Intention to have a second child, family support and actual fertility behavior in current China: An evolutionary perspective

Objectives

This study provides an evolutionary perspective to a classic topic in demography, that is, the discrepancy between reproductive intention and subsequent behavior, in the context of China's two-child policy.

Methods

We conduct an event history analysis of longitudinal data from the 2015 and 2018 waves of the Xi'an Fertility Survey (sample size = 321 followed one-child mothers) to test the hypotheses of how within-family support/conflict affects women's fertility behavior.

Results

Only 50% of positive intentions (i.e., intending to have a second child) led to another (live) birth within the 3-year interval; meanwhile, 15% of uncertain intentions and 5% of negative intentions resulted in a birth. Husband's and the firstborn's emotional support raised the hazard of second childbirth along maternal life course, which cannot be fully mediated by mother's fertility intention and thus, contributed to an intention-behavior gap. Husband's sibship size had dual effects on female childbearing behavior: A positive indirect effect mediated by fertility intention, but a negative direct effect presumably due to sibling competition for intergenerational support. Finally, after controlling for fertility intention, having a firstborn son was still associated significantly with a lower second-childbirth hazard, presumably due to son preference as well as concern over parental investment.

Conclusions

Our study identifies a discrepancy between maternal fertility intention and realized childbearing, which was partly explained by (lack of) support from other (multiple) stakeholders in family reproduction.