Affective aspects of parenthood and their intergenerational effects on fertility

Abstract

This study examines how mothers’ affective experience of motherhood impacts daughters’ fertility intentions; the goal is to understand how adult daughters’ fertility intentions are influenced by their perception of how much their mothers enjoyed mothering and loved their children. A survey of 2000 married women in Japan aged 25–35 with either no children or one child provides data to test hypotheses regarding the impact of daughters’ experience of mothers’ mothering. Regression and structural equation modeling reveal that those who think their mothers enjoyed being a mother and loved children have greater fertility intentions than those who sense strain in their mother’s experience. This article concludes that fertility intentions are long in the making. In addition to being a product of immediate life circumstances, women’s fertility intentions are partly a function of childhood and adolescence experience including affective aspects of the parenting they received.