The Individual, Institutional, and Interactional Influences on Women's Decisions to Have a Child: A Multi-Level Examination.

Using data from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), I independently and aggregately examine multi-level predictors (individual, institutional, and interactional) of married women's decisions to have a child. The individual level consists of normative childbearing considerations for women and women's fertility intentions as antecedents of fertility decisions. I control for individual characteristics such as age, education, religion and race and their connections to the decision to have a child within all three levels. Within the institutional level I explore how women's employment and the costs and benefits of children influence the decision to have a child. At the interactional level I address the interaction of husbands' and wives' decisions to have a child within three interactional contexts: union stability, spousal disagreement, and gender attitudes. Based on my sample of 402 childless, fecund, married couples I analyze how the various indicators at Wave 1 predict the decision to have a child at Wave 2 using dichotomous logistic regression. Overall, at the various levels of analyses, I find that wives' intentions to have a child as well as their part-time employment, non-employment, and earnings are important factors in making the decision to have a child. Although the interactional contexts in which wives make the decision to have a child do not appear to significantly influence their decisions, the interaction variables of wives' and husbands' earnings and childbearing benefits are important. Additionally the wife's age and the couple's Catholic religious preference significantly influence women's decisions to have a child. The results of my analyses suggest that various factors are important predictors of women's decisions to have a child; however, future research, using larger and racially diverse samples of childless married couples and more refined measures of the decision to have a child, is needed to enrich our understanding of such an important issue.

Author dc:creator

• Rhea, Anisa Clair

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Catherine Zimmer, Committee Chair

• decision-making
• fertility decision-making
• childbearing decisions
• women's decisions
• multi-level

Statement dc:rights

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Dc Identifier Other

etd-04232002-114756

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