Childlessness or Delayed Fertility? Stable Relationships as the Basis for Future Parenthood

Chiara Baldan, RESEARCH FELLOW
Annalisa Donno, University of Padova
Maria Letizia Tanturri, University of Padova

Several recent studies concentrate on paths leading to permanent childlessness and they find unexpectedly a plurality of trajectories leading both men and women to end their reproductive life without children. What remains unexplored, however, is to understand whether there are some peculiarities in the early childless’ life course that may distinguish them from the group of those who eventually have children, but at later stages of their life course. This study tries to fill this gap and compare the early life trajectories of women and men who reach the end of their reproductive life without children (at age 45 and 50 respectively) from those who become parents after the age of 30 for women and 35 for men, with particular attention on the union/relationship histories and the working career. The sample comprises 3,900 individuals born between 1916 and 1971, interviewed in Multipurpose Survey on Families, Social Subjects, and Life Cycle (2016). By employing sequence analysis and cluster analysis we identify 6 clusters for women and 3 clusters for men. For women, two clusters seem predictive of late parenthood for women and both are characterized by a long period spent in engagement, in the early stages of the life course.

Keywords: Fertility, Longitudinal studies

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