Family dynamics and fertility: the role of men

Life history theory predicts that an unstable early family environment promotes a faster reproductive strategy. We test this prediction using data from the original Kinsey survey collected by the Institute for Sex Research: 1938 - 1963 in the US (n=16207). Broadly, for women our results support the prediction that absence of either natural parent from the childhood home will accelerate reproductive events such as age at first sex, first marriage, and first birth, although the effects are stronger for father absence than for mother absence. For men, the key may be the addition of a stepfather to the household as sexual behaviour was accelerated for men living with a natural mother and stepfather, but not with a natural mother only. For men we also find that mother (but not father) absence is associated with later age at puberty. These results withstand adjustment for socio-economic status, age, ethnicity, age at puberty (where applicable) and family size. These results support the hypothesis that early family environment influences later reproductive strategy. However, the different responses to the presence/absence of different parental figures in the household, and the different responses of the sexes, suggests that parental absence is not simply an indicator of an unstable early environment.

The aim of this paper is to outline how focus group participants´ accounts and representative national quantitative survey results about reproduction and parenting interact with media and legislation texts around these topics through the discourses they draw from. We collected 1) all relevant articles in the last 10 years (2002-2011) in the most important Slovak mainstream broadsheet daily (N=1500), 2) all relevant articles in the most important Catholic broadsheet (N=132) for the last year (10/2010-9/2011), as well as 3) all relevant laws currently in force and looked for the main messages about parenting. To explore attitudes and argumentations of lay people (parents, future parents, as well as child-free persons) about reproduction and parenting we organized 15 semi-structured focus group discussions with young men (N=48) and women (N=39), aged 20-34. Seven groups were all male, four all female and four were mixed, with participants from various socio-economic backgrounds and varying levels of education. The discussions were analyzed using qualitative thematic analysis and basic critical discursive analysis. Findings from media and legislation text analysis correspond with the FG participants´ accounts especially concerning the limited role of fathers and negative stereotypes about fatherhood.