The authoresses examine issue of abortion in the Czech Republic in the era of socialism and in post-communism period. They compare statistical data (collected by Czech Statistical Office) and data from public opinion survey concerning abortions and reproduction trends. Data from public opinion survey differs from the statistical one and cannot prove that a special group of women prefer abortion as a solution of the unwanted pregnancy. The paper handles the topics such as models of reproduction behaviour in socialism based on statistical data. The authoresses claim that the abortion was used as a specific way of contraception before the 1989, particularly by the married women with two and more children and childless women got the abortion occasionally. The abortion rate started to slump after the decline of state socialism especially due to the spread of modern contraception. However, during the 1990s the number of childless women who got abortion increased. (http://www.genderonline.cz/view.php?cisloclanku=2005122101)
Childless old age is often directly linked to social isolation and loneliness. This article is based on a qualitative analysis of interviews from a research project on strategies used by the seniors to maintain their personal autonomy, the results of which demonstrated that the informal and particularly the family networks of childless elderly people are not always any less wide or dense than those of other senior citizens. An evident precondition for childless seniors to be able to negotiate old-age support is that they have actively and over the long term cultivated a network in their previous life stages. Nevertheless, it was found that childless seniors display a sense of having superficial and uncertain roots in their wider families, and this suggests a possible difference in how they define their entitlement to more extensive and intensive help from relatives. The author suggests that a normative relationship between the kinds and scope of support offered on the one hand and particular types of kinship on the other may pressure childless seniors to revise their expectations of significant others and their loose obligation to provide assistance, and conversely these seniors may accentuate their own responsibility and the importance of personal autonomy.
Women in Slovakia and in other countries in Central and Eastern Europe whose reproductive years overlapped with the previous political regime rarely opted not to have children, and childlessness thus became a marginal phenomenon. This study provides a detailed reconstruction of long-term childlessness trends among women in Slovakia. In addition, we focus on the changes in cohort fertility and especially in first births in connection to the future development of childlessness among women born in the late 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. A very important goal of this paper is to look more closely at a group of women who remain childless in a society where people married and had children at very early age and where becoming a mother was a general norm. Our analysis is based on the Population Censuses. Using the childlessness rate and binary logistical regression, we attempt to identify characteristics which determine whether women will remain childless or not. The main finding of this analysis is that Slovakia has experienced a U-shaped pattern in permanent childlessness in cohorts between 1900 and 1970. The lowest level was observed among women born around 1940. Cohorts from the late 1960s and the early 1970s experienced rapid increases in childlessness. According to our estimations the childlessness level among women born in the first half of the 1980s may reach 18 – 20 %. A detailed analysis of the structural characteristics of the childless women showed family status and education to have a significant impact on the likelihood to remain childless. Likewise, certain differences in childlessness levels are also found in women by nationality, religion and their place of residence.
Declining fertility, childlessness or postponement of maternity is among other things interpreted as a consequence of work vs. care conflict, i.e. a conflict between paid employment and pay free work in the household, including the care for children. Women anticipate the perils and uncertainty that the long absence on the labour market due to maternity leave can bring. Family social politics that should support combination of the two spheres, or allow men to participate more in child care are not yet enforced in the context of Czech Republic. In terms of sociological theory, there is an absence of consent regarding the fact, whether social policies may actually have a significant impact on reproduction of women and men. The article is based on qualitative research and deals with the given issue through perception of young Czech women who gave birth to their first child after reaching the age of thirty, or who still remain childless at this age. It does not primarily focus on how they reflect the harmonization of public and private sphere, but recognizes the value they attach to paid work during their life course and the connection to other events, especially when deciding about maternity. The analysis of interviews with these women unveiled, above all, the changing perception of work depending on age, age norms of maternity, (non)existence of a partner and maternity consideration. Conflict between paid work and maternity acquires various forms and the influence of inadequate support in the effort to combine the both spheres is noticeable only indirectly through the process of how women think about maternity as a transition that longitudinally and significantly affects other life spheres.
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