Child Bearing

Question 1

Changes to the role of women

Answer 1

• Women are becoming more involved in Higher education and delaying marriage and children until later in life
• Career aspirations of women have led to decrease in fertility rates of all women under the age of 40- suggests that women are waiting longer to have children
• Increased career aspirations means women are less likely to have larger families as they want to progress within their careers

Question 2

Improved contraception

Answer 2

• Avalibility and effectiveness of contraception and family planning methods allow women to have greater control over when they have children
• Availability of contraception on prescription and new technologies associated with contraception have increased efficiency of protecting from unwanted pregnancy
• Male contraception has increased as a result of awareness campaigns into sexually transmitted diseases

Question 3

Delaying child-bearing

Answer 3

• Greater indivdiualism in lifetsyles have meant that couples are more likely to wait until later in life to have children
• Career progression, insecurity of relationships and uncertain employment all impact on the decision to have children

Question 4

Changing values

Answer 4

• Parenthood is a lifelong stressful commitment many couples are now deciding that they do not want children, whereas before this would have been a bad thing. It is now accepted in society

Question 5

Cost of child bearing

Answer 5

• The cost of raising a child is rising every year with the current estimate at 230,000 from birth to 18. This can influence couples who choose to only have one child as they cannot afford to have a second
• Rise of child-centred society can impact on the costs of raising children

Question 6

Infant mortality rate

Answer 6

• Fewer people die in their childhood than ever before, this means that fewer families are compstating by having more children in the hope that 1 or 2 will survive infancy.

Question 7

Reasons for a decline in child bearing rates

Answer 7

1. changes to role of women
2. improved contraception
3. delaying child bearing
4. cost of child bearing
5. infant morality rates

Question 8

Impacts of changing fertility rates

Answer 8

1. Reduction in labour force
2. Dependency ratio
3. Immigration

Question 9

Reduction in labour force

Answer 9

With less people being born gaps are starting to show in the labour force, meaning that there are not the people to fill the gaps left by those retiring

Question 10

Dependency ratio

Answer 10

The dependency ratio is an age-population ratio of those typically not in the labour force. With fewer children being born, the ration becomes unbalanced due to ageing populations

Question 11

Immigration

Answer 11

Immigration becomes more important with declining birth rates as this will fill gaps in the labour market