Becoming Parent in a Post-Communist Society: An Analysis of Ideational Factors

Zsolt Spéder, Demographic Research Institute
Balázs Kapitány, Demographic Research Institute

The move from an early fertility to a "new", late fertility model is characteristic for each post-communist societies including the Hungarian one, and is the basic reason for low period fertility. The offered approaches explaining the changes, such as the second demographic transition theory, the economic crisis hypothesis, the disorderliness approach, can be located in a space stretching between structural and cultural explanations. Using two waves of an ongoing follow-up survey, we will be able to show “selection” effects of cultural factors on childbearing behaviour and at the same time control for some structural factors. The effects of religiosity, child related norms (ideal age and ideal number of children), individualism- and anomia-scale, and optimism are analysed in our models. Using parallel logistic regression models for male and female respondents, we could show and compare influences of ideational factors.