Comparisons of Mothers of One Child by Choice with Mothers Wanting a Second Birth

Abstract

This paper compares 38 mothers with 1 child by choice with 37 mothers wanting a 2nd child on selected background characteristics and attitudes about the 1st birth and a 2nd child. While deliberate 1-child wives had lower levels of religiosity and were less femininely sex-typed mothers were highly similar on other characteristics. Only child mothers agreed less about benefits to the marriage or marital relationship in having the 1st child as well as feelings of status or personal fulfillment. Also deliberate 1 child mothers were more likely to agree on being bored by caring for their 1st child to have received little help from their husbands or parents and to have felt incompetent. While mothers in both groups had similar attitudes about the advantages and disadvantages of work outside the home mothers of 1 child by choice agreed more often that outside work was more important than motherhood. Mothers of 1 child by choice had very similar background characteristics to a matched sample of women who had decided to have a 2nd child; but even with controls of age education and duration of marriage differences in perceptions about children still emerged. Further research needs to compare deliberate 1 child mothers with a representative sample.