Domestic gender equality and childbearing in Sweden

Gendered division of domestic work and willingness to have more children in China

“…While studies have suggested that husbands' housework sharing responsibilities tend to be positively correlated with fertility, particularly the risk of having another child (Goldscheider, Bernhardt, and Brandén 2013), similar studies in China are absent. Research in China provides insight into the way the relationship between gender equality and reproduction is translated into a very unique social, economic, political, and policy context.…”

“…In Sweden, for example, Nilsson (2010) finds no effect of housework on having more children controlling for age and the number of existing children. Conversely, Goldscheider, Bernhardt, and Brandén (2013) argue that having a partner who does not share housework suppresses fertility, measured by transition to parenthood and the second and third birth.…”

“…While there is no consensus on whether husbands' share of domestic work would enhance fertility in all settings or even in the same setting due to various reasons (see Goldscheider, Bernhardt, and Brandén 2013;Miettinen, Basten, and Rotkirch 2011), no study links low fertility with the husbands' low share of family responsibility in China. Husbands' low involvement in domestic work suppresses fertility, although the association may not be sufficient to make a statistic difference.…”

“…Various studies have examined the possibility that couples will have more children if husbands increase their contributions to domestic work. There has been a number of large comparative studies using developed countries' data (GarciaManglano, Nollenberger, and Sevilla 2015) or data from multiple European nations (Crespi and Fontaine 2012;Harknett, Billari, and Medalia 2014;Kohler, Billari, and Ortega 2006), as well as research on specific countries, such as Australia Siminski 2010a, 2010b), Finland (Miettinen, Basten, and Rotkirch 2011), Germany (Cooke 2004), Hungry (Oláh 2003), Italy (Pinnelli and Fiori 2008;Rizzi 2012), Japan (Komatsu 2011), the Netherlands (Mills et al 2008), Portugal (Andrade and Bould 2012), Spain (Cooke 2009), Sweden (Goldscheider, Bernhardt, and Brandén 2013;Nilsson 2010), and the United States (Torr and Short 2004). These analyses document a variety of patterns.…”

“…Originally researchers argued the association is negative, but recently researchers have argued that gender equality in the home, assisted by pro-family public policy that aims to reduce the conflicts of a woman's workload and family obligations, may be positively associated with recovering childbirth in regimes with below-replacement or lowest-low fertility (e.g., Duvander and Andersson 2006;Goldscheider, Bernhardt, and Brandén 2013;Neyer, Lappegård, and Vignoli 2013;Oláh 2003). While findings vary, potentially due to divergent measurements used for both gender equality and domestic work, studies tend to suggest a significant link between the husband's involvement at home and fertility.…”