Fertility and personal networks: the meaning of children in friendships among men

An-Magritt Jensen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

The hypothesis of “the low fertility trap” (Lutz et al.,2007) claims is that: “The fewer the children belonging to the environment that the young people experience, the lower the number of children that will be part of their normative system in terms of what is a desirable life” (op.cit. 13). While most European countries have experienced very low fertility for a long period, the TFR in Norway has increased since the mid-1980s and is now among the highest in Europe. Paradoxically, during the same period childlessness among men has also grown. More men live without children and the “child environment” is increasingly gendered. This paper concentrates on young people’s “child environment” through the perspective of men primarily. The analysis is based upon the project “The Social Meaning of Children” financed by the Research Council of Norway with Anne Lise Ellingsæter, An-Magritt Jensen and Merete Lie as project leaders. The data is semi-structured interviews of 90 women and men in their prime reproductive ages (25-40 years), with and without children, from upper middle and working classes and selected from two large Norwegian cities during 2010. The network analysis focuses on the role of friends in particular, emphasising the concepts of social influence and social learning (Mische, 2011; Rossier and Bernardi, 2009). A preliminary observation suggests that friend-networks in relation to children are highly gendered. Few men discuss childbearing with other friends. Their female partner’s friends seem to play a larger role of social influence in childbearing, than men’s own friends. However, not(-yet) fathers pick up what happens to their own friends after a child birth. This social learning can both be positive and negative for their own willingness to have children.