Paper submitted to IPC-IUSSP, Cape Town, South Africa, 2017 Fertility Decisions in Transition: Highly-Educated Young Adult’s Views on Fertility Three Decades Apart in Spain Xiana Bueno Harvard University Abstract: Spain has had low fertility levels for almost thirty years now. Qualitative interviews with highly-educated young adults from two studies in 1985 and 2012 provide a unique opportunity to explore their fertility intentions across two generations almost thirty years apart. Both studies share an uncertain economic context characterized by high unemployment. Economic insecurity, therefore, stands out as a stagnant factor behind fertility intentions of both generations coupled with the lack of support for work-life balance. Interviewees' reasoning also suggests that besides the advancements in gender equity the transition of gender-role norms towards greater egalitarianism remain unfinished. However, results indicate that changing age and family norms underline the differences between the fertility decision-making of respondents from the 1980s and 2010s setting aside the Second Demographic Transition. This study contributes to the debate on the central role of gender equity at the individual and the institutional level. Keywords : low fertility, highly educated, Spain, comparative analysis, interviews 1
Paper submitted to IPC-IUSSP, Cape Town, South Africa, 2017 Introduction It has been more than three decades since Spain has joined the group of low-fertility countries. Spanish total fertility rate declined sharply after 1975 and crossed in 1982 below the two-child red line . From then on, below replacement fertility in Spain, and other post-industrial societies, has been the focus of the research agenda in demography, among other disciplines, especially since survey data confirms the persistence of the two- child norm as couples’ ideal family size ( Sobotka & Beaujouan, 2014). One of the significant concerns among demographers has been to study the effect of the fertility postponement and whether or not low-fertility is a reversible or transitional phenomenon (Bongaarts and Feeney 1998, Bongaarts 2002; Lesthaeghe and Willems 1999, McDonald 2002). In the 1990s, demographers explained the decline in fertility that spread across many European countries since 1960s as the consequence of a series of changes in family norms and new patterns of family formation that resulted primarily from changes in gender roles after females’ incorporation to the labor market and greater individual autonomy. Lesthaeghe and Van de Kaa (1986) and Van de Kaa (1987) gave to these set of changes the name of the second demographic transition (SDT). Spanish demographers embraced the SDT perspective to explain the fertility decline after 1975 in the light of the changes observed in family formation patterns, particularly the delay in the mean age at first child (Alberdi 1995, Bernardi and Requena 2003, Delgado et al. 2006, Devolder and Cabré 2009). Despite the initial relatively good reception of SDT perspective among demographers and its wide usage to explain changes in family formation, time uncover some contestant reactions in the discipline. To many, SDT is ambiguous and its main criticism is that as a “transition”, its starting and endpoint has never been defined (Cliquet 1991), while the concept itself implies a convergence of behaviors across countries that it has not been observed (Sobotka 2008). In recent years, the debate on fertility behavior in postindustrial societies has evolved towards the centrality of gender-role norms and individuals’ gender -role 2
Paper submitted to IPC-IUSSP, Cape Town, South Africa, 2017 ideology positing that greater gender egalitarianism is the keystone for couple’s fulfillment of their fertility aspirations (McDonald 2000a, 2000b, Esping-Andersen and Billari 2015, Goldscheider, et al. 2015). However, at the micro level of analysis, individual’s reasoning on fertility decisions from the time of emerging new family behaviors has never been analyzed through the lens of the SDT. Does young adults’ reasoning on family formation has evolved or has remained steady? How valid are the theoretical explanations in the past today? Is today’s young adult reasoning on family formation similar to the one that their parents’ generation had thirty years back? The aim of this study is to contribute to the scientific debate on fertility behavior by exploring whether the reasoning behind the fertility decisions of young adults in the middle 1980s was similar, or not, to one of young adults in the early 2010s. This work leverage the great opportunity of analyzing original qualitative materials carried out in 1985 and 2012. Both are periods of economic uncertainty with unemployment rates over 20 percent among 25-34-year-old individuals. The possibility of comparing the narratives about the family formation of two generations almost thirty years apart appeared to be an alluring occasion. The research designs of the two non-related projects from 1985 and 2012, have several commonalities that make them extraordinary appealing to be compared to each other. Both use qualitative in-depth interviews carried out in the urban areas of Madrid and Barcelona to native, highly-educated, young adults of similar ages, experiencing different stages of the family formation process. In common, they have an uncertain economic context characterized by high unemployment, but young adults from the 1980’s exper ienced their family formation in a context stricken by a strong social, political and demographic change after dictator Franco died in 1975. Both sets of interviews represent valuable materials to explore attitudes and experiences of young adults towards gender roles and fertility. We select only highly-educated individuals for a threefold purpose. First, higher human capital has been associated with a greater likelihood of fulfilling fertility aspirations (Toulemon and Testa 3
Paper submitted to IPC-IUSSP, Cape Town, South Africa, 2017 2005). Second, previous empirical research has found a close link between higher-education and gender egalitarianism (Blau 1998). Third, it has been pointed out that highly-educated individuals have been the forerunners of fertility change (Skirbekk 2008, Sobotka 2008). Explaining fertility decline: the process of fertility transition Second Demographic Transition (SDT) is the name given by Lesthaeghe and Van de Kaa in 1986 to a set of interrelated changes on family formation that has been associated with the decline of fertility in Western societies and the weakening of the traditional gender-role model. Three sets of changes can be identified. First, cultural changes mainly related with a shift of values on the partnership behavior and new family models such as the secularization process, the increase of divorce rate, the spread of non-marital cohabitation, the larger social acceptance of births out of wedlock, as well as single-parent families or other family arrangements. Likewise, cultural changes also refer to a greater individualistic values and individual autonomy and a greater importance of self-fulfillment. Second, technological and legal changes such as the general access to contraceptive measures, the development of assisted reproduction, or the legalization of safe abortion under certain assumptions. And third, structural changes such as the educational expansion and the incorporation of women into the labor market. In short, according to SDT the life-cycle transitions have become more frequent, less strictly patterned and more complex (Lesthaeghe 1995). It escapes to the aim of this study to bring here the debate of whether or not the SDT represents a common pattern for a plurality of societies, as one of its main critics stands for (Sobotka 2008). Changes associated with the SDT are also changes closely linked with a shift in the gender role division of labor. The end of the prevalence of the male-breadwinner model led to the onset of a new, and not yet solved, gender-role conflict, based on the inability of social institutions and 4
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