L 3.3

• social and economic pressures affect decisions about family size.
• factors that increase people's desires to have babies is called pronatalist pressures
• children can be a source of:

  • pleasure
  • pride
  • comfort
  • support for elderly parents in countries without security system
• children are valuable to a family, not a security
• society needs to replace people
• some societies look upon families with few or no children with pity of contempt, the idea of deliberately controlling fertility may be shocking or taboo
• male pride linked to having many children as possible
• Higher education and personal freedom for women often result to decisions to limit childbearing
• desire to spend time and money on to other goods and activities affects the desire to have children
• education and socioeconomic status inversely relate to fertility in richer societies
• developing countries fertility increases as educational levels and socioeconomic status rise
• The Great Depression, 1930

  Birth rates were low
• "Baby Boom" followed after World War II as couples reunited