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Does the Only-Child experience matter for women’s fertility intention? Evidence from Chinese female migrants in Spain.

Mengyao Wu, University of Salamanca
Alberto Del Rey Poveda, University of Salamanca

While the impact of China’s one-child policy has always been a concern for both scholars and policy-makers, little is known about if the only-child’s fertility preference is also affected by this family planning policy, and much less under the immigration context. This article analyses the impact of the one-child policy and the host country on the family planning of Chinese female migrants. We examined the only-child experience correlate of Chinese women’s fertility intention in Spain. We conducted 30 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with women who were born in the 1980s and 1990s, and who had spent at least two years in Spain. We also incorporate attitudes towards grandparents caring for child into the models, which have proven to be a salient factor in shaping childbearing intentions but have seldom been considered in studies of migrant fertility. Our preliminary findings show that Chinese women’s family size planning is affected both by their only-child background and by the presence of parental childcare in the host country.

Keywords: Fertility and childbirth, Qualitative data/methods/approaches, Family demography, International migration

See extended abstract.

  Presented in Session P3.