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In contemporary (not only) Czech society, the share of childless persons is increasing. Research in the field of social sciences focuses mainly on explanation of female childlessness than male one. This text tries to at least partially fill the gap in research when focusing on male childlessness from the perspective of masculinity, resp. hegemonic masculinity. Thematic analysis of repeated problem-oriented interviews with 12 heterosexual men (of different age and education) focuses on explanation of the life experience of these men with childlessness, respectively their perception of childlessness in relation to the conditions and circumstances of their lives according to the construction of their masculinity along the main axes, i.e. "values and norms", "perception and meaning of close relationships", "meaning of work and leisure activities", "experiencing the individual's life situation". The combination of these basic axes leads to the re-production or disruption of hegemonic masculinity characteristics. The analysis has shown that even in the case of childlessness, men more often construct their masculinity in terms of its hegemonic mode than crossing it. However, the construction of hegemonic masculinity also occurs through "unspoken", "concealed", i.e. what is not directly articulated in interviews, so attention should also be paid to this issue in research on masculinities.

Remaining childless or having just one child are two different experiences and each is attached to a different social status. However, they can also be viewed through a unifying lens as phenomena that contribute to low fertility. Theories that seek to explain low fertility often attribute both phenomena to the same causes. This article examines what factors are connected to a person's intention to remain childless or to have just one child and whether it is possible to consider intentions to remain childless or have just one child as low-fertility plans caused by the same factors. Drawing on data from the Life Course 2010 survey and theories that seek to explain low fertility, logistic regressions are used to test what factors are connected to intentions to remain childless and what factors relate to intentions to have just one child. Some factors were founded to be linked to both intentions to remain childless and intentions to have just one child: an older age, a lower level of education, changing reproductive intentions, not having a partner, and less emphasis on the need to be parent to be fulfilled in life. Other factors were found to relate only to intentions to remain childless. Intentions to remain childless and intentions to have one child can thus be regarded as reproductive intentions that are underpinned by similar but not identical factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The share of childless people in contemporary Czech society (and elsewhere) is increasing. Research in the social sciences has mainly focused on explaining female rather than male childlessness. This article tries to at least partially fill in the gap in this research by focusing on male childlessness from the perspective of masculinities and more specifically hegemonic masculinity. A thematic analysis of problem-oriented interviews conducted repeatedly with 12 heterosexual men (of different ages and educational backgrounds) focuses on explaining these men’s life experience of childlessness and their perception of childlessness in relation to the conditions and circumstances of their lives, and it does this in relation to how they construct their masculinities along the main axes of ‘values and norms’, ‘the perception and meaning of close relationships’, ‘the meaning of work and leisure activities’, and ‘individuals’ experience of their life situation’. Hegemonic masculinity characteristics are then either reproduced or disrupted according to how these different axes combine. The analysis has shown that, even in the case of childlessness, men more often construct their masculinities in a hegemonic than a non-hegemonic mode. However, hegemonic masculinity is also constructed through what is left ‘unspoken’ and ‘concealed’, that is, through what men do not explicitly state in interviews, so attention should also be paid to this issue in research on masculinities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the attitudes of young people, parenthood is ideally realised as a part of a stable relationship and as a decision shared by both partners. The relationship between a man and woman is a crucial condition of parenthood and the absence of it could be an important barrier to entry into the parenthood phase. This paper summarises one part of the results of a qualitative research project focused on decision-making about motherhood in the case of first births over thirty and their childless peers. The issue of decision-making about motherhood was observed from the perspective of relationships. The analysis shows that the influence of relationships on the decision about motherhood is rather indirect: I) mate preferences changed over time and with the priorities of different life stages, 2) important to ideas about the relationship is the gender dimension, mostly in reference to the division of household labour, and 3) the overall approach to relationships results from the maternal preferences of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Declining fertility, childlessness or postponement of maternity is among other things interpreted as a consequence of work vs. care conflict, i.e. a conflict between paid employment and pay free work in the household, including the care for children. Women anticipate the perils and uncertainty that the long absence on the labour market due to maternity leave can bring. Family social politics that should support combination of the two spheres, or allow men to participate more in child care are not yet enforced in the context of Czech Republic. In terms of sociological theory, there is an absence of consent regarding the fact, whether social policies may actually have a significant impact on reproduction of women and men. The article is based on qualitative research and deals with the given issue through perception of young Czech women who gave birth to their first child after reaching the age of thirty, or who still remain childless at this age. It does not primarily focus on how they reflect the harmonization of public and private sphere, but recognizes the value they attach to paid work during their life course and the connection to other events, especially when deciding about maternity. The analysis of interviews with these women unveiled, above all, the changing perception of work depending on age, age norms of maternity, (non)existence of a partner and maternity consideration. Conflict between paid work and maternity acquires various forms and the influence of inadequate support in the effort to combine the both spheres is noticeable only indirectly through the process of how women think about maternity as a transition that longitudinally and significantly affects other life spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motives to parenthood are an important topic not only for those who think over if, when and how many times to become parents but also for those who choose the alternative ways to parenthood (the treatment by the assisted reproduction, the foster family care) for some reasons. By the means of qualitative content analysis of 569 statements of women and men it was found that significant part of people planning their parenthood and parents are not conscious of their motives. On the contrary, people who are not planning their parenthood reconsider their motives in detail. Obviously they feel to be under the social pressure and they make efforts to defend their decision. From the results it is evident that the motivation to parenthood is formed by the large complex of more or less conscious and more or less important simultaneously occurring motives. The study represents a component part of qualitative research mapping the psychosocial problems of parenthood in the Czech Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infertility is a problem that affects around 15% of Czech couples of reproductive age. Using data from the survey `Marriage, Work, Family' the objective of this analysis is to identify the attitudes that Czech men and women maintain towards various strategies for overcoming infertility (adoption, different forms of assisted reproduction) and the factors that influence and shape these attitudes. The first part of the analysis looks for the determinants behind attitudes towards adoption and assisted reproduction in the respondent's external characteristics. For example, education and religion were found to have a significant influence. More educated respondents are more open to methods of assisted reproduction; religious respondents are more open to adoption. In terms of inner determinants (the respondent's attitude patterns) the authors, building on the preference theory proposed by Catherine Hakim, found a preference effect among women. The findings are seemingly paradoxical: of three groups of women (work-centred, home-centred, and adaptive) it is work-centred women (and the partners of work-centred women) who are most likely to take various infertility strategies into consideration. The third part of the analysis an analysis of the external determinants of attitudes towards infertility strategies revealed that in some cases attitudes are influenced by the characteristics of the partner more than by the respondent's own characteristics in particular, the woman's attitudes are shaped more by the characteristics of her partner than by her own characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is focused on studying the relationship between the divorce rate of childless couples and the share of single-child mothers. We offer the hypothesis that there is a high probability that there are mothers with single children among women who gave birth to their first child after divorce. The hypothesis is based on the assumption that the divorce of a childless woman breaks her life's path, trims her reproductive period (which is defined socially and biologically, and, finally, increases the chances she will bear only one child. Data show that divorced childless women have only one child much more often than non-divorced women but the number of such women (despite the rising divorce rate among childless women) is low and can't affect the share of single-child mothers in the whole population. The analysis is based on vital statistics for the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2004. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motherhood - at least in Western countries - is perceived more as the result of a free choice than an inevitable destiny. Women can and simultaneously must choose if, when and how they become mothers. However, full control over reproduction is an illusion. Women have to consider many factors beyond their control - in addition to their individual desire to have a child, women must take into account the socially and culturally defined conditions of motherhood and biological limits of reproduction. Efforts to fulfil the expectations of being a good mother can lead to prolonging the period of temporary childlessness, which can result in permanent childlessness. Our research compares two groups of women experiencing a situation in which their desire to have a child was not consistent with the other conditions of motherhood. The first study is focused on women who delayed motherhood because of an absence of a partnership. The second study deals with women who suffer from infertility. The paper poses the following question: How is the norm of being a good mother defined and redefined when its fulfilment is not possible? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childless old age is often directly linked to social isolation and loneliness. This article is based on a qualitative analysis of interviews from a research project on strategies used by the seniors to maintain their personal autonomy, the results of which demonstrated that the informal and particularly the family networks of childless elderly people are not always any less wide or dense than those of other senior citizens. An evident precondition for childless seniors to be able to negotiate old-age support is that they have actively and over the long term cultivated a network in their previous life stages. Nevertheless, it was found that childless seniors display a sense of having superficial and uncertain roots in their wider families, and this suggests a possible difference in how they define their entitlement to more extensive and intensive help from relatives. The author suggests that a normative relationship between the kinds and scope of support offered on the one hand and particular types of kinship on the other may pressure childless seniors to revise their expectations of signifi cant others and their loose obligation to provide assistance, and conversely these seniors may accentuate their own responsibility and the importance of personal autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While fertility rates in Western countries are low and the number of people who will remain voluntarily childless is increasing, more and more couples are seeking medical treatment for infertility. Fertility problems transcend the boundaries of medicine and challenge the traditional positivistic understanding of health and illness and the authority of scientific and objective medicine. The circumstances for coping with infertility are not universal and depend instead on the given society and on cultural values. Studying infertility means studying every important institution of our society: the institutions of marriage and the family, the institution of parenthood, medicine, and so on. While American and other Western social scientists have studied social aspects of infertility for many years, in the Czech Republic the topic remains the domain of medicine. This article focuses on basic concepts employed in the study of infertility and involuntary childlessness in sociology. It presents and summarises relevant concepts such as stigmatisation, social exclusion, identity problems, and gender differences in the response to infertility. It presents the debate over explaining the terms of infertility and (involuntary and voluntary) childlessness. It shows how the position of involuntary childlessness has been changing as the problem has increasingly come to be dealt with in medical terms and as high-tech medical treatments for infertility have been developed. Finally, the article opens up the topic for debate and raises the question of potential methods of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]