Diverse Paths into Childlessness over the Life Course

Remaining childless is seen as a process that is influenced by a continuously changing context and by many choices an individual makes in various life spheres over the life course. Previous studies usually compared mothers and the childless by the end of the reproductive span and aimed at identifying dominant reasons for childlessness by regressing measures of accumulated experience of life events on the probability of having no children. Such an approach does not allow us to capture the wide variety of paths to childlessness. Using sequence analysis we reconstruct the major life course trajectories of childless women and reveal the complexity of the life paths that lead to childlessness in urban population of Italy and Poland. We conclude that more reflection on designing the studies on childlessness is needed and better data and methods should be implemented in order to understand the complexities of the process of remaining childless.