Family dynamics and fertility: the role of men

Introduction: Unmet need is an important indicator of demand for family planning services. Unmet need is typically calculated for currently married women, but excluding husbands from the calculation may provide misleading estimates of demand since husbands’ preferences are related to reproductive behaviors.

Methods: This study proposes a method of calculating couples’ unmet need for family planning based on spouses’ independent fertility intentions among fecund nonusers of contraception. Demographic and Health Survey couple data from Benin, Burkina Faso and Mali are used.

Results: Across the three countries, less than half of the couples with unmet need had concordant unmet need (39.2-43.2%). A similar proportion of couples had wife-only unmet need (35.8-43.5%). A smaller proportion of couples had husband-only unmet need (17.3-21.0%).

Conclusions: Calculating unmet need based only on women’s fertility intentions overestimates couples’ concordant unmet need. Additionally, that approximately one-fifth of couples have husband-only unmet need suggests that men could be an entry point for contraceptive use for some couples. To calculate husbands’ unmet need, population-based surveys such as the DHS should consider collecting the necessary data consistently between men and women and across countries and survey years.

This paper investigates the determinants of childlessness among men and women in later adult life in Italy, using data on a sub sample of 30-49 years old men (7,254) from the Multipurpose Italian survey, Family and Social Actors (2003). A weighted multinomial logit model is used to contrast “voluntary childless men (or women)” with other categories: the “un-voluntary childless” and fathers (or mothers). Covariates include background and early life course characteristics; family formation variables; work related features, attitudes and values. Results seem to corroborate the hypothesis that voluntary childlessness is a common behaviour among men and women, but its determinants partly differ, with particular regard to socio-economic status. In particular voluntary childlessness among men seems linked mainly to poor education, poor health and worse social status. Conversely among women the opposite is true: those with a university degree and a managerial position are more likely to be voluntary childless. Therefore, voluntary childlessness could spread in a different way across social classes. Family disruption or celibacy are common cause for not having and not willing to have children for both men and women, as well as secularisation and anti-traditionalist attitudes and the residence in the North of Italy.

Application of conventional demographic approaches in studying fertility poses major analytical hindrance to the successful implementation of various global and national interventions on population in developing countries. Inadequate infrastructure and personnel capacity to capture and reliably track the dynamics of her 160 million population coupled with sustained high fertility rates provide compelling grounds for a review of the current processes, as the country’s population policy remains unrealised. This study sought to explore the inclusion of the stakeholder analysis approach of Health Systems Research in the study of fertility in order to improve our understanding of the dynamics of population change and its consequent effect on the overall reproductive health of a highly populous nation.
The study used data of males abstracted from the 2003 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS). An empirical analysis of variations in fertility outcomes and reproductive preferences of males across the six geo- political zones and other socio-demographic characteristics was done. Peculiar factors which are significantly associated with completed family size/ children ever born (CEB) were also analysed.

Cohort trends in Belgian fertility show that higher educated women have consistently realised the more frequent progression to second and third births. Using a prospective study, based on longitudinal microdata from the 1991 and 2001 Belgian censuses, this paper investigates the mechanisms behind the positive gradient and explores (i) the correlation with household positions and activity status among Belgian women and their partners; and (ii) the variation in second and third birth hazards between Belgium’s main administrational units. Our results suggest that higher educated women have reduced the opportunity costs of parity progression after the first child by having access to stable employment, homogamy to highly educated partners and more frequent uptake of (in)formal child care. For lower educated women, parity progression more often entails a further weakening of their position on the labour market. Homogamy to less educated partners as well as higher unemployment risks of these partners further reduces second and third birth hazards. Finally, regional variation in second birth hazards is largely explained by regional differences in education, household positions and activity status. For third births, regional differences remain evident and women living in Brussels and Wallonia keep realising the highest birth hazards.

Age at first marriage has a major effect on childbearing because women who marry early have, on average, a longer period of exposure to the risk of becoming pregnant and a greater number of lifetime births. To reduce fertility, early marriages should be prohibited and necessary interventions are required. But what’s the nature and extent of age at first marriage in Bangladesh under the legal age of marriage is 18 years for women needs to be explored. This study uses the fifth rounds of Bangladesh Demographic and Health Surveys (1993-2007) following descriptive method of analysis. Result shows that although the legal age of marriage in Bangladesh is 18 years for women, a large proportion of marriages still take place before the legal age. Within a given age cohort, there is much greater variation in the proportion of men marrying by different ages than in the proportion of women marrying by those same ages. As the use of law as a means of regulating early marriage is in no way sufficient it should be encouraged to create a policy environment that supports later marriage, through legal reform, and affirmative policies and programs on behalf of women those who are vulnerable.

We analyse the rarely studied transition to the first birth among Uruguayan male youngsters in 1990 and 2008, applying survival analysis in an exploratory approach to survey data. Our findings suggest a later timing in the first birth for male youngsters compared to female youngsters, accompanied by an educational attainment level gradient that is present for both sexes. Also, the differentials by education show an augmentation between 1990 and 2008, leading us to establish the hypothesis of a process of polarization in the transition to the first birth between the two time periods. We examine the extent of simultaneity with other markers of the transition to adulthood, such as leaving the parental home, entering the workforce and leaving the educational system, in order to establish the role of the first birth in the larger process of the transition to adulthood among males. We further analyse the impact of attributes such as region of residence and social origins.

The reduction in fertility to below replacement levels in Less Developed Countries (LDC), and to extremely low levels in Europe have been associated to a more equilibrated gender relationships. Faced with low level fertility in Latin America, increasing number of women who desire having a number of children over what they had and the changes in legislation relating to the duties of biological father in Brazil, it becomes extremely important to understand how reproductive motivations of each member of the couple interact to form a joint action in childbearing particularly the influence of partners in planning and reproductive behavior. The aim of this work is to verify the unsatisfied demand for children among formally married or cohabiting women from a gender perspective in Brazil. Data analyzed came from 1996 and 2006 Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in Brazil. The outcomes show that negative discrepant in fertility increased in the period considered and the highest ratio occurred among women with partners who desired fewer children than them. These findings demonstrate the need to study the role of the husbands' opinion in decision-making for children in the presence of discrepant fertility in LDC, particularly, starting with the case of Brazil where fertility is below replacement level.

In Indian society women has secondary status, number of studies proved that the empowered women influence decision making process. Therefore the study tries to find out dose women empowerment influences fertility. The women empowerment encompass various dimensions, such as house hold decision making, mobility related decision making and economic decision making index. It helped to calculate women empowerment in different states. The result shows the effect of women empowerment on fertility in different states of India which gives an idea about how women autonomy and fertility varies with state to state.
Methodology: NFHS-3 collected information from a nationally representative sample of 109,041 households, 124,385 women age 15-49, among these 87925 ever-married women has been interviewed. The NFHS-3 sample covers 99 percent of India’s population living in all 29 states.
The composite indices prepared to calculate women empowerment and mass media awareness by using various indicators. Multivariate and bivariate indicators are used to find out the influence of women empowerment and fertility.
Findings: it has been observed that women empowerment and its dimensions vary with the state to state. Also it has been observed age group plays an important role in women empowerment with the increase in age women autonomy increases

In this paper an attempt has been made to explore the impact of age, education and caste difference between spouse on the fertility and fertility intention. The dataset of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-III, 2005-2006) has been used for the present study. As a measure of fertility we have used children ever born and for the fertility intention we have used ideal family size and desire for additional child. Both bi-variate and multivariate techniques have been used for the analysis. This study reveals that age difference has negative effect on children ever born whereas education difference has a positive effect on children ever born. As compared to the couple who marry in same caste, children ever born are high in the couple with inter-caste marriage. Odds of having ideal family size upto 2 are increases with the age difference. Likelihood of reporting ideal family size upto 2 is 14 percent high in the couple where wife is from lower caste and 23 percent high in the couple where wife is from higher caste as compared to the couple where both are from same caste. Odds of desiring additional child are decreases with the increase in age difference. Educational difference between couple has positive effect on desire for additional child.

Gender factor is the driver of gender transition in fertility in low-fertility countries. Prospects of demographic development and maintain a relatively high fertility depends on the availability of gender policy, and especially the involvement of men in child care and household work. Gender equity concept is also relevant to explaining fertility behavior of Russian population. To develop gendered demographic policy in context of men involving in childcare and domestic tasks it is necessary to investigate which patterns of male participation in child care we have in present time and which men have a more egalitarian or more traditional family behaviour in Russia. This paper is devoted to the role of men in the childcare and children’s upbringing in Russian families. The goal of the research is to figure out the factors determining the men’s participation in the children’s upbringing and care in Russian families and to draw the picture of the socio-demographic profiles of egalitarian and traditional men using satisfaction of partners with child care distribution. Data: Macrodata: Rosstat Time Use Survey 2010. Microdata: Gender and Generation Survey (GGS Russia); Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS). Methods: multivariate, factor, cluster analysis.