Exploring the childless universe: profiles and fertility intentions of men and women without children in Italy

In the last decades, several western countries experienced a large increase in childlessness. Relatively little is known about the profiles of childless women in Italy, and virtually nothing about men, as well as their fertility intentions. This paper aims to fill this gap by identifying typical life course trajectories of childless women and men in Italy, and by exploring how childless people’s fertility intentions differ according to the various life course profiles. For eliciting typical patterns, I followed a holistic perspective and applied sequence analysis to a childless sample derived from the Italian 2009 Family and Social Subjects survey, taking into account a few relevant spheres, including partnership, employment, and education. Reconstructing the major life course trajectories, several similarities emerged between childless women and men, who shared some typical patterns. Determinants of fertility intentions were investigated through a logistic regression approach applied to a subsample of childless people nearly at the end of their reproductive period. Interestingly, similar childless profiles did not lead to similar attitudes towards fertility intentions.