(1994), Dayıoğlu and Kırdar (2010) highlight that social norms nevertheless hinder many women, even the most educated ones, from participating in the labor market, especially when married and having children. Several studies show that dominant conservative religious attitudes are negatively correlated with female labor market participation (Clark et al., 1991; Tsani et al., 2013, Lavy and Zablotsky, 2011; Heineck, 2002; Reitz et al., 2014.). However, the impact of religion gets insignificant once controlled for socioeconomic covariates such as education and income (Bayanpourtehrani and Sylwester, 2013) . Socioeconomic development, in turn, is highly correlated with the development of institutions, while both are interdependent (Aghion et al. 2004 ). In other words, lack or insufficiency of institutions likely explains low female employment in Turkey. Several studies have shown that difficulties in combining work and family life due to the absence of institutional child care support, in particular for young children, represents a strong barrier for both female employment and fertility (Luci-Greulich and Thévenon, 2013, 2014).

Due to this absence, it seems that most Turkish women have to decide between career and family, or at least between employment and family enlargement. Yet, the economic and cultural development in Turkey make room for a hybrid family preference (Mayer et al., 2012), an intermediary model between independent (modern and individualistic) and interdependent (traditional and collectivist) family models defined by family change theory (Kagitcibasi, 2013). This argument is consistent with the mean ideal number of children that women wish to have, reported by the demographic surveys, which decreased only slightly from 3 in 1978 to 2.5 for the 1993-2008 period. The loss in the utilitarian value of children is certainly comes hand in hand with the desire to not have a outstandingly high number of children, yet the increase in emotional value of children does not require small families below replacement level. Today, most Turkish men and women intend to have two or three children. Therefore, in the absence of institutional barriers to having children, fertility levels in Turkey have the potential to stay above replacement level (i.e. if Turkish families succeed in realizing their fertility intentions, total fertility rates should be around 2.5).

The fact that total fertility rates are already below this threshold, it seems that many Turkish families are actually not able to realize their desired number of children. How could we explain this difference between realized and desired number of children (which exists even when taking into account tempoeffects caused by birth postponement)? One explication could be that the direct and indirect cost of children is too high which obliges couples to have fewer children than desired (Becker, 1960; Mincer, 1958).

This antagonism becomes obvious in particular in economically developed regions of Turkey, for which the survey reports the largest difference between the desired and actual number of children. For example, in the West Marmara region, the mean ideal number of children desired is 2.1 while the total fertility rate is 1.38. Also, the mean ideal number is 2.4 in Istanbul and the Aegean region, while the total fertility rate is 1.78 in Istanbul and 1.91 in the Aegean region. The gaps are too important to suggest that they exist only due to tempo effects. Completed fertility is likely to stay below the intended level, mainly because parents face barriers for realizing their intentions.

Reconciling work and family life is difficult for Turkish women, especially in urban areas. There is no binding parental leave regulation for companies (only 16 weeks of maternity leave) and child care coverage is weak on average (Carkoglu et al., 2011). Pre-primary enrollment rates are among the lowest in the world (Kılıç et al., 2009) and way beyond European average. Below 1% of children aged 0 to 2 are enrolled in formal childcare, while the EU average is 28% (Council of Europe, 2009). It is mostly only those children who are born to households which are economically well off who benefit today from 5