From Some to None? Fertility Expectation Dynamics of Permanently Childless Women

This study focuses on an understudied yet revealing dimension of why individuals remain childless: stated fertility expectations over the life course. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort, I use a combination of sequence analysis, data-driven clustering techniques, and multivariable regression models to identify and describe groups of permanently childless women who follow similar trajectories of stated fertility expectations. Results indicate that a little more than one-half (56  %) of eventually childless women fall into a cluster where childlessness is expected before age 30. Women in the remaining clusters (44 %) transition to expecting childlessness later in the life course but are differentiated by the types of trajectories that precede the emergence of a childless e xpectation. Results from multivariable regression show that several respondent characteristics, including race/ethnicity, education, and marital history, predict cluster membership. Taken together, these findings add to a growing body of literature that provides a more nuanced description of permane ntly childless women and motivates further research that integrates interdependencies between life course domains and fertility expectations and decision-making of those who remain childless.
Source: Demography - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research