Does the Reason Matter? Variations in Childlessness Concerns Among U.S. Women

Does the reason why women have no children matter with regard to level of childlessness concerns? Reasons include biomedical barriers, situational barriers, delaying motherhood, and choosing to be childfree. The concept of ' 'childlessness concerns ' ' captures the idea that holidays and family gatherings are difficult because of not having children or feeling left out or sad that others have children. Life course and identity theories guided the structural equation model analyses of a representative sample of 1,180 U.S. women without children from the National Survey of Fertility Barriers. The results indicated that women with the least control over pregnancy, those with biomedical barriers, had the highest childlessness concerns. As hypothesized, the association between reasons and childlessness concerns was mediated by the identity-relevant measure, importance of motherhood. Contrary to the authors ' hypothesis, the association was not mediated by social messages to have children. Thus, it is primarily involuntarily childless women who have high childlessness concerns.Key Words: identity, infertility, involuntarily childless, life course, reproductive barriers, voluntarily childfree.Does the reason why women have no children matter with regard to childlessness concerns? There are several pathways to adulthood without parenthood (Hagestad & Call, 2007), but less is known about the relevance of different reasons for differences in experiences. There is evidence that childless women with biomedical fertility barriers have higher general distress than childless women without biomedical barriers (McQuillan, Greil, White, & Jacob, 2003), but it is unclear whether women who have no children for reasons other than biomedical barriers (e.g., those who are consciously choosing to be childless, are facing situational barriers, or simply have chosen to not have a child yet) also have concerns related to not having children. In addition, among involuntarily childless women, variations in messages from others about the importance of children or internalized normative expectations (i.e., importance of motherhood) should be associated with variations in childlessness concerns. Even if women do not place a high importance on motherhood as an identity, social messages about the importance of having children could increase concerns.Much prior research on childless women provides insights from in-depth qualitative interviews with convenience or snowball samples. These studies have revealed concerns that women had about managing a nonnormative adult identity (nonmother) or the social consequences of a nonnormative life course. We measured childlessness concerns using a scale that includes items that asked whether holidays or family gatherings are difficult because of having no children, or whether women compare themselves to those who have children, feel left out if around others with children, or feel sad when friends or family are pregnant. This childless concerns scale therefore captures difficulties dealing with situations that heighten the visibility of adult women without children. Many studies focus on women without children who are beyond reproductive age. In order to analyze social pressure to have children, however, we included women who may only temporarily have no children as well as those who are beyond reproductive age.Using the National Survey of Fertility Barriers (NSFB; http://sodapop.pop.psu.edu/datacollections/nsfb), a probability -based sample of American women between the ages of 25 and 45, we assessed childless concerns among women without children who fell into one of four categories: (a) childfree and expected to remain childless, (b) childless with no reason given but intending to have a child, (c) childless with a situational barrier, and (d) childless with a biomedical barrier. Our categories for measuring reasons why women did not have children did not measure permanent statuses but instead captured their current assessment of the reason why they currently had no children. …