoy in the public spheres of work and education and the lack of equity they experience in the private sphere of the home, women are caught in a bind (Frejka and Calot 2001;McDonald 2000McDonald , 2006Brewster and Rindfuss 2000). Women in the childbearing and childrearing ages find it difficult to combine work and family, pay a "motherhood penalty" in the labor market (Budig and Hodges 2010;Gangl and Ziefle 2009;Härkönen, Manzoni, and Bihagen 2016), and often do not attain their fertility ideals or realize their fertility intentions (Adsera 2006;Brinton et al 2018;Hagewen and Morgan 2005;Engelhardt, Kögel, Prskawetz 2004;Torr and Short 2004). Gender equity theory suggests that in light of the work-family conflict they experience or anticipate experiencing, women are unwilling to bear (additional) children.…”

Childbearing in Italy and Spain: Postponement Narratives

“…Demographers have primarily addressed postponement by scrutinizing individuals' fertility ideals or desires and intentions looking at associations between these and their socioeconomic characteristics and circumstances, as well as the welfare regimes and cultural context of their societies. In much of the previous research, access to the voices of those who are postponing has often been limited to a small number of survey items, although there are notable exceptions (Randall and Koppenhaver 2004;White, Judd, and Poliandri 2012;Bernardi, Klärner, and Von der Lippe 2008;Brinton et al 2018) and renewed interest in combining qualitative research with quantitative demographic analysis (Randall and Koppenhaver 2004). Here, we take a different approach and analyze women's accounts derived from semistructured qualitative interviews with Italian and Spanish women aged 30-35 in well-established heterosexual relationships who are either sure that they want children but "not yet" or who are ambivalent and oscillate within their accounts between futures with and without children.…”

Fertility decisions in transition: young adults’ perceptions on fertility three decades apart in Spain

“…Moreover, in contexts with a weak welfare state, such as the Spanish context (Esping-Andersen, 1999), economic uncertainty goes hand-in-hand with the lack of state support for childbearing, for example, the availability of public daycare, family policies, the work-life balance, and labormarket flexibility (Domínguez-Folgueras, 2018;Lapuerta et al, 2011), which lowers young adults' fertility intentions (Brinton et al, 2018;Bueno & Brinton, 2019).…”