The Decision of Whether to Have a Child: Does Couple Disagreement Matter?

Abstract

Most of the international studies on fertility are based on a female perspective. A major difficulty in couple-level research is the need for high-quality data that includes information on both partners. Using couple data from a longitudinal study conducted in Italy [2003-2007], a country with persistently low fertility levels, we examined the effect of disagreement within a couple about childbearing behaviour. The starting point was the hypothesis advanced in an earlier study that Italian women prevail in reproductive decision-making, because childbearing lies mainly in their sphere of influence. The data revealed that the decision rules are parity- specific. At parities zero and one, the disagreement produced an intermediate childbearing outcome irrespective of which partner wanted a(nother) child; while at higher parities, an asymmetrical veto power model in which the female partner had greater influence was observed. The findings suggest that the predictive power of short-term fertility intentions strongly improves if both partners’ views are considered in fertility models, and thus support the adoption of couple analysis in fertility research.