Explaining the Associations of Education and Occupation with Childlessness: The Role of Desires and Expectations to Remain Childless

Although there are well-established relationships between women's higher education, labour force participation (LFP), and occupation on the one hand childlessness other in US, underlying reasons role that desires expectations play remain unclear. We use National Longitudinal Survey of Youth United States (N=4,198 women) apply both logistic regression models to examine early life, multilevel for repeated measures throughout life course. find educational attainment LFP positively associated with childlessness. do not find, however, educated working women more often desire or expect childless. In contrast, we among who ultimately childless, those work fulltime have status occupations children their These results suggest education produce constraints, resulting postponement childbearing which hinders realizing expectations. Since many childless despite expectation become a mother, our findings stress importance work-life reconciliation. It furthermore highlights increasing public awareness regarding decrease fecundity age.