Fertility intentions over time

Although national data shows that fertility level has been continuing decline in Vietnam, the official report of Vietnamese General Office of Population and Family Planning found that the evidences for increasing baby born in the year 2012 has no doubt roused reproductive proclivities. The lunar calendar is regularly used in many Asian Countries, including Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Japan and Korea. Traditionally, Vietnamese believe in the zodiac promotes the superstition that the timing of one's birth determines one's fate. 2012 is a special Dragon year of in the 60-year cycle of Vietnamese lunar calendar, regarding luckiest time to have a child. The dragon is the symbol of royalty, and people expect that a child born in this year will grow up to be extremely lucky, talented, and be a powerful leader. Cultural belief affects significantly demographic outcomes, and suggests that cultural reform or popular education by government should play an important role for population policymakers. And the lunar calendar should be regard as a proximately determinant on fertility in Vietnam.

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.

The aim of this paper is to describe the attitudes toward fertility of immigrants’ children living in Italy and to measure the influence of individual and community determinants on their fertility preferences (FP). Data come from ITAGEN2, a quantitative survey performed in the s.y. 2005/06 targeted on Middle Schools (aged 11-14), statistically representative of 48 Italian provinces (above 103) for schools with >10% of foreign pupils (Centre-North) and >3% (South). About 20 thousand self-filled questionnaires have been collected (10,000 foreigners and 10,000 Italians). More than 200 schools are involved. The main results are the followings. Immigrants’ children want less children than Italians’ children (the opposite result comparing to similar survey in the Netherlands and Canada). The assimilation process works also for FP, as the FP of 2° generation are very similar to the FP of native Italians. Apart from the age of immigration, FP are influenced by the following individual characteristics: gender (– females), working status of the mother (– working mother), number of siblings (+), orientation toward career (–), knowledge of Italian language (+), ethnic tradition (+). At a community level, FP are influenced mainly by the realized fertility in school-friend’s family than the desired fertility in the country of origin.

The literature describes the arrival of the first child as an “unexpected” break in the couple’s equilibrium, source of crisis between the partners and sliding down satisfaction with different dimensions of life. The paper clarifies under which conditions changes in couple’s life satisfaction can effect parents’ expectation about the progression to the second child after the arrival of the first child. Couples postponing the progression to the second child are the ones reducing more the expectations to have another child during the first year of life of the first child. Among all the dimensions of satisfaction, satisfaction with the partner seems the strongest predictor for the quickest progression to the second birth. At the same time, couples that better predict how parenthood is going to be hard reduce less the expectation to have another child. Couples that do not find confirmation in their expected level of parental commitment decrease more their level of satisfaction and postpone the decision to have the second child. The analyses are conducted based on 9 waves (from 2001) of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Panel Survey.

Background: High fertility and persistent unmet need still remain health challenges among women in Uganda. We explore fertility desires, trends in use of family planning (FP) and changing FP preferences among women in a rural resource limited setting.
Methods: Retrospective analysis of non-pregnant sexually active women aged 15-44 yrs enrolled in an open community cohort between 2002 and 2008.
Results: The desire for childbearing significantly increased from 36% to 42% (p<0.0001). However, this significant increase was observed among HIV-ve and not HIV+ve women. Women’s desire for a/another child declined with age and higher parity. Use of modern FP significantly increased from 35% to 42% (p<0.0001). Among women who did not desire a/another child, increased FP use was observed for short term methods (44% to 66% among HIV+ve and 39% to 46% among HIV-ve; p<0.0001) while long term method use significantly declined from 4% to 2% among both groups of women. However, over half of the women who wanted to limit childbearing stated willingness to adopt a permanent FP method, irrespective of parity and HIV status.
Conclusions: Greater attention needs to be paid to women’s intentions to limit childbearing and to provision of long-term and permanent FP in Uganda.

During the last decades, childlessness has increased continuously across Europe and has been gaining increasing significance in the demographic literature and socio-political discussion. Education-specific studies show that childlessness is a particularly widespread phenomenon among female university graduates. Based on the Generations and Gender Survey, we study fertility intentions of University graduates, concentrating on 2,800 university degree holders aged 27 to 40 years in western Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France and Norway. We study how main life domains are associated with the intention to have a child. Based on the concept of life course and inspired by the concept of rush hour of life we identify determinants of fertility intentions. We examine associations between employment and relationship on the one hand and plans for starting a family on the other. The study reveals remarkably lower fertility intentions as well as substantial gender differences in Germany and Austria. Childbearing plans are most pronounced among university graduates around the age of thirty. What is associated with fertility intentions is not only the degree of institutionalisation but also the duration of the relationship. Moreover, amount of working hours is related to childbearing plans.

Abstract:
The essay uses the data from the survey on fertility desire and change of only children parents, DongCheng District, Beijing in 2006 and 2011 to analyze the fertility desire and change of only children parents. Furthermore, in the essay, consistency degree is compared between the influences that only children parents personal features have on the ideal number of children and the fertility desire of only children and their parents. In the end, the writer deems the ideal number of children is still mainly one, but the desire that parents want two children is a little bit growing. And there is not obvious preference in gender. To a certain degree, the fertility desire of this group has changed. Otherwise, only mother’s education degree has influence on ideal number of children. The fertility desire of parents and children has higher uniformity. The fertility desire exists generation influence.
Key words: only children parents, fertility desire, transition research

The measurement of unintended fertility in cross-sectional studies relies on questions about children already born and is therefore subject to ex post rationalization which is the propensity to reporting children as wanted when they were originally unwanted. Women may feel that to label a child as unwanted is to stigmatize him. In addition, an originally unwanted child is likely to loved one, hence eventually “wanted”.

Evidences on this issue in developing countries are limited. This study using annual information on couples’ fertility preferences collected both retrospectively and prospectively collected as part of a Demographic Surveilliance System in Northern Malawi will add new empirical evidence in this area. We assess the extent of ambivalence of fertility intention by comparing retrospective and prospective fertility intention of the child over three years.

Students are currently enrolled in primary schools, middle schools, high schools, and universities in the two communities. The data also touch upon the students’ current family size, parents’ family size, families’ Socio-Economic Status (SES), Parents’ occupations, educational levels, parents’ number of siblings, desired age of marriages well as parents’ place of birth.

At the core of this study is the assumption that population policies have indeed affected the size of the current families, thus the observed decline in birth rates in the respective countries. Moreover, the authors suggest that the effect of the population policies upon the next generation of parents could be ascertained by measuring their attitudes regarding the “expected” number of children as reflected in their responses to the notions of ideal, likely, and realistic number of children envisioned for themselves.

Our data suggest a direct relationship between the sample students’ expected family size and the current Total Fertility Rates (TFR) observed in the respective countries. The socio-economic impact of our findings with some surprising results will be discussed as well.

Evidence from various studies has shown that the persistently high population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa countries in general and Nigeria in particular has been as a result of preference for large family size and marginal use of contraceptives by women. This study examined the inter-relationships between female reproductive behaviour, spousal communication and family size as well as the interplay of factors affecting them.
Eight- Hundred respondents were interviewed using multi-stage sampling procedure. Analysis of the data collected was done at three levels. The results of our findings confirmed the hypothesis that spousal communication on reproductive issues will exert a strong influence on fertility outcomes and contraceptive use. Results show that generally among the Yorubas, while knowledge of contraceptive is high, usage is still relatively low. As high as 70 percent of males and 62 percent of female respondents claimed knowledge of at least one contraceptive method, but the proportion of males and females using any of these methods was low (38.5 percent and 31.3 percent respectively). The study shows that contraceptive prevalence rate among males is higher than that of females. The study recommends that men and women should be focused in reproductive matters by increasing their knowledge.