3.3 Fertility is Influenced by Culture

• Pronatalist Pressures; factors that increase people's desires to have babies
• Children; can be a source of pleasure, pride, and comfort
• Children; are valuable to the family not only for future income but even more as a source of current income and help with household chores
• Society; has a need to replace members who die or become incapacitated
• Some societies look upon families with few or no children with pity or contempt, and for them the idea of deliberately controlling fertility may be shocking, even taboo.
• Male Pride; often is linked to having as many children as possible
• Higher Education and Personal Freedom for Women; often results in decisions to limit childbearing
• Education and Socioeconomic Status; are usually inversely related to fertility in richer countries
• Fertility; in some developing countries it initially increases as educational levels and socioeconomic status rise
• The Great Depression (1930); made it economically difficult for families to have children, and birth rates were low
• Baby Boom; followed World War 2, as couples were reunited, and new families started