Socioeconomic Insecurity and Cross-National Projections of Future Parenthood

• In Event: 30269 - Inequality in the Transition to Adulthood

Abstract

Over the past few decades, low fertility rates and corresponding childlessness have become leading concerns for both social scientists and policymakers in many countries worldwide. Many researchers have focused specifically on the role of socioeconomic insecurity, here defined as employment precarity and economic instability, in shaping fertility intentions and parenthood plans. However, limited research has investigated fertility intentions in contexts of insecurity through the lens of projected futures, which permits a closer investigation of respondents’ narratives, deliberations, and meaning-making, particularly important in uncertain and unstable contexts. Thus, I ask: how do young, childless people in an uncertain context project their future parenthood (or childlessness)? How do their circumstances—including both their personal experiences of insecurity and their national contexts—shape their projected futures? To answer these questions, I draw on 147 interviews conducted in 2020-2021 with young childless college graduates, most of whom were facing insecurity, in the United States and Spain, as well as 131 follow-up surveys. I find that secure and insecure respondents in both countries held very similar perspectives on whether they wanted children to form part of their future lives, insecurity aside; the majority of respondents expressed a desire to become parents. However, while the majority of secure respondents in both countries imagined futures where children were an unquestioned and desired future reality, a large portion of insecure respondents in each country described futures where their parenthood was constrained by insecurity. Further, I find that within each national context, insecure respondents imagined the possibility of future children somewhat differently—with Spaniards more centrally describing concern that their desire for children would be permanently thwarted by insecurity and Americans more centrally describing their parenthood futures in the language of agency and choice despite their insecurity. This paper contributes to the literature on fertility intentions in contexts of insecurity, as well as to the literature on projected futures.

Author

• Elena Ayala-Hurtado, Princeton University