The Ohio Population Consortium presents this 3rd webinar in a series focusing on fertility goals.
Even in low-fertility countries, two children continues to be the modal response to survey questions about ideal, desired, or planned family size. From these observations, demographers have concluded that the two-child family is a powerful and stable ideal motivating decisions about childbearing. Yet increasing evidence questions the way this ideal is translated into specific choices. The “two-child family” norm is conditioned by other goals and constraints (including, but not limited to, partnership dynamics, career aspirations, and financial circumstances).
Speakers in this webinar will reflect on what we know from survey data about how the ideal of the two-child family is related to other financial and family goals; how gender ideologies of work and family shape the desired number of children; and how lived experiences of family planning, pregnancy, and childbirth may shape prospective childbearing desires.
Presenters:
Julia Behrman, Department of Sociology, Northwestern University
Eunsil Oh, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Emily Mann, Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior & Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, University of South Carolina