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The study examines the awareness and acceptability of child adoption in Edo State. The design used for the study was survey design. The population for the study is made up of adults male and female in Esan West Local Government Area. One hundred respondents were randomly selected using random sampling techniques. The validity was ascertained by experts Reliability was established using the split-half method. Coefficient reliability of 0.75 was obtained. The instrument used for data collection was a questionnaire with twenty items. The data was analyzed using simple percentages according to the research questions formulated. The results of this study revealed amongst others that there is awareness and acceptability of child adoption. But, Large percentage of respondents disagreed with the fact that adopted children should have equal right to properties as biological children. It was therefore recommended that pregnancies that are not planned for especially from teenagers should not be aborted, childless couples should be free to adopt child or children.

While qualitative researchers increasingly accept online video interviews as a reliable method, many maintain concerns about rapport and data quality. Drawing on two separate interview projects conducted in private in-person settings, public in-person settings, and privately via Skype, we compare interview contexts with regard to rapport, suitability to sensitive topics, interview duration, and scheduling concerns raised by prior research. Analytical comparison of these two corpuses of data suggest, largely in contrast to previous literature, that (1) interviews conducted in private settings (either in-person or via Skype) result in more sharing of deeply personal experiences, and there is little difference in this exceptional disclosure between Skype and in-person private interviews; (2) interviewing via Skype produces neither reduction nor inappropriate excesses of rapport; and (3) Skype interviews are a popular choice among participants, did not result in shorter interview duration, and were not subject to greater rescheduling or cancellation.

This study examines predictors of perceived work-life balance among women and men faculty of color using data from the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE). Asian American men faculty report higher perceived work-life balance, while African American women faculty report lower perceived work-life balance as compared to other faculty members. Findings from multivariate analyses show that the strongest, most consistent positive predictor of perceived work-life balance was the faculty perception that the institution does what it can to make personal/family obligations and an academic career compatible. The findings offer important implications for institutional and departmental climate and policy.

American families and workplaces have both changed dramatically over the past half-century. Paid work by women has increased sharply, as has family instability. Education-related inequality in work hours and income has grown. These changes, says Suzanne Bianchi, pose differing work-life issues for parents at different points along the income distribution. Between 1975 and 2009, the labor force rate of mothers with children under age eighteen increased from 47.4 percent to 71.6 percent. Mothers today also return to work much sooner after the birth of a child than did mothers half a century ago. High divorce rates and a sharp rise in the share of births to unmarried mothers mean that more children are being raised by a single parent, usually their mother. Workplaces too have changed, observes Bianchi. Today's employees increasingly work nonstandard hours. The well-being of highly skilled workers and less-skilled workers has been diverging. For the former, work hours may be long, but income has soared. For lower-skill workers, the lack of "good jobs" disconnects fathers from family obligations. Men who cannot find work or have low earnings potential are much less likely to marry. For low-income women, many of whom are single parents, the work-family dilemma is how to care adequately for children and work enough hours to support them financially. Jobs for working-class and lower middle-class workers are relatively stable, except in economic downturns, but pay is low, and both parents must work full time to make ends meet. Family income is too high to qualify for government subsidized child care, but too low to afford high-quality care in the private market. These families struggle to have a reasonable family life and provide for their family's economic well-being. Bianchi concludes that the "work and family" problem has no one solution because it is not one problem. Some workers need more work and more money. Some need to take time off around the birth of a child without permanently derailing a fulfilling career. Others need short-term support to attend to a family health crisis. How best to meet this multiplicity of needs is the challenge of the coming decade. (Contains 75 endnotes and 2 figures.)

Infertility is a stressful experience, yet little is known about the specific issues confronting infertile women. In the present study, researchers sought to identify themes important to infertile women and examine possible associations with mental health levels. Using qualitative content analysis, researchers analyzed the email messages of 57 infertile women participating in a German-language Internet-based treatment for infertility. The themes most important to infertile women were emotions surrounding their wish for a child, coping with this unfulfilled wish, and medical aspects. Clinically anxious women reported substantially and significantly more negative and positive emotions than non-anxious women did (Mann-Whitney U(1)=178; p=0.034). Participants who were both clinically anxious and depressed reported more negative emotions and substantially fewer positive emotions when compared to participants who were solely anxious. The themes identified, considered important by infertile women, could be helpful to health professionals working in fertility treatment. (Contains 3 tables.)

Most intergenerational social mobility studies are based upon retrospective data, in which samples of individuals report socioeconomic information about their parents, an approach that provides representative data for offspring but not the parental generation. When available, prospective data on intergenerational mobility, which are based on a sample of respondents who report on their progeny, have conceptual and practical advantages. Prospective data are especially useful for studying social mobility across more than two generations and for developing joint models of social mobility and demographic processes. Because prospective data remain relatively scarce, we propose a method that corrects retrospective mobility data for the unrepresentativeness of the parental generation and thus permits them to be used for models of social mobility and demographic processes. We illustrate this method using both simulated data and data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. In our examples, this method removes more than 95 percent of the bias in the retrospective data.

This study examines time with children among women who remain childless in young to middle adulthood. The authors identify biologically childless women aged 25 to 44 years in the June 2004-2008 Current Population Survey, and use their subsequent time use diaries in the 2004-2009 American Time Use Survey to measure their time with children. The authors pay particular attention to time with children who are not one's "own" (by adoption or marriage) and to differences across educational groups of childless women. It is found that childless women frequently spend time with children, and childless women with no 4-year college degree are almost twice as likely to spend time with children as childless women with a 4-year degree. The authors also show how educational differences in childless women's time with children are mediated by work patterns, residential arrangements, and especially union status. The findings suggest large class differences in how women experience the boundary between childlessness and parenthood. (Contains 5 tables, 2 figures, and 1 note.)

This research explored how older people describe their paths to late-life childlessness. In-depth accounts from 38 childless older people, age 63-93, highlight the complex journeys and diverse meanings of childlessness for male and female participants, single and partnered, including some who had outlived children. Positioning theory is used to show how the conventional voluntary--involuntary binary is insufficient for capturing their experiences. Childlessness was for some an active choice to break a family violence cycle; for others, it was an outcome of social upheaval. It evoked feelings of both grief and relief over time, it was seen as evidence of discernment in being unwilling to parent at any price, or it was something that felt "natural" within a meaningful life. Rates of childlessness are increasing; this research highlights the fact that pathways and meanings of childlessness vary so much that it is unwise to assume that people have similar experiences of nonparenthood, especially in later life.(Contains 2 tables and 1 note.)

Welfare states enact a range of policies aimed at reducing work-family conflict. While welfare state policies have been assessed at the macro-level and work-family conflict at the individual-level, few studies have simultaneously addressed these relationships in a cross-national multi-level model. This study addresses this void by assessing the relationship between work-family and family-work conflict and family-friendly policies in 10 countries. Applying a unique multi-level data set that couples country-level policy data with individual-level data (N = 7,895) from the 2002 International Social Survey Programme, the author analyzes the relationship between work-family and family-work conflict and four specific policy measures: family leave, work scheduling, school scheduling, and early childhood education and care. The results demonstrate that mothers and fathers report less family-work and mothers less work-family conflict in countries with more expansive family leave policies. Also, in countries with longer school schedules mothers report less and women without children more work-family conflict.

Does the reason why women have no children matter with regard to level of childlessness concerns? Reasons include biomedical barriers, situational barriers, delaying motherhood, and choosing to be childfree. The concept of "childlessness concerns" captures the idea that holidays and family gatherings are difficult because of not having children or feeling left out or sad that others have children. Life course and identity theories guided the structural equation model analyses of a representative sample of 1,180 U.S. women without children from the National Survey of Fertility Barriers. The results indicated that women with the least control over pregnancy, those with biomedical barriers, had the highest childlessness concerns. As hypothesized, the association between reasons and childlessness concerns was mediated by the identity-relevant measure, importance of motherhood. Contrary to the authors' hypothesis, the association was not mediated by social messages to have children. Thus, it is primarily involuntarily childless women who have high childlessness concerns. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

This study elaborates on how a disorienting dilemma, a life-event crisis, may trigger reflection. The study comprised an analysis of interviews with involuntarily childless women, who were in the process of negotiating emotionally chaotic experiences. The implications for Jack Mezirow's theory of transformative learning are explored. Compared with the more often discussed role of reflection in facilitated contexts, the analysis shows differences in the role of reflection in this nonfacilitated context, where it appears to enable meaning making in a chaotic situation that was not understandable from within existing meaning frameworks. Furthermore, disorienting dilemmas are manifested in various emotional experiences, indicating that one's relation to these emotions--as opposed to the nature of the emotion--becomes essential with regard to triggering reflection. Last, the social dimension appears as a second-wave trigger of reflection, as one's changed assumptions are found to collide with views of significant others. (Contains 1 note.)

The prevalence and social acceptance of childlessness have increased in recent decades. Still, little is known about how this social acceptance is shaped, the extent to which approval of childlessness differs across Europe, and what factors cause potential cross-national variation. The authors used data from the European Social Survey 2006 (N = 36,187) to examine the attitude toward voluntary childlessness in 20 countries. Results from multilevel models were largely in line with expectations derived from Second Demographic Transition theory concerning traditional orientation, age, religiousness, education, and stage of Second Demographic Transition in a country. The results also corroborated individual-level expectations on the role of gender and socioeconomic status based on New Home Economics theory. One country-level indicator, child-care availability, was not related to the attitude toward childlessness. The current study provides new insights into explaining cross-national differences in the attitude toward childlessness and more generally into the process of fertility decision making.

Changing perceptions of childlessness have been documented in the United States, but little is known about perceptions in developing countries undergoing rapid social changes and globalization, including Turkey. This project uses a survey and hypothetical vignettes about childless couples and parents to assess university students' perceptions of childlessness (N = 850). The authors find that parents are rated higher on interpersonal warmth and marital relationship quality, but mothers are seen as more stressed. Childless men and women are perceived as more driven but also as more emotionally troubled. The results indicate the continued importance of parenthood among Turkish students but also an understanding of women's stresses in combining work and motherhood. The authors find relatively few rural and urban differences, whereas gender and income differences may reflect greater awareness of work-family concerns and acceptance of childlessness among women and higher income students. (Contains 4 tables.)

Research has associated parenthood with greater daily time commitments for fathers and mothers than for childless men and women, and with deeper gendered division of labor in households. How do these outcomes vary across countries with different average employment hours, family and social policies, and cultural attitudes to family care provision? Using nationally representative time-use data from the United States, Australia, Italy, France, and Denmark (N = 5,337), we compare the paid and unpaid work of childless partnered adults and parents of young children in each country. Couples were matched (except for the United States). We found parents have higher, less gender-equal workloads than nonparents in all five countries, but overall time commitments and the difference by parenthood status were most pronounced in the United States and Australia.

Within a relatively short period of 30 years, public acceptance of voluntary childlessness has increased enormously in the Netherlands. In this paper, we address two research questions, which we answer with data from 13 waves of the repeated cross-sectional survey Cultural Change in the Netherlands (CCN, 1965-1996). First, we investigate to what extent the increasing permissiveness is due to cohort replacement and to intra-cohort change. We find that between 1965 and 1980 the change is primarily due to intra-cohort (period) effects, whereas cohort replacement has become more important since 1980. Second, we address the question which social categories constitute the 10% of the population who do not accept voluntary childlessness. Church attendance--and not religiosity or religious socialization--turns out to be the most important factor. Low levels of income and education also negatively affect the acceptance of voluntary childless. (Contains 2 figures, 6 tables, and 5 footnotes.)

Previous research suggests that discrepancies between work values and rewards are indicators of dissonance that induce change in both to reduce such dissonance over time. The present study elaborates this model to suggest parallels with the first phase of the extension-and-strain curve. Small discrepancies or small increases in extension are presumed to be almost unnoticeable, while increasingly large discrepancies are thought to yield exponentially increasing strain. Work satisfaction is a principal outcome of dissonance; hence, work value-reward discrepancies are predicted to diminish work satisfaction in an exponential fashion. Findings from the work and family literature, however, lead to the prediction that this curvilinear association will be moderated by gender and family roles. Using longitudinal data spanning the third decade of life, the results suggest that intrinsic work value-reward discrepancies, as predicted, are increasingly associated, in a negative curvilinear fashion, with work satisfaction. This pattern, however, differs as a function of gender and family roles. Females who established family roles exhibited the expected pattern while other gender by family status groups did not. The results suggest that gender and family roles moderate the association between intrinsic work value-reward dissonance and satisfaction. In addition, women who remained unmarried and childless exhibited the strongest associations between occupational rewards and satisfaction. (Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.)

This article reviews recent research (1999-2009) on the effects of parenthood on well-being. We use a life course framework to consider how parenting and childlessness influence well-being throughout the adult life course. We place particular emphasis on social contexts and how the impact of parenthood on well-being depends on marital status, gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. We also consider how recent demographic shifts lead to new family arrangements that have implications for parenthood and well-being. These include stepparenting, parenting of grandchildren, and childlessness across the life course.

This paper bridges the literature on childlessness, which often focuses on married White couples, to the literature on race and fertility, which often focuses on why total fertility rates and nonmarital births are higher for Blacks than Whites. Despite similarity in levels of childlessness among Black women and White women, Black trends have been largely ignored. Recent research has not adequately explored the extent to which factors driving childlessness may vary among Black and White women. We attempted to fill this gap using the National Survey of Family Growth (N = 3,628) and found many similarities in the predictors of childlessness for both races. Exceptions were the role of marital status and educational attainment.

Education and fertility (including childrearing) are foundational processes in societal metabolism, and the relationship between them can have profound, long-term effects on a variety of institutions, including the labor market, the family (especially care for the elderly), and educational institutions themselves. In postindustrial countries, conventional wisdom holds that there is a strong inverse relationship between education and completed fertility, but this has not been carefully examined in recent decades, and the topic has been almost completely neglected for men. In this article, we address these core questions and relations, drawing on the Norwegian population registers for cohorts born 1940 to 1964. Among women, the relationship between completed fertility and educational level attained at age 39 has become substantially less negative. In all cohorts, better-educated women have later first births and remain childless more often than do the less educated. The negative effect of education on higher-order birth rates net of the impact of later motherhood has, however, disappeared. Family-friendly ideologies and policies, including better access to high-quality daycare, are likely the engine behind this shift. Among men, a positive relationship has emerged: the better educated become fathers later than others, but fewer remain childless, and there has been an increasingly stimulating effect of education on second- and third-birth rates. We discuss these sex differences in light of the persistent differences between mothers' and fathers' roles. (Contains 8 footnotes and 8 tables.)

This study examines whether the mental and physical health of single mothers benefit from marriage or cohabitation compared to childless women who marry. Results indicate that marrying is associated with similar declines in psychological distress for single mothers and childless women, but only when that marriage endures. Single mothers do not receive the same physical health benefits from entering an enduring marriage, in part because single mothers have lower levels of marital quality. Entering and exiting marriage is worse for the mental and physical health of single mothers than for other women and in some cases, worse than remaining unpartnered. Enduring cohabiting unions offer few psychological or physical health benefits to either group but short-lived cohabiting unions are associated with increased distress. (Contains 4 tables and 5 notes.)

Over the past 50 years, women's roles have changed dramatically--a reality captured by substantial increases in employment and reductions in fertility. Yet, the social organization of work and family life has not changed much, leading to pervasive work-family conflict. Observing these strains, some scholars wonder whether U.S. women's high employment levels are sustainable. Women's employment in professional and managerial occupations--the core of the analyses offered in this article--merits particular interest because of the material and symbolic implications for gender equality. In a cohort analysis of working-age women born between 1906 and 1975, I show that employment levels among college-educated women in professional and managerial occupations have increased across cohorts. Full-time, year-round employment rates continue to rise across cohorts, even among women in historically male professions and mothers of young children. Although labor force participation rates have stopped rising, they have stalled at a very high rate, with less than 8 percent of professional women born since 1956 out of the labor force for a year or more during their prime childbearing years. Moreover, the difference in employment rates between mothers and childless women--the "child penalty"--is shrinking across cohorts. (Contains 16 footnotes, 8 tables, and 2 figures.)

This paper uses an exogenous change in the intrahousehold distribution of income, provided by a change in United Kingdom Family Allowance policy to test the income-pooling hypothesis implied by unitary household models. Expenditure shares are estimated for a wide range of goods using household-level data. Shifts in expenditure shares suggest that children and mothers benefited at the expense of fathers when this policy change shifted income within households from men to women. Similar shifts are not found among married-couple households with no children. This paper refutes income pooling, and confirms and extends results in Lundberg, Pollak, and Wales (1997). (Contains 10 tables and 28 footnotes.)

The Korean family has long met Confucian values by producing children to maintain and support the paternal family line, but in South Korea's transition to a low birth rate, an increasing number of couples have remained childless. Have Confucian family values been abandoned? In this study, 103 young single South Koreans wrote protocols describing their thoughts about childless couples and having children. Most of them viewed childless couples negatively and said that they planned to have children of their own. Confucian values were clearly central in what students wrote about childlessness. The results suggest that the increase in voluntary childlessness does not mean that Confucian values have been abandoned by young South Koreans. Confucian family values seem to remain primary, but they may be reinterpreted or reluctantly violated because economic and other circumstances make it difficult or impossible to meet those values in the South Korean context.

Acceptance of childlessness has increased since the 1970s, with women reporting greater acceptance than men. Using the National Survey of Families and Households (1987-1988; N = 10,648) and the General Social Survey (1994; N =1,395), we examined this gender gap as it relates to both structural and sociocultural factors, including religion, gender attitudes, and other attitudes about gender and family. Women were more likely than men to hold positive attitudes about childlessness, and women's less traditional attitudes about marriage, gender equality, and women's employment only partially explained this difference. In the childbearing ages, positive attitudes were strongly related to intentions to remain childless and showed a greater gender gap at higher education levels. The findings highlight important differences in men's and women's experiences of family, work, and gender issues. (Contains 5 tables.)

Much attention has been given to the new "sexual morality" of college students today. Indeed, some maintain that the American family is doomed because of the attitudes of young people today toward sex and the family. How does the sexual morality of college students today compare with the sexual morality of college students over half a century ago? To answer this question a replication of the 1940 study of sexual morality of college students by John Cuber and Betty Bell published in the "American Journal of Sociology" was conducted between 2000 and 2005. Gender comparisons were made with respect to sexual morality involving pre-marital sex, extra-marital sex, and childlessness. (Contains 3 tables and 19 sources.)

Although research has examined work-family issues and organizational support for employees' family responsibilities, few studies have explored the work-life issues of single employees without children. The current study examines single employees' perceptions of how their organizations support their work-life balance in comparison to employees with families. A multi-dimensional scale is developed assessing five dimensions of singles-friendly culture: social inclusion, equal work opportunities, equal access to benefits, equal respect for nonwork life, and equal work expectations. Employees with families perceived more equity in most of these facets than did singles. Managerial and professional employees with higher incomes also perceived their organizations as more singles-friendly. Finally, social inclusion predicted organizational commitment for single employees, and this effect was mediated by perceived organizational support. In contrast, more equal work opportunities were related to lower turnover intentions among childfree singles.

In this paper we ask: How is motherhood being represented in the British media, especially in relation to choice, age and fertility? Do media discourses reflect a redefinition or transformation of "motherhood" in the twenty-first century, and what implications do they have for feminist research into maternal identity and motherhood? As three Ph.D. students from The Open University, all working on different aspects of motherhood, we examine and discuss the significant debates around motherhood, fertility and choice taking place recently in the British media. In the context of increasing divergence from traditional family forms, advances in medical technology such as assisted reproductive techniques, and changing attitudes to sexual behaviour and marriage over the past few decades, motherhood and parenting remain contested sites in the public domain. The availability of contraception and of abortion has given rise to increased choice, and yet women's fertility choices are increasingly subject to scrutiny and criticism. In particular, media debate in the UK has focused on challenges to traditional motherhood and the implication that the family is "in crisis". This is particularly evident in the coverage of teenage mothers, older mothers and women who delay motherhood. Such media representations of older and younger mothers and those women who "leave it too late" reveal significant insights into the social construction of motherhood. (Contains 1 note.)

A 33-month longitudinal study was conducted with 38 infertile couples making the transition to biological childlessness after unsuccessful fertility treatments. Changes in their levels of psychological distress; marital, sexual, and life satisfaction; and self-esteem were examined. Increased self-esteem and decreased sexual satisfaction were evident over time. Poorer adjustment was related to having none or few available options, little social support, poor emotional and physical health, and reliance on emotion-focused coping. Participants who adopted demonstrated better adjustment.

Via a simultaneous analysis of different life course pathways (marital, occupational, and childbearing histories) and different outcomes, this article addresses the question When does childlessness matter in late life and how? Survey data from Amsterdam (N = 661) and Berlin, Germany (N = 516) are used. Lifelong childlessness results in smaller networks among men and women in Amsterdam and Berlin, and in the Dutch sample it leads to higher income levels. Dutch men who have never had children and Dutch women who have outlived their children have relatively low life satisfaction levels. In Germany, marital history is a more powerful predictor of life satisfaction in old age than parental history. The findings attest to the importance of distinguishing lifelong childlessness from outliving one's children and of considering the consequences of childlessness for a variety of life domains. (Contains 8 tables.)

This article focuses on the ways in which patterns of marriage and fertility shape older people's involvement in community groups and their support networks. The data are from Australia, Finland, Germany, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Findings show that childless older adults, regardless of marital status and gender, are equally as likely as parents to be active in the community and in voluntary organizations and to perform volunteer work. Never-married childless women are particularly active socially. Married, childless men are particularly dependent on their wives. In general, childless people are less likely than are parents to have robust network types capable of maintaining independent living without recourse to residential care during conditions of frailty. In some countries, it appears to be marriage rather than parenthood that makes the difference in support networks. (Contains 3 tables and 1 note.)

The prevalence and implications of childlessness in old age are compared across nine major surveys in seven countries: Australia, Finland, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Specifically, the researchers examine indicators of the well-being and resources of childless men and women, compare them to their within-country peers with children, and explore the similarities and differences among childless older adults in different countries. The results show strikingly similar patterns across countries (with the exception of Japan). Childless elders are more likely than parents to live alone or in an institution. Childless never-married women have consistently higher education levels than other groups of women. Among men, marriage rather than parenthood is consistently linked with higher socio-economic status. The results suggest important structural processes that differentially shape the resources and well-being of men and women, childless and parents, over the life course and in old age. (Contains 8 tables and 2 figures.)

This article provides the rationale for doing research on childlessness and parenthood in late life. Childless older adults have been rendered invisible in the social scientific literature. A central goal of this issue is to make them visible and to expose unstated assumptions about normal adult life. Parenthood emerges as a key organizer of the life course and a major factor in social integration. Because the childless tend to be conceptualized as "the other," focusing on them teaches lessons about the dangers of dichotomous thinking, that is, overlooking diversity and assuming deficiency. Studying older adults without children reveals the necessity of considering life pathways over time and of putting lives in a historical context. (Contains 1 table.)

Changes in the rates of childlessness over time are explored using European, Australian, American, and Japanese data from censuses, national registers, and large-scale surveys. The trends are remarkably similar across the countries for which data are available: a peak in childlessness rates for the 1880-1910 birth cohorts, a more or less continuous drop across the 1910-1945 birth cohorts, and a steady rise across the cohorts born after the Second World War. Thus, contemporary older adults (particularly the "young old") belong to generations for which the proportions childless are near the minimum ever recorded. The article examines the factors associated with the changes in rates of childlessness, and more particularly trends in marriage (e.g., median age at marriage and the proportions marrying), trends in family formation (e.g., median age at the first birth and average family size), and the role of voluntary and involuntary factors. (Contains 1 table and 3 figures.)

In this article life history data from the U.S. National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), and the Dutch survey on Older Adults' Living Arrangements and Social Networks (NESTOR-LSN) are used to shed light on the various pathways leading to and associated with childlessness, and the proportions of men and women who have followed a particular pathway (e.g., marrying late, divorcing early, never leaving the parental home). The central question is whether the childless took different routes during early adulthood in the domains of family, education, and employment. Data point to the critical importance of transition timing, especially with regard to leaving the parental home and marrying. Delayed transitions had domino effects and blocked second chances at securing an economic base and becoming a parent. (Contains 6 tables.)

We explore women's psychological well-being in late midlife in relation to childlessness and timing of entry into motherhood. Using two U.S. surveys, Health and Retirement Study (HRS) (1992) and National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) (Sweet, Bumpass, & Call, 1988), we assess the well-being of childless women in their 50s compared to mothers with early, delayed, or normatively timed first births. We focus on the cohorts born between 1928 and 1941, who experienced strong normative pressures during the baby boom with regard to marriage and child-bearing. We find few differences among childless women but lower well-being among early mothers, related to singlehood and poorer socioeconomic status. Unmarried mothers are significantly disadvantaged regardless of maternal timing, controlling for socioeconomic status. Current maternal demands are independently related to well-being and help to explain observed differences in family satisfaction. Overall, childlessness and off-time child-bearing are related to midlife well-being through their link with more proximate factors, particularly current marital status, health, and socioeconomic status. The institution of marriage had a power and inevitability in the fifties that it has never had since. You simply didn't ask yourself "if" you wanted marriage and children; the only relevant questions were when and how many? And the answers were, as soon as possible and as many as possible" (Harvey, 1993, p. 69). We explore women's psychological well-being in late midlife in relation to childlessness and timing of entry into motherhood. (Harvey, 1993, p. 69). (Contains 5 tables.)

The impact of early life events that take place under specific historical and societal circumstances on adult development have rarely been investigated in old age. We examined whether having started a family in young adulthood was related to the contents of possible selves generated by women aged 85 to 100+ in the Berlin Aging Study (N = 129; M age = 93 years). Health-related possible selves dominated in the entire sample. However, mothers (n = 79) and lifetime childless women (n = 50) differed in their endorsement of family- and friend-related possible selves. Contrary to expectations, childless women mentioned more family-related themes, while mothers addressed more friendship-related themes. Despite these differences both groups of women reported equally high levels of well-being. These findings indicate that starting a family in young adulthood still has an influence on the self up until very old age and that these distinct pathways can still lead to similar aging success. (Contains 2 tables, 1 figure and 1 footnote.)

The early-1970s abortion legalization led to a significant drop in fertility. We investigate whether this decline represented a delay in births or a permanent reduction in fertility. We combine Census and Vital Statistics data to compare the lifetime fertility of women born in early-legalizing states, whose peak childbearing years occurred in the early 1970s, to that of women from other states and cohorts. We find that much of the reduction was permanent, in that women did not compensate by having more children later, and that it largely reflects an increased share of women remaining childless throughout their fertile years. (Contains 3 tables, 5 figures, and 23 footnotes.)

In the last 2 decades, the United States has seen an increase in childlessness and first births at older ages. Using the National Survey of Family Growth, we focus on women aged 35-44 who are voluntarily childless (expect no children and are fecund or contraceptively sterile). We compare these women to those who are involuntarily childless (fecundity impaired) and to those who are temporarily childless (expect children). Voluntary childlessness grew from 1982 (5%) to 1988 (8%), was stable up to 1995 (9%), and fell slightly in 2002 (7%). Voluntarily childless women have the highest income, prior work experience, and lowest religiosity compared to other women. This has been true since 1982, the earliest time point examined.

We use data from both waves of the National Survey of Families and Households to assess whether relinquishing a serious intention to have (more) children leads to greater increases in depressive symptoms than continuing confidence in childbearing intentions. Our sample includes 2,200 individuals of childbearing age, men and women, all parities, and all marital statuses. Change score analysis shows that individuals who relinquished a serious intent to have children had elevated distress at Time 2 and that the association is conditioned by gender, health, and education. We find that fertility potential can be important to psychosocial well-being and that closing the door on future fertility, especially for women, those in ill health, and the better educated, leads to increased distress.

This study explored the coping processes of couples experiencing infertility. Participants included 420 couples referred for advanced reproductive treatments. Couples were divided into groups based on the frequency of their use of eight coping strategies. Findings suggest that coping processes, which are beneficial to individuals, may be problematic for one's partner. Couples where men used high amounts of distancing, while their partner used low amounts of distancing, reported higher levels of distress when compared to couples in the other groups. Conversely, couples with women who used high amounts of self-controlling coping, when paired with men who used low amounts of self-controlling coping, reported higher levels of distress. Implications of study findings are discussed, and ideas for future research are proposed.