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Gendered Division of Housework and Childcare, Satisfaction with that Division and One-child Mothers´ Fertility Intentions in Spain

Cristina Suero-García, Department of Demography University of Vienna, Wittgenstein Centre (IIASA, OeAW/VID, University of Vienna)

In Spain, the Gender Revolution is still in the second stage, where gender equality has reached the public sphere but not the private. Although the Spanish population holds highly gender-equal attitudes, couples still maintain unequal household and caring work divisions. Consequently, women experience a double shift exacerbated by the scarcity of family-supportive public policies in the country, which may lead them to not intend to increase their family sizes. I use recent data from the recently released 2018 Spanish Fertility Survey (SFS2018), fit several logit models and carry out a moderation analysis to show how the division of housework and childcare within the couple and the satisfaction with those divisions impact fertility intentions among one-child mothers in Spain. Results show that only women who are very unsatisfied with the distribution of childcare and those who have highly unequal housework division reduce their fertility intentions. Moreover, interaction effects show that the satisfaction with the distribution moderates the impact of the distribution of chores on fertility intentions. To conclude, Spanish women seem to be very tolerant of unequal distributions and only decide not to increase their families when they experience a very unsatisfying or highly unequal distribution of chores.

Keywords: Fertility and childbirth, Gender, Family demography

See extended abstract.

  Presented in Session P6.