Men’s gender attitudes and their fertility intentions in Tehran

Abstract

Background: Total fertility rate has fallen below the replacement level in 2006 in Iran. In family demographic research, gender attitude is considered as an affecting factor to understand low fertility intention. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between men’s gender attitudes and their fertility intention. Methods: The data were drawn from a survey entitled "Married Lifestyle and its Determinants in Tehran City in 2015" using multi-stage cluster sampling method and a structured questionnaire. 618 married men were selected with wives aged between 15 to 49 years. Crammers V estimate and logistic regression were used in bivariate and multivariable analysis in IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 22.0. Results: The results showed that 249 (40.3%) of the men in Tehran had egalitarian gender attitudes and 141 (22.8%) of them had traditional gender attitudes. The mean number of intended children in traditional men was 2.1, but 1.6 in egalitarian men. Multivariate logistic regression showed that gender attitudes had a significant impact on the intention to have a(nother) child only in one-child men. The odds ratio of intention to have a(nother) child was lower among egalitarian men (OR=0.271, P=0.016(. Conclusion: Men’s gender attitudes on their fertility intention vary across parities. In one-child men, egalitarian gender attitudes are related to low fertility intention.

Keywords

• Attitudes
• Fertility
• Gender Identity
• Marriage