2009 Articles

Relationships between men's gender attitudes and fertility

Westoff, Charles F.; Higgins, Jennifer

An analysis published in a recent edition of this journal (Puur, Olah, Tazi-Preve, and Dorbritz 2008) reported that, in eight European countries, men with egalitarian gender attitudes both desired and had more children than men with more traditional gender attitudes. These unexpected findings led us to explore a similar research question with an alternate dataset--the European/World Value Surveys. But we found--without exception--a negative association between men's egalitarian attitudes and fertility, not only in the selected European countries but also in a considerable number of other developed countries. We explore possible reasons for and implications of these divergent findings.