Family Planning and Unplanned Postponement of Second Births

Anna Stastna , Charles University, Prague
Jitka Slabá, Charles University
Jirina Kocourkova, Charles University In Prague

The two-child family continues to constitute the most common family model in Czechia. However, due to the postponement of family formation and childbearing, second births are being shifted to older ages. Given that a third of women in the cohorts born between 1966 and 1990 indicated in the survey that their first/second child was born or would be born later than they had initially planned to have children, we argue, that childbearing postponement can also be the result of a failure of the original individuals' plans. We analyse both the reasons behind women postponing second childbirth to later ages than originally planned and the effect of fertility postponement on the length of the birth interval between the first and second birth. For the analysis, we employ data from the 'Women 2016' survey (N=1257 women born 1966-1990) that includes information on childbearing plans and timing, the subsequent realisation of these plans and reasons for timing plans not being fulfilled. We employ binary logistic regression to identify those who have higher chances of unplanned postponement of the second birth, and factor analysis assesses reasons for the unscheduled delay in childbirth. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis is employed to determine how the unplanned childbirth postponement and different factors behind the unplanned postponement influence second birth timing.

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 Presented in Session P1. Poster Session Fertility, Family and the Life Course