IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/socinc/v10y2022i3p172-183.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Contested Parenthood: Attitudes Toward Voluntary Childlessness as a Life Strategy in Post‐Socialist Bulgaria

Author

Listed:
  • Elitsa Dimitrova

    (Department of Demography, Institute for Population and Human Studies, Bulgaria / Paisii Hilendarski Plovdiv University, Bulgaria)

  • Tatyana Kotzeva

    (Bourgas Free University, Bulgaria)

Abstract

The article focuses on the social differences in the attitudes toward female and male voluntary childlessness in Bulgaria and their dynamics over time. The analysis is based on data from the European Social Survey conducted in 2006 and 2018 in Bulgaria. By the means of multinomial logistic regression, we test the effect of the period, gender, age, marital status, number of children, education, employment, minority status, and religiosity on attitudes toward childlessness. The results reveal a decrease in negative attitudes and a strong increase of neutral stances. However, higher age of respondents is still associated with an increase in negative attitudes toward voluntary childlessness rather than neutrality. Women are significantly more likely to accept voluntary childlessness than to be neutral compared to men. Respondents who are married, parents, lowly educated, jobless or economically inactive, people belonging to ethnic minority groups, and highly religious people are more likely to disapprove of voluntary childlessness. Perceptions on female or male voluntary childlessness are significantly correlated with attitudes toward extramarital fertility, cohabitation, divorces when children are under twelve years old, and full‐time female employment when children are below the age of three. The analysis of variance reveals that the individuals who accept or are neutral to voluntary childlessness have stronger non‐conformist attitudes emphasizing self‐expression, the idea of “having a good time,” and rejection of traditional authorities compared to the respondents with negative attitudes.

Suggested Citation

  • Elitsa Dimitrova & Tatyana Kotzeva, 2022. "Contested Parenthood: Attitudes Toward Voluntary Childlessness as a Life Strategy in Post‐Socialist Bulgaria," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(3), pages 172-183.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:socinc:v:10:y:2022:i:3:p:172-183
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/5065
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Albertini, Marco & Arpino, Bruno, 2018. "Childlessness, parenthood and subjective wellbeing: The relevance of conceptualizing parenthood and childlessness as a continuum," SocArXiv xtfq6, Center for Open Science.
    2. Suzanne Noordhuizen & Paul Graaf & Inge Sieben, 2010. "The Public Acceptance of Voluntary Childlessness in the Netherlands: from 20 to 90 per cent in 30 years," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 99(1), pages 163-181, October.
    3. Margarita Chudnovskaya, 2019. "Trends in Childlessness Among Highly Educated Men in Sweden," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 35(5), pages 939-958, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ivett Szalma & Hana Hašková & Livia Oláh & Judit Takács, 2022. "Fragile Pronatalism and Reproductive Futures in European Post‐Socialist Contexts," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(3), pages 82-86.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jona Schellekens & David Gliksberg, 2018. "The Decline in Marriage in Israel, 1960–2007: Period or Cohort Effect?," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 34(1), pages 119-142, February.
    2. Kolk, Martin & Barclay, Kieron, 2021. "Do income and marriage mediate the relationship between cognitive ability and fertility? Data from Swedish taxation and conscriptions registers for men born 1951–1967," Intelligence, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    3. Florianne C. J. Verkroost & Christiaan W. S. Monden, 2022. "Childlessness and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Is There Evidence for a U-shaped Pattern?," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 38(3), pages 319-352, August.
    4. Valentina Tocchioni & Anna Rybińska & Monika Mynarska & Anna Matysiak & Daniele Vignoli, 2022. "Life-Course Trajectories of Childless Women: Country-Specific or Universal?," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 38(5), pages 1315-1332, December.
    5. Valentina Tocchioni & Anna Rybińska & Monika Mynarska & Anna Matysiak & Daniele Vignoli, 2021. "Life-course trajectories of childless women: Country-specific or universal?," Econometrics Working Papers Archive 2021_01, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti".
    6. Martin Kolk & Kieron J. Barclay, 2020. "Do income and marriage mediate the relationship between cognitive ability and fertility? Data from Swedish taxation and conscriptions registers for men born 1951-1967," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2020-010, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    7. Kieron Barclay & Martin Kolk, 2020. "The Influence of Health in Early Adulthood on Male Fertility," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 46(4), pages 757-785, December.
    8. Aurea Grané & Irene Albarrán & Roger Lumley, 2020. "Visualizing Inequality in Health and Socioeconomic Wellbeing in the EU: Findings from the SHARE Survey," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(21), pages 1-18, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:socinc:v:10:y:2022:i:3:p:172-183. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.