Fertility depends on three things: opportunities for intentional or unintentiona
Fertility depends on three things: opportunities for intentional or unintentional reproduction; intentions around family size; and ability to carry out those intentions.
In almost all cultures, the parents of a young man or woman traditionally have arranged the marriage, encouraged the couple to have children, and supported them with housing and childcare. A woman may have been compelled to have more children by her husband or in-laws.
Today, western young people typically choose their own partners, choose their desired number of children, and find their own housing and childcare arrangements. Across the world, greater personal freedom, greater social tolerance of non-traditional family arrangements, and advancing medical technology are uniting to make it possible for people to have as many or as few children as they wish.
Opportunities
Fertility rates are higher when people have more opportunities to meet and mingle. Factors which influence opportunities to meet and mingle include the degree of social isolation; the sex ratio; the usual age at marriage or cohabitation; degree of absence of spouse; likelihood of bereavement, separation, or divorce; and time between unions (if separation or widowhood occur).
Social and religious norms, income, geography, and political crises influence the opportunity to partner. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020+ greatly interfered with the ability of people to meet partners. Generally speaking, prosperity, peace, urbanization, and secularization mean greater opportunities for partnering and conception.
Intentions
Sadly, intentions around sex and fertility are sometimes violated by acts of rape. On a lighter note, we sometimes succumb to consensual passion and forget our intentions.
For the most part, people in many nations today have quite a bit of freedom when it comes to having children. Our target number of children depends on personal preferences, family/social/religious norms, and economic considerations. We’ll discuss the economic considerations in detail later in this chapter.
The target number of children may change as parents raise their first or subsequent children, and as life experiences impact the family. The desired number of children also depends on a person’s experience of childhood and on their notion of what the future holds.
When infants or children die, the family may try to conceive more children.
Sometimes a family has more children in order to achieve a target number of children with particular characteristics. In the past, one had to “keep trying” until one had the desired number of boys, girls, healthy children etc. Now genetic testing in utero is making selection easier, and reducing overall fertility. (More on that in our next chapter and in our chapter on son preference.)
Ability to achieve intentions
Once people have an idea of how many children they would like to have and when they would like to have them, they can begin to plan accordingly. Our plans do not always work out the way we e