From Some to None? Fertility Expectation Dynamics of Permanently Childless Women.

ABSTRACT: Permanent childlessness is increasingly acknowledged as an outcome of a dynamic, context-dependent process, but few studies have integrated a life course framework to investigate the complex pathways leading to childlessness. This study focuses on an understudied yet revealing dimension of why individuals remain childless: stated fertility expectations over the life course. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort, I use a combination of sequence analysis, data-driven clustering techniques, and multivariable regression models to identify and describe groups of permanently childless women who follow similar trajectories of stated fertility expectations. Results indicate that a little more than one-half (56 %) of eventually childless women fall into a cluster whe

SUBMITTER: Gemmill A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6557585 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature