Motherhood Situation and Life Satisfaction: Are Reasons for Having No Children Important?

The proportion of adult women without children in the United States has increased in recent years and there are multiple reasons women do not have children. Past research concerning the well-being of women relative to their motherhood status does not recognize the great diversity among women without children. I attempt to fill that gap by classifying women based on the presence or absence of children, fertility barriers, and childbearing intentions. The classification results in five motherhood situations: mothers, voluntarily childfree, women delaying motherhood, involuntarily childless with situational barriers and involuntarily childless with biomedical barriers. This study specifies the relationship between women's life satisfaction and motherhood situation using data from the first wave of the National Survey of Fertility Barriers (N=4,712). I draw on identity theory and life course theory to compare the life satisfaction of women with and without children to see if the status (not having children) is more important than the process (the reason women have no children). I also test the moderating effects of importance of motherhood, age, and marital status. Findings show that women who delay motherhood and childless women with situational barriers are different from women who choose to be childfree or women who have biomedical barriers. Therefore it is important not only to compare mothers to non-mothers, but also to explore the reasons why women do not have children when examining differences in life satisfaction. Acknowledgements I would like to thank all of the members of my thesis committee at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Drs. McQuillan has been an invaluable mentor since the beginning of my graduate studies, and I am grateful for her guidance. Dr. Cheadle has also provided support throughout my graduate training and I appreciate his insight. Dr. Kazyak's positive feedback has helped me to refine this project. Finally, I would like to thank Kelley Sittner Hartshorn for her patience and willingness to help each time I walked down the hall and interrupted her work to ask a thesis-related question. 4 INTRODUCTION There has been a substantial increase in the proportion of adult women without