Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Parent or Not: A Longitudinal View of Fertility Intentions and Outcomes

Sat, August 11, 10:30 to 11:30am, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Floor: Level 5, Salon G

Abstract

In recent years, fears about a population boom have been replaced by observations of declining fertility in many wealthy countries, foretelling an increasingly aging population with fewer people of working age. Research has focused on smaller family sizes, and increase in one- and two-child families, rather than on women and couples with no children, and many studies view childlessness by the time of completed fertility as a side-effect of postponement.
The availability of the 2014 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) cohort allows for new insights into fertility intentions and outcomes, including the eventual parenthood status of women and their original fertility intentions in adolescence. This paper classifies respondents into four fertility intention-outcome typologies: intentional parent, intentional childless, unintentional parent, and unintentional childless, based on women’s earliest stated fertility intentions and their parenthood status at the end of childbearing years. Using these typologies as well as individual demographic characteristics and marital transitions over the life course, factors associated with a woman accurately predicting whether or not she will have children are identified.
Past research has identified demographic differences between childless women and mothers, and these hold up in the current data regardless of whether the childlessness is intentional. The current study shows that women’s stated fertility intentions serve as an excellent predictor of actual parenthood by the time of fertility completion. In addition, among women who expected to have children, the end of a marriage serves as a predictor of unintentional childlessness.

Author