A study of relationship between religiosity, sex role attitude, attitude toward children and ideal and actual number of children

The purpose of this study is to answer these questions: What is the ideal number of children for married women and what is its relationship to their religiosity and gender role attitudes. To answer this question, the literature reviewed, and questionnaire among 400 married women in Shiraz distributed using stratified random sampling. Findings showed that also religiosity has a significant relationship to actual number of children but there is a considerable agreement about ideal number of them can be seen regardless of religiosity. Attitudes towards gender roles have a significant relationship with the ideal number of children which remains significant after control of other variables. Finding suggests that women plan number of their children regarding the role of a good woman in their mind. The results show that the rate of population growth has strong cultural roots and is a consequence of changing values to more individualistic nature and gender role attitudes. Women now are more care about quality of family life and upbringing better children and it is more important than the number of children.