Fertility Desire of Chinese Parents to Have More Children Under the Three-Child Policy
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Abstract
On May 31, 2021, the Chinese government announced the three-child policy. However, unlike the prophase investigation, the policy to encourage more children did not significantly impact couples’ desires to have more children. Fertility desire represents a person’s childbearing wishes when all potential obstacles are disregarded. The fertility desire of Chinese parents for a second or third child should be more specifically known. This qualitative research was used with a content analysis approach based on in-depth and semi-structured interviews with 40 parents and predesigned questions according to the Traits-Desires-Intentions-Behavior (T-D-I-B) framework. Fertility desire of participants to have more children covered three themes: the attraction of multiple offspring to the fertility desire, the desire to have more children but dare not have, and the encouragement of the desire to give birth to more children. Based on these, the supportive encouragement measures of the three-child policy need to be considered. Specifically, incentive measures are adopted regarding the cost of living, investment in education, public welfare and services, and social stereotypes of parental roles to promote more parents’ desire to have more children. From a parental view, the three-child policy lacks practical support measures, which should be an obstacle to fertility.
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