Document Type : Research/Original/Regular

Authors

• Fateme Malekkhani ¹
• Fatemeh Bidaki ²
• Zahra Malekkhani ³

¹ Faculty of social sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran

² MS student of agricultural biotechnology, University of Tarbiat Modares, Tehran

³ Population and family governance University of Tehran

Abstract

Considering the matching of reproductive age with the age of education and its decline after the completion of higher education, there is a need to pay special attention to having children while studying. This article specifically focuses on the attitudes and challenges of students towards the issue of having children. Data collection was done in two stages; In the first stage, an in-depth semi-structured interview was conducted with 15 students. In the next step, using the initial findings, new questions were formulated and published in the form of an electronic questionnaire in the virtual space (university groups) and 60 valid answers were received. The data were coded based on Atreid Stirling's thematic analysis model in an iterative process. In the process of analysis, 75 basic themes, 8 organizing themes and 2 inclusive themes were identified. The overarching themes are "necessity of having children from the perspective of students" and "obstacles and needs of students in the field of having children". Under the first theme, four organizing themes are "individual motivations", "family motivations", "social motivations" and "religious motivations", and under the second concept, five organizing themes are "economic needs", "cultural needs", "psychological needs", There are "needs in the field of health" and "facilitation-support needs". Finally, by reviewing the existing policies and laws and using the experience of family-friendly universities in the world, solutions were presented to improve the status of having children in this group.

Highlights

Background and Purpose

Solving the population problem needs a correct understanding of the objective and subjective barriers to having children. Some obstacles and needs in the field of childbearing are common among students and the rest of the society, but students have their own challenges too. These challenges become more evident as the level of education increases. Addressing this issue is necessary for certain reasons. First, the age of starting university education often coincides with the reproductive age. With the end of higher education, the reproduction tendency or capacity begins to decline, and new problems arise in this regard. Considering the general trend of university education in Iran, these problems pose serious challenges to the population in the long run. Especially, with the increasing admission of women to university and the importance of academic degrees in marriage, student couples face the challenges of education and, thus, have the least number of children. Second, with the long-term presence of top talents in universities and their greater exposure to these obstacles, the birth rate of this group gradually decreases and the country's genetic reserve of talents is depleted.

Relatively rich literature has been formed around the issue of student fertility and the relationship between education and childbearing in the world. All researchers agree on one point; with the increase in the level of education (especially for women), the fertility rate decreases. Some researchers point to the issues of climate, health, food security, biodiversity, energy and other vital resources as well as the need of developing countries to reduce population growth and evaluate this phenomenon positively (Götmark & Andersson, 2020). In contrast, some have pointed to intelligent higher education. They believe that the reduction of childbearing in the educated classes of the society reduces the collective intelligence in the long term. So, they introduce it as a great risk for societies (Misenberg, 2008). In general, based on the existing research, bearing children among educated people decreases for several reasons including a) increase of the age of marriage and the high probability of permanent celibacy (Shen, 2018), b) lack of support during studies and pressure of roles, c) biological limitations, d) economic issues (e.g.,the problem of housing, financing of students, and the economic conditions of women), e) change of cultural norms and the attitudes of educated people (Chaudhury, 1984), f) the relationship between marriage and having children (in many countries, this relationship is stronger among the educated), g)association of quantitative and qualitative values (i.e., tendency to increase the quality of parenting versus decreasing the quantity of children) (Cornett, 2020), h) sensitivity to parenting and a kind of idealism, i) more desire for and access to contraceptives, j) reduction of child mortality in families with higher education, and k) Reduced attractiveness of having children among the educated.

So far, various theories have been used to understand the relationship between the increase of education level and the decrease of fertility. A large number of researchers have explained this relationship by referring to the opportunity cost theory. Some have also combined this theory with others such as the theory of roles and the effect of human capital (Brüderl & Diekmann, 1997).

Method

The research data were collected in two stages. In the first stage, using the snowball method, 15 students of Sharif University of Technology, Science and Technology University, Amir Kabir University, Tehran University and Allameh Tabatabai University, including 10 women and 5 men, were identified, and semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with them. In order to achieve a more accurate understanding of the dimensions of the problem and have a greater diversity in the samples, the initial findings were used to extract the challenges of childbearing and formulate new questions in the form of an electronic questionnaire to distribute among university groups in the cyberspace. A total of 54 female and 6 male students, 13 of whom were single and 47 were married, answered the questions. The data were analyzed and evaluated with the thematic analysis method based on the model proposed by Attride-Stirling (2001).

Results

In the process of analysis, 75 basic themes,8 organizing themes and 2 inclusive themes were identified. Individual, family, social and religious motivations were included under the comprehensive theme of "need to have children". Also, economic, cultural, medical, psychological and support-facilitation needs were included under the inclusive theme of ”obstacles to and prerequisites of having children”.

Figure1. The need to have children

According to the findings, there seems to be a desire to have children among students, but some structural problems prevent them from thinking about having children or a large number of children. The male students mostly mentioned job and housing as their problems, and the female ones referred to the lack of academic, social and family support for childcare

Discussion and Conclusion

The results of this research show that the barriers to having children among students are very diverse. The factors that have turned raising children into a challenge for students mainly include the prohibition of employment during studies, too much academic preoccupation, lack of supportive organs for students, new attitudes about family size, induction of a feeling of being repulsed by othera, and education, especially for mothers. To cope with these challenges, special policies and laws are needed. In many countries, family-friendly universities have been established to reduce the effect of such obstacles and facilitate the education of parents. These universities have created structures and facilities to provide material and psychological supports for parents (CohenMiller et al., 2018). The supports range from matrimonial dormitories, financial aids and scholarships for parents to psychological and counseling services, flexible educational planning, and appropriate institutions such as child-parent libraries. These accommodations can be localized and reproduced in our country too.

Keywords

• Student
• childbearing
• challenges
• obstacles
• family friendly university

Main Subjects

• parenting