A Study on the Effects of the Quality of Marital Life on the Childbearing Intention

This study focuses on the effects of the quality of marital life on the childbearing intention. The discussion of this paper is based on the results of a survey conducted in Tehran City. The survey includes 1232 married men and women under 49 years old who have been selected on the basis of multi-stage cluster sampling method. According to the preliminary results of this study, the childbearing desire is affected by the quality of marital life: the lower the latter, the higher the former. However, this preliminary result is not supported by multivariate analyses of this study. In addition, the results of logistic regression analyses indicate that the effect of the quality of marital life on individuals’ childbearing intention depends on their current status in terms of the number of children they already have. This means that a higher quality of marital life can lead to greater childbearing intention only amongst those who have no or one child, whereas it does not have any significant effect on childbearing intention of those who already have two or more children.