当前位置: X-MOL 学术Evol. Hum. Behav. › 论文详情
Our official English website, www.x-mol.net, welcomes your feedback! (Note: you will need to create a separate account there.)
Whether to have a second child or not? An integrative approach to women's reproductive decision-making in current China
Evolution and Human Behavior ( IF 5.1 ) Pub Date : 2019-03-01 , DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.11.004
Jianghua Liu , Virpi Lummaa

Abstract The transition to low fertility worldwide has led to introduction of diverse frameworks across disciplines to understand its causes and consequences. Previous attempts to compare the relative importance of the key factors influencing women's fertility decision-making largely focused on a single rather than multiple steps of decision-making—an important problem if different factors are associated with different steps. Furthermore, insufficient attention has been paid explicitly to husband's and already-born children's influences, two potentially important factors. Here we introduce a framework covering three steps of reproductive decision-making—ideal family size, fertility desire and fertility intention—and test it using multi-level survey data collected from Chinese one-child mothers. Mother's attitudes towards having two children were paramount factors underlying her ideal family size, and husband's and the firstborn child's attitudes were critical to her desire to have a second child, which in turn played a decisive role in her intention to have a second child. Although husband's attitude was related to all steps, most factors were only relevant to one step; e.g., perceived child mortality and value for old-age security predicted ideal family size, admiration—a prerequisite for social learning—for two-child families predicted fertility desire, and physical/economic constraints primarily predicted fertility intention. Our study emphasizes multiple decision-makers in family reproduction; indicates the relative importance of fertility-influencing factors could vary with steps of decision-making; and has important implications for population policy in low-fertility societies.
更新日期:2019-03-01
down
wechat
bug