Childbearing Challenges in Educated Women with Three or More Children and Motivational Strategies

Population and its changes have long been one of the most important and vital issues of a country. According to the latest data from the Statistics Center, the fertility rate has reached 1.7, which means less than the replacement level, which shows that we are facing the challenge of population decline. Changes in women's lifestyles and attitudes are one of the most important factors affecting the issue of fertility. In this study, the challenges of fertility in women with three children were investigated. The aim of this study was to find the motivating factors for fertility. The research was qualitative and phenomenological. For this purpose, in-depth interviews were conducted with 20 mothers aged 26-42 years, who had three or more children and were selected by snowball sampling method. According to the analysis of the findings, three main categories of barriers to fertility, motivating factors for fertility and expectations to facilitate fertility and 10 sub-categories and more than 100 concepts were obtained. In general, it can be concluded that people have large numbers of children according to their religious beliefs, and in this way, the material and spiritual support received from both families can be a helpful factor. Also, the accompanying help of the wife in household chores and caring for the children to the mother was an important and effective issue.