This research explored Americans’ responses to dual questions from the “Constructing the Family II” survey asking if it was “all right” for wives and husbands to refuse to have children with their spouses. We reviewed the data descriptively, demographically using multinomial logistic regression, and qualitatively, investigating subset respondents’ rationales. Most respondents supported or opposed refusal equally, with only about five percent of respondents supporting refusal for one partner but not both. Among subset respondents, qualitative themes varied by refusal type and included Family Considerations, Rights, and Nuclear Family Ideals. Together, the quantitative and qualitative findings suggested that those who supported refusal for both spouses were the most egalitarian; however, these respondents along with those who supported refusal for one partner but not both were also likely to provide dissimilar, and often quite traditionally gendered, rationales. We conclude that despite surface-level egalitarianism, attitudes about fertility decision-making were not free from gendered thinking.
ArteagaS.DowneyM. M.FreihartB.GomezA. M. (2020). ‘We kind of met in-between’: A qualitative analysis of young couples’ relationship dynamics and negotiations about pregnancy intentions. Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 52(2), 87–95. https://doi.org/10.1363/psrh.12136
4.
BacciM. L. (2001). Desired family size and the future course of fertility. Population and Development Review, 27, 282–289. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3115261
5.
BauerG.KneipT. (2013). Fertility from a couple perspective: A test of competing decision rules on proceptive behaviour. European Sociological Review, 29(3), 535–548. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcr095
6.
BauerG.KneipT. (2014). Dyadic fertility decisions in a life course perspective. Advances in Life Course Research, 21, 87–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2013.11.003
7.
BeckmanL. J. (1984). Husbands’ and wives’ relative influence on fertility decisions and outcomes. Population and Environment, 7(3), 182–197. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01255488
8.
BerringtonA. (2004). Perpetual postponers? Women’s, men’s and couple’s fertility intentions and subsequent fertility behaviour. Population Trends, 117(117), 9–19.
9.
BewickV.CheekL.BallJ. (2003). Statistics review 8: Qualitative data – tests of association. Critical Care, 8(1), 46–53. https://doi.org/10.1186/cc2428
CotterD.HermsenJ. M.VannemanR. (2011). The end of the gender revolution? Gender role attitudes from 1977 to 2008. American Journal of Sociology, 117(1), 259–289. https://doi.org/10.1086/658853
12.
De SantisG.BacciM. L. (2001). Reflections on the economics of the fertility decline in Europe. In Paper presented at EURESCO conference: The second demographic transition in Europe, Bad Herrenalb. Germany, 23–28 June, 2001.
13.
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. (2022). 597 U.S. 215.
14.
DuvanderA.FahlénS.BrandénM.Ohlsson-WijkS. (2020). Who makes the decision to have children? Couples’ childbearing intentions and actual childbearing. Advances in Life Course Research, 43(2), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2019.04.016
FerreeM. M. (2003). Resonance and radicalism: Feminist framing in the abortion debates of the United States and Germany. American Journal of Sociology, 109(2), 304–344. https://doi.org/10.1086/378343
17.
FrejkaT. (2017). Childlessness in the United States. In KreyenfeldM.KonietzkaD. (Eds.), Childlessness in Europe: Contexts, causes, and consequences. Demographic research monographs. Springer.
18.
GersonK. (2010). The unfinished revolution: Coming of age in a new era of gender, work, and family. Oxford University Press.
19.
GuzzoK. B.HayfordS. R. (2020). Pathways to parenthood in social and family context: Decade in review, 2020. Journal of Marriage and Family, 82(1), 117–144. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12618
20.
HamiltonL.GeistC.PowellB. (2011). Marital name change as a window into gender attitudes. Gender & Society, 25(2), 145–175. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243211398653
21.
HardtJ.HerkeM.BrianT.LaubachW. (2013). Multiple imputation of missing data: A simulation study on a binary response. Open Journal of Statistics, 3(05), 370–378. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojs.2013.35043
22.
HayfordS. R.GuzzoK. B.SmockP. J. (2014). The decoupling of marriage and parenthood? Trends in the timing of marital first births, 1945–2002. Journal of Marriage and Family, 76(3), 520–538. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12114
23.
HsiehH. F.ShannonS. E. (2005). Three approaches to qualitative content analysis. Qualitative Health Research, 15(9), 1277–1288. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732305276687
24.
HuttemanR.BleidornW.PenkeL.DenissenJ. J. (2013). It takes two: A longitudinal dyadic study on predictors of fertility outcomes. Journal of Personality, 81(5), 487–498. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12006
25.
JansenM.LiefbroerA. C. (2006). Couples’ attitudes, childbirth, and the division of labor. Journal of Family Issues, 27(11), 1487–1511. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X06291038
26.
KnightC. R.BrintonM. C. (2017). One egalitarianism or several? Two decades of gender-role attitude change in Europe. American Journal of Sociology, 122(5), 1485–1532. https://doi.org/10.1086/689814
27.
KrippendorffK. (2012). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology (3rd ed.). Sage Publications.
28.
KuhntA.TrappeH. (2016). Channels of social influence on the realization of short-term fertility intentions in Germany. Advances in Life Course Research, 27(1), 16–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2015.10.002
PowellB. (2006). Constructing the family II: A telephone survey of residents of Indiana and the nation. Karl F. Schuessler Institute for Social Research.
35.
PowellB.BolzendahlC.GeistC.SteelmanL. C. (2010). Counted out: Same-sex relations and America’s definitions of family. Russell Sage Foundation.
36.
RayC. M.HarceyS. R.GreilA. L.TiemeyerS.McQuillanJ. (2018). Stability and change in personal fertility ideals among US women in heterosexual relationships. Demographic Research, 39, 459–486. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26585337.
37.
Roe v. Wade. (1973). 410 U.S. 113.
38.
RohlingerD. A. (2002). Framing the abortion debarte: Organizational resources, media strategies, and movement-countermovement dynamics. The Sociological Quarterly, 43(4), 479–507. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.2002.tb00063.x
SasslerS.LichterD. T. (2020). Cohabitation and marriage: Complexity and diversity in union-formation patterns. Journal of Marriage and Family, 82(1), 35–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12617
41.
ScarboroughW. J.SinR.RismanB. (2019). Attitudes and the stalled gender revolution: Egalitarianism, traditionalism, and ambivalence from 1977 through 2016. Gender & Society, 33(2), 173–200. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243218809604
42.
Scientific Software Development GmbH. (2020). Atlas.ti qualitative data analysis software for mac: Release 9. Scientific Software Development GmbH.
43.
ShapiroG. (2014). Voluntary childlessness: A critical review of the literature. Studies in the Maternal, 6(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.16995/sim.9
44.
StataCorp. (2023). Stata statistical software: Release 18. StataCorp LLC.
TestaM. R.CavalliL.RosinaA. (2014). The effect of couple disagreement about child-timing intentions: A parity-specific approach. Population and Development Review, 40(1), 31–53. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2014.00649.x
47.
von HippelP. T. (2007). Regression with missing YS: An improved strategy for analyzing multiply imputed data. Sociological Methodology, 37(1), 83–117. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9531.2007.00180.x
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
