Childlessness: measurement, determinants, and trends

With increasing incidences of infertility, the surrogate mothers are considered as an alternative which enables childless couples to have a child of their own with the help of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs). With a quasi-legal status along with the wide supply of cheap labour working as surrogate women, India has become the preferred place for surrogacy. Based on a field study in Kolkata city in 2012, the participation and perception of the various actors of this ‘clandestine’ arrangement has been captured, which include nursing homes, doctors, brokers, surrogate women and biological parents. It has been found that there is high demand for one’s own blood related child and couples keep persevering till they get success. This has led to the increase in the desire for surrogacy arrangement and almost all surrogate women interviewed admitted that they accepted this ‘work’ only for monetary gains. The surrogacy, as it is practised now in India as an Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) provides scope for the rich couples and private hospitals to ‘exploit’ poor women. This raises many alarming questions on human rights, reproductive health and professional ethics.

Studies on Infertility and its cure in Nigeria have focused largely on traditional, spiritual and orthodox approaches while bio-technology and other Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) as treatment options have received negligible attention. Employing both qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques, the study established that several socio-cultural factors encapsulated in patriarchy had impinged on the acceptance and adoption of bio-technological intervention.
The study found that education (χ2 =8.50,df =8,N=732,P>0.05), gender(χ2 =0.09,df =2,N=732,P>0.05) and age (χ2 =1.6,df=4,N=732,P>0.05) respectively have no significance on the acceptability of ART, but ethnographic data revealed otherwise. Income(χ2=276.741,df=8,N=732,P>0.05), cultural belief (χ2=481.823,df=4,N=732,P>0.05), patriarchal relation (χ2=538.043,df=6,N=732,P>0.05), family support (χ2=533.04,df =6,N=732,P>0.05) and location of the care centre (χ2 =0.808,df =2,N=732,P>0.05) act as strong determinant of acceptability of ART

We propose a new Bayesian approach to forecasting cohort childlessness. Combining historical and contemporary data from the Human Fertility Database (HFD), we estimate a posterior distribution for the Lexis surface of age-specific first-birth rates for US cohorts born 1950-1992. Past rates on this surface are known with high precision from the HFD, while future rates must be forecast. Our approach combines estimation of past and future rates in a single model, using historical HFD data to build priors and thus identify likely (and unlikely) age and time patterns across Lexis surfaces. The resulting forecast of first-birth rates and cohort childlessness automatically includes uncertainty estimates. Among many other results, our forecast indicates that US childlessness, which is currently falling slightly, will reach a minimum for women born in the 1970s, and will almost certainly be higher for those born in the 1980s.

Short postponement of entry to motherhood has occurred from 1990 onwards in Iran. There is some evidence of an increase in childlessness due to delay of childbearing. Using data from the 2000 Iran Demographic and Health Survey (IDHS) and the 1991-2003 survey of Socio-Economic Characteristics of Household in Iran (SECHI), this paper estimates the level and trend of childlessness across time in Iran. Our results show that childlessness in five-year age-groups between ages 15 and 39 increased during 1991-2003. In contracts, the proportion of childlessness in the last years of the reproductive life which can considered as permanent childlessness has reduced from 3.8 per cent to 2.2 per cent. Increased proportion of women with zero parity in Iran seems to be due to tempo effects resulted from short postponement of first birth. Reduction in lifetime childlessness may be due to more access to the assisted reproductive technologies in the country. The IDHS data allowed us to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary childlessness. Among ever-married women aged 15-49 voluntary and involuntary childlessness were 8.5 and 2.0 per cent, respectively. Provincial estimates show that most provinces with a low level of socio- economic development experienced the highest involuntary childlessness as compared with other provinces.

Parenthood is one of the major transitions in adult life for both men and women. Couples experience stigma, sense of loss, and diminished self-esteem in the setting of their infertility. Also postponement of childbearing in young generation couples may be one of the reasons of infertility which dramatically increased the number of couples seeking treatment for infertility now-a-days due to more awareness of available services and latest and more successful techniques.
In this study an attempt have been made to estimate infertility indirectly from the information on childlessness and health seeking behaviour in Uttar Pradesh using the DLHS-III survey data collected in 2007-08. Infertility is perceived as a problem across virtually all cultures and societies and has an estimate about 11 percent of females of reproductive age 20-49, whose marital duration is more than two years. Among those respondents who reported problem of lifetime infertility, more than three-fourth suffered from primary infertility. The estimates of childlessness and current primary infertility are 4.1 percent and 2.0 percent respectively. Also percentage of women seeking treatment for lifetime primary and current primary infertility is about 84.0 percent.

This paper investigates the determinants of childlessness among men and women from Bulgaria, Romania and Russia, using data on a sub-sample of 30-49 years old respondents from the Generations and Gender Survey (2004-2005). We used two models using weighted logistic regressions to contrast childless (involuntary or voluntary) men and women with fathers and mothers. The first model includes covariates related to background and work related characteristics, early life course variables, attitudes and values. The second model adds a set of three variables about family formation. Relevant results from the extended model indicate that childlessness is linked with higher levels of education among Bulgarian and Romanian adults regardless gender, and with better job positions for Romanian men and women. Mother’s higher education among Bulgarian men and absence of siblings among Romanian female increase childlessness. It seems that having siblings discourage childlessness, regardless gender and country. Non-traditional attitudes, particularly disagreeing with the key role of children in women’s life fulfillment, favors childlessness. As expected, celibacy and couple’s breakdown play the most important role in childlessness, while cohabitation reduces the probability of being childless, regardless gender and country.

Childbearing is a common way that many persons expect and are expected to deepen the bonds of their romantic relationships. This paper looks at what happens to marital and cohabiting relationships when this pathway to intimacy is interrupted. Using waves I, III, and IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I employ event history methods to investigate the influence of miscarriage(s) on the risk of union dissolution. I find that miscarriage is associated with a greater risk of dissolution for married childless couples but not for cohabiting childless couples. For married and cohabiting couples with children, miscarriage does not increase the risk of divorce or separation. These findings illuminate the relational dimensions of subfecundity and draw attention to the influence that unexpected health events can have on family relationships. Additionally, this paper provides new evidence that marriage and cohabitation remain distinct with respect to childbearing in the US.

Childlessness has major psychological and social implications for affected persons especially in settings where fertility is highly valued. In such setting, childlessness is a potentially stigmatizing status and voluntary childlessness is rare. Given the various socio-economic and demographic changes that have taken place in recent decades in virtually all societies, there is the need to explore how these developments may have affected societal perception of childlessness especially in societies that celebrate parenthood. Using narratives of individuals from three Nigerian communities, this paper examined societal perception and acceptance of voluntary and involuntary childlessness. The paper relies on data collected from 24 focus group discussion with men and women in Nigeria. Findings show that voluntary childlessness is not a legitimate choice in Nigeria. Infact, staying with an infertile spouse was seen as choosing to be voluntarily childless. However, we noted a more tolerant attitude to involuntary childlessness. The policy and programme implications of the findings are discussed.

Research that explores the influence of mental health on fertility is limited. Mental health is a factor in the formation of relationships and may influence fertility related behavior. This analysis presents findings of an initial effort to assess the relationship between psychiatric disorders and fertility of women aged 40 years and older. The initial focus for this analysis is on childlessness.
Data for the analysis are from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R), a nationally representative face-to-face household survey of adults in the United States conducted from 2001 to 2003. NCS-R retrospectively assessed predictors and prevalence of mental health disorders, substance use disorders. We examined childlessness as related to each of the major DSM-IV psychiatric disorders. A separate model was constructed for each psychiatric disorder and education and marital status were controlled.
Among the sample of women, those who had been diagnosed with conduct disorder were 2.6 times more likely to be childless compared women without conduct disorder, controlling for the covariates. Those diagnosed with drug abuse disorder were 2.1 times more likely to be childless. While the crude odds of childlessness was significantly higher among those with alcohol abuse disorder, the adjusted odds were not significant.

Attainment of low fertility in Indian states has shown remarkable convergence over the years. This welcomed change has always been discussed with the perspective of contraceptive use, increased age at marriage of females as well as urbanization and modernization. However, this experience is not without increase in the levels of infertility (primary as well as secondary) among Indian women. While primary infertility is on a rise in keeping with the declining fertility levels across indian states, this reflects in the levels of secondary infertility as well. There has been a remarkable rise in primary infertility levels in low fertility states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh when compared with other states which are expected to fall in line soon. The share of non- progression to higher parities beyond one seems to be around ten percent in the country as a whole. These figures for the low fertility states are to the extent of twenty five per cent. Hence, the achievement of low fertility is not merely because of control of fertility but due to failure in reproduction as well.