Who can refuse? Attitudes About the Fertility Decisions of Wives and Husbands

Abstract

This research explored Americans’ responses to dual questions from the “Constructing the Family II” survey asking if it was “all right” for wives and husbands to refuse to have children with their spouses. We reviewed the data descriptively, demographically using multinomial logistic regression, and qualitatively, investigating subset respondents’ rationales. Most respondents supported or opposed refusal equally, with only about five percent of respondents supporting refusal for one partner but not both. Among subset respondents, qualitative themes varied by refusal type and included Family Considerations, Rights, and Nuclear Family Ideals. Together, the quantitative and qualitative findings suggested that those who supported refusal for both spouses were the most egalitarian; however, these respondents along with those who supported refusal for one partner but not both were also likely to provide dissimilar, and often quite traditionally gendered, rationales. We conclude that despite surface-level egalitarianism, attitudes about fertility decision-making were not free from gendered thinking.