Navigating work and motherhood: exploring the link between career orientation and childbearing motivations in emerging adulthood.

BACKGROUND: Difficulties in reconciling work and family life are recognised as one of the major reasons for women delaying or even forgoing childbearing. Nonetheless, there are different mechanisms through which women's engagement in the labour market can impact their choices regarding having children. The current study focuses on the relationship between women's career orientation and the childbearing motivation of young, childless women. Additionally, we examine the moderating effect of women's self-esteem. METHODS: Questionnaires to assess women's childbearing motivation, career orientation (career commitment and career centeredness), and self-esteem were administered online to Polish childless women aged 18-25 (N = 358). Multivariate regression was performed to verify how professional aspirations determine childbearing motivation. Moderation analysis included self-esteem in the equation. RESULTS: Women's desire to be employed over their life course (career commitment) was associated with perceiving childbearing as less strenuous. However, women who placed a higher value on professional development perceived more costs and barriers related to parenthood. Women with higher self-esteem demonstrated a generally more negative view of childbearing, yet their perceived costs of having children increased along with rising professional aspirations. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate that career aspirations are a highly complex construct, and their relationship to childbearing motivation may differ depending on how women perceive their future in the labour market. The mere desire to engage in professional work is not detrimental to childbearing motivation, but the anticipated costs of having children become greater the more a woman is career-centred and the lower her self-esteem.

"The future is unstable": Exploring changing fertility intentions in the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 pandemic.

OBJECTIVE: To understand whether reproductive decision-making among United Kingdom (UK) respondents had changed in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and, if so, why COVID-19 had led them to change their intentions. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional online survey in January 2021. We asked survey participants if their fertility intentions had changed and to rate how aspects of their life had changed during COVID-19. We also included an open-ended question and asked participants to explain in their own words how COVID-19 had influenced their reproductive decision-making. We used descriptive and regression analyses to explore the quantitative data and thematically analyzed written responses. RESULTS: Nine percent (n = 70) of our 789 UK respondents reported a change in fertility intention after the start of the pandemic. Changes in both pro-natal and anti-natal directions made the overall change in intentions small: there was a 2% increase across the sample in not intending a child between the two time points. Only increased financial insecurity was predictive of changing intentions. Responses to the open-ended question (n = 103) listed health concerns, indirect costs of the pandemic, and changing work-life priorities as reasons for changing their intentions. CONCLUSION: While studies conducted at the beginning of the pandemic found that fertility intentions became more anti-natal, we found little overall change in fertility intentions in January 2021. Our findings of small pro-natal and anti-natal changes in fertility intentions align with emerging UK birth rate data for 2021, which show minimal change in the total fertility rate in response to the pandemic.

From parentification to parenthood: caregiving responsibilities in childhood and childbearing desire in young adulthood.

INTRODUCTION: Childbearing and childrearing challenge parents' physical, social and emotional capacities. Childbearing motivations and desires are indicators of person's psychological readiness to meet these challenges and to establish a healthy bond with the child. Yet, much uncertainty still exists on how childbearing motivations and desires develop in the life course and to what extent early experiences in the family of origin contribute to their development. OBJECTIVE: The overall goal of the present study was to understand the relationship between early caregiving responsibilities (i.e. childhood parentification) in the family of origin and childbearing motivations and the desire to have a first child. METHODS: In the cross-sectional design study, childless Polish adults (N = 384; 20-35 years old) completed a set of self-report measures. Different dimensions of parentification experienced in childhood were measured retrospectively using the Parentification Inventory, and childbearing-related variables were assessed using the Childbearing Questionnaire. Data were analysed using mediation analyses. RESULTS: We found that past experiences of parent- and sibling-oriented parentification were positively associated with the desire to have a child, and these relationships were fully mediated by positive childbearing motivation. Further, our results showed that satisfaction with childhood caregiving responsibilities positively predicted childbearing desire, and this effect was partially mediated by positive and negative childbearing motivation. CONCLUSION: Individuals' early caring activities, especially when they evoke feelings of satisfaction and appreciation in the child, may play an important role in shaping childbearing motivations and desires that underlie their future reproductive behaviours.

Life-Course Trajectories of Childless Women: Country-Specific or Universal?

While existing research has documented complexities in biographies of childless women, few studies to date have systematically examined the life-course pathways of the childless from a comparative, cross-country perspective. In this paper, we analyse biographies of childless women in four countries-Germany, Italy, Poland, and the United States-in order to investigate whether pathways into childlessness are country-specific or commonly shared across institutional, cultural, and geographical settings. Partnership, education, and employment histories are examined using sequence analysis with dynamic Hamming distance and cluster analysis. Discrepancy analysis indicates a country-effect in women's biographies although life-course patterns identified in each country share similarities. Overall, seven life-course trajectories have been identified, with the most numerous cluster comprising single, working women who completed their education at a relatively young age. The results highlight a marked variation in the life-courses of childless women. Put together, these findings provide descriptive evidence for both country-specificity and cross-country similarity in the pathways to childlessness. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10680-022-09624-5.

Religiosity and Fertility Intentions: Can the Gender Regime Explain Cross-Country Differences?

Research on the relationship between religiosity and fertility intentions revealed substantial cross-national differences. In some countries, a strong and positive effect of religiosity on fertility intentions was found, while in others, the effect was weaker or not significant, and the reasons underlying these cross-national differences are still unclear. The aim of this article is to explain these macro-level differences from the perspective of the prevailing gender regime. We argue that in countries with more traditional regimes, a stronger effect of religiosity on fertility intentions could be expected than in countries with a more egalitarian view. We make use of the first wave of the Generations and Gender Survey and incorporate data from a total of 12 European countries in our analysis. We examine the influence of gender regime according to various macro-level indicators on gender attitudes and gender equality using meta-regression analyses. We also conduct robustness checks using other indicators such as the Gender Development Index. Our results reveal that the gender regime is only able to explain these differences in certain situations, specifically those relating to the long-term fertility intentions of men.

Do costs and benefits of children matter for religious people? Perceived consequences of parenthood and fertility intentions in Poland.

The aim of this study was to examine the positive relationship between religiosity and fertility from the perspective of perceived consequences of parenthood. Previous studies in Germany have found that highly religious people ascribe higher benefits and lower costs to having children. Furthermore, the impact of costs and benefits on fertility is less pronounced among the highly religious. This study tested these mechanisms for fertility intentions and in the context of Poland - a country with a low fertility rate and high religiosity in comparison to other European countries. A sample of 4892 men and women of childbearing age from the second wave of the Polish version of the Generations and Gender Survey conducted in 2014/2015 was used. First, the extent to which perceived costs and benefits mediate the impact of religiosity on fertility intentions was analysed. Second, whether religiosity moderates the impact of perceived costs and benefits on fertility intentions was investigated. The results show that part of the positive effect of religiosity on fertility intentions can be explained by more-religious people seeing higher benefits of having children. Furthermore, but only in the case of women, religiosity moderates the impact of perceived costs on fertility intentions, suggesting that the effect of perceived costs decreases with increasing religiosity.

Self-employment as a work-and-family reconciliation strategy? Evidence from Poland.

As self-employment offers greater flexibility compared to wage and salary contracts, women might choose it to achieve a better work-family balance. Past empirical research on this topic yielded equivocal results, however. We add to this discussion and provide evidence for Poland. Public support for working parents in Poland is relatively poor and women need to develop strategies in order to combine work and care. Running one's own business might be such a strategy. We adopt a life-course perspective and investigate whether self-employment encourages childbearing and whether women who have already given birth are more likely to opt for self-employment. We estimate multi-process hazard models, using the Generations and Gender Survey. We find that self-employment neither affects women's fertility decisions nor does it attract mothers on wage and salary contracts. Nevertheless, it is chosen by non-employed mothers as it may be the only opportunity for them to enter the labour market.

FROM MOTIVES THROUGH DESIRES TO INTENTIONS: INVESTIGATING THE REPRODUCTIVE CHOICES OF CHILDLESS MEN AND WOMEN IN POLAND.

This study examined the potential of the theoretical model proposed by Warren Miller (the Traits/Motives-Desires-Intentions-Behaviour or TDIB model) for investigating the involuntary-voluntary childlessness continuum. The first three stages of the theoretical motivational sequence (motives to desires to intentions) were examined using a purposive sample of 314 childless Polish men and women aged 30-39 (at the time of data collection in September 2013). In Poland, this is the age range when the final decision for or against parenthood is taken. To model the motivational sequence, the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique was applied. The results confirmed the hypothesized relations between the constructs for childless individuals in the analysed age group. Their childbearing desires were found to be good predictors of reproductive intentions, while negative and positive childbearing motives (independently) underpinned their desires. Moreover, positive motives appeared to have a stronger effect on desires than negative ones. The study also documented the psychometric properties of the Polish adaptation of the Childbearing Questionnaire, which was originally developed by Miller to measure childbearing motives. The advantages of using this tool for investigating the involuntary-voluntary childlessness continuum are discussed. Overall, the study validated the theoretical model as well as the adaptation of the Childbearing Questionnaire in the new research context: in the new cultural setting and for examining reproductive choices of a specific subpopulation. Directions for future research that could build on the TDIB model and allow for a deeper understanding of permanent childlessness are outlined.