Is having children associated with higher partnership stability? A novel perspective on childbearing and involuntary childlessness after medically assisted reproduction

Abstract

Existing evidence shows that couples with children have, on average, lower separation rates than childless couples. Establishing whether this association is driven by selection into parenthood or by childlessness status is complicated by the difficulties involved in identifying involuntarily childless couples. We propose advancing this debate by focusing on couples who remain involuntarily childless after undergoing medically assisted reproduction (MAR). Using data on Finnish nulliparous couples from the years 1995-2017 (N=149,884) and event history models, we compare the separation risks of couples who remained childless after MAR (N=3,871), who had a child after natural conception without MAR (N=167,962) or with a prior history of MAR (N=2,273), and who conceived through MAR (N=14,474). The results show that couples who remained childless after MAR had a substantially higher risk of separation than couples who had a child through natural or MAR conception. The higher risk of separation decreased with increasing time since the discontinuation of the MAR treatments, but persisted over the longer term. In contrast, we find no differences in partnership stability between couples who had a child after MAR or who conceived naturally. The results suggest that involuntary childlessness might be associated with an increased risk of separation.