Deciding to parent or remain childfree: Comparing sexual minority and heterosexual childless adults from Israel, Portugal, and the United Kingdom.

Abstract

This study compared Israeli, Portuguese, and British childless lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) and heterosexual adults on parenthood aspirations as indicated by their desire and intent to become a parent and their concern about childlessness. For this purpose, 168 childless adults (57 self-reported as LGB) in Portugal were matched on sociodemographic variables with 168 participants from the United Kingdom and 168 participants from Israel, resulting in a sample of n = 504 (M age = 28.26, SD = 6.17). Participants were recruited through convenience sampling and completed online questionnaires assessing parenthood desire, intent, and concern about childlessness. Results indicated that participants from Israel and Portugal reported higher levels of parenthood desire, intent, and concern about childlessness than participants from the United Kingdom. Parallel patterns also appeared separately for LGB and heterosexual participants between the countries. Heterosexual participants from Israel scored higher than counterparts from Portugal on parenthood intention and concern about childlessness. In addition, LGB participants in general reported lower levels of parenthood desire, intentions, and concern about childlessness than did heterosexual participants. The findings are interpreted in light of the different sociocultural contexts of the countries, that is, the individualistic values characterizing the U.K. versus the familistic values characterizing the Israeli and Portuguese contexts, alongside a strongly pronatalist stance evident in Israel and economic context in Portugal. The study contributes to the scant comparative literature on parenthood aspirations among LGB individuals as a function of cultural context by providing a multicontextual viewpoint on parenthood aspirations, sexual orientation, and diverse sociocultural contexts. Implications for clinicians are discussed.

The Prospective Co-Parenting Relationship Scale (PCRS) for Sexual Minority and Heterosexual People: Preliminary Validation

“…This seemed to apply to heterosexual and to LGB persons equally, with the more familistic culture of Portugal acting as a centripetal force pulling family members together across the generations [28,39]. Similar results were found by Shenkman et al [26], when comparing the parenthood prospects in Portugal, the UK, and Israel. Thus, the social support from family of origin on coparenting plans should be inspected, and indeed may be an important factor in societies in which family social values are stronger.…”

“…The parenting experience, including the prospective one, which comprises the planning and negotiation about parenting and the way future parents think about their future coparenting relationship [5,6], also differs according to the social and cultural context [22,[24][25][26]. Therefore, instruments assessing coparenting should encompass cultural variability [16,27].…”

Assisted Conception Socialization Self-Efficacy Among Israeli Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Parent Families and its Association with Child Externalizing Problems

“…The Israeli society is familistic and pronatalist (Birenbaum-Carmeli & Dirnfeld, 2008 ), and Israel has one of the highest fertility rates of all Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (OECD, 2019 ), as well as the world’s highest rate of in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics per capita (Birenbaum-Carmeli, 2016 ). Biblical commandments to “be fruitful and multiply,” recurrent wars, Jewish religious openness to assisted reproductive technology, and the traumas of the Holocaust have all been proposed as contributing factors to this culture (Birenbaum-Carmeli, 2016 ; Shenkman et al, 2021 ).…”

What We Know and What Remains to Be Explored about LGBTQ Parent Families in Israel: A Sociocultural Perspective

“…In an examination of the contribution of different sociocultural contexts to parenthood aspirations, one study compared Israeli, Portuguese, and British childless LGB and heterosexual adults [ 56 ]. A sample of 168 participants from each country were individually matched on sociodemographic variables and compared on parenthood aspiration indicators and attitudes toward staying childfree.…”

“…LGB participants from Israel and Portugal reported higher levels of parenthood desire, intent, and concern about childlessness than participants from the United Kingdom [ 56 ]; quantitative design, n = 504.…”