Research On The Influence Of Intergenerational Support On Rural Childbearing-age Women’s Fertility Intentions

At present,China has entered the stage of "endogenous low fertility" and socioeconomic factors have become the key constraints on fertility.The reality of insufficient social fertility support and lack of public services makes families the main bearers of all fertility costs.In this context,how the fertility support resources that can be mobilized within the family affect the fertility intentions of women of childbearing age,and whether there is variability in the impact of support provided by different family members versus different support styles are the main questions of interest in this paper.This study combines family economics theory and family modernization theory in a theoretical perspective,and analyzes the current situation of rural women of childbearing age in terms of their fertility intentions using field survey data from rural Jiangxi.By constructing binary and multivariate logistic regression models,the effects of different dimensions of intergenerational support resources within the family on the ideal number of children and gender preferences of rural women of childbearing age are explored respectively,and the reasons for their formation are further elucidated.The following findings emerged from the study:First of all,the fertility intentions of rural married women of childbearing age show a shift from traditional to modern characteristics.Firstly,in terms of the ideal number of children,the level of willingness to have more children has decreased significantly,and "having fewer children is better" has gradually become the collective consciousness of rural women of childbearing age.Secondly,in terms of gender preference,the concept of "having more children is more blessed" has faded,and "it does not matter if you have a boy or a girl" has been adopted.Thirdly,the traditional nature of fertility preference has been retained,and "two children,one boy and one girl" still dominates the ideal child structure of women of childbearing age.Furthermore,intergenerational support significantly influences the fertility intentions of rural women of childbearing age.Firstly,based on rational expectations of the future,financial and caregiving support from the offspring to the father had a respectively significant negative effect on women of childbearing age’s intention to have "three or more" children and boy preference.Secondly,paternal support to offspring has a significant impact on women’s fertility intention,and the impact of intergenerational support varies across forms and sources.On the one hand,in terms of maternal family support,women’s willingness to have more children is lower when they receive more financial support from their maternal family,and women’s preference for boys is weaker when the level of care support from their maternal family is higher,mainly because women’s increased family power reinforces their "individualistic" fertility orientation.On the other hand,in-law support positively influences women’s preference for boys by "exchanging" discourse.Moreover,caregiving support from in-laws has a negative effect on childbearing age women’s intention to have more than three children,mainly because the difference in perceptions between the two generations in the co-parenting process may lead to intensified family conflicts,which in turn inhibits childbearing intentions of women of childbearing age.