The aim of the thesis is to identify some of the motives for parenthood - especially the most frequent ones. These motives are divided into groups and analysed. With respect to the trends in last decades, where the decrease in birth rates has been reported and parenthood is often being postponed, the thesis aims to cover changes in importance of the motives in comparison to the past. The first part of the thesis consists of six chapters. The first chapter con- tains definition of the term motivation, the second one deals with a brief overview of family forms, nature of parenthood and position of children in the past, whereas in this part some aspects of motivation for parenthood are already introduced. A part of this chapter is also a discussion of parenthood development and related topics in last decades. The next chapters deal with groups of aspects of motivation for parenthood, i.e. the biological, econo- mic, social, emotional and miscellaneous ones. The second part is a research proposal. The proposed research deals with changes in motivation for parenthood during the part of life in which many people become parents. The research proposal counts with addressing a lar- ge group of respondents and subsequent statistical analysis of the received data. Keywords: motivation, family, parenthood