A Phenomenological Study on Married Women Awareness of Childbearing

 One of the fundamental questions of demographers and sociologists is why the fertility rate has decreased during the recent ages. Social scientists consider different factors to explain fertility behavior changes in the 20th and 21st centuries. Here, the main question is what changes have been occurred in the awareness of the modern individual and how she sees childbearing. Iran is also one of the countries which have seen a remarkable decline in fertility rate over the last 50 years. This research investigates the awareness of married women about childbearing.

The research has been performed by the phenomenological method. Childbearing experiences and awareness of 11 married women have been studied in this research. In effect, every Phenomenological study includes in-depth explanations and accurate analysis of lived experience. The current study has been performed by Mostakas method. In the first stage, the problem of research is developed and then the philosophical and phenomenological assumptions are collected. Also, purposive and also accessible samplings have been applied in this study. The researcher has studied the experience and consciousness of 11 married women aged 15-40.  In the third stage, the investigator collected the research information using the deep interview method. In the last stage, the researcher has analyzed the data and extracted meaningful and important propositions or semantic units, clusters, and themes from the phrases.
 

According to the current research findings, childbearing social phenomenon includes central themes such as childbearing meaning, children's ideal number, children's rational number, children's sexual preference, childbearing reasons, childbearing barriers, excessive rational childbearing barriers, concerns for childbearing, concerns for not having children, the experience of having children, pregnancy experience, pregnancy imagination, following mother's childbearing pattern, the reasons for the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of children's number in source family, and finally, how the mother encourages them to have children. It is worth noting that this social phenomenon is resulted from participants' inter-subjectivity on childbearing. To the research participants, the meaning of childbearing includes sacrificing, developing marital life, meeting emotional needs, and fulfilling the desire of childbearing. The average of children's ideal number for each studied woman is 2.7. The average of children's rational number, which means the number of children that every woman can have by considering her situations, is 1.4. Participants prefer to have the girl rather than the boy. The childbearing reasons include religious beliefs, developing marital relationship, the desire of being a mother, the negation of having only one child, and the functions which are accompanied with childbearing for the parents. According to the participants, these functions are emotional. Childbearing barriers cover economic, social, and psychological barriers, disorder in marital relationship, the desire of development, the ideals of raising a child, and cognitive reasons. Childbearing barriers which are excessive rational contain economic barriers, social barriers, lack of source family support, negative lived experience, the fear of being pregnant and also the fear of giving birth, the desire of development, the importance of child quality, child problems, and individual limitations. The concern about childbearing covers economic circumstances, employment, education, and the difficulty of raising a child. The major concern of not having a child is the fear of loneliness. The experience of having children contains its difficulties and pleasures. The pregnancy experience includes the feeling of concern, maternal feelings, difficult or simple pregnancy, and having an abortion. Moreover, the majority of women who have no children felt anxious by the imagination of being pregnant. Most of the participants prefer not to follow the childbearing pattern of their mother (which was almost 4 children). Also, most of the mother participants encourage them for childbearing. Finally, it can be said that cultural changes on childbearing should be considered in Iran's demographic policies. In fact, childbearing is changing in Iran and becomes multidimensional which includes not only the economic factors, but also socio-cultural ones.