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We chose to analyse Hungarian childlessness in order to map whether there is any voluntary childlessness at all in a society which is characterised by strong traditional family values and the widely accepted social norm that everyone should become a parent.

To answer to this question, we applied both quantitative and qualitative methods. First, we analysed the first three waves of the Hungarian panel survey ‘Turning Points of the Life Course’ conducted in 2001, 2004 and 2008. The focus is on men and women who were childless in 2001 and were still childless in 2008. To have a better understanding of the background of the quantitative results, we have also analysed 55 life-history interviews conducted with heterosexual men and women, who were recruited by using chain-referral sampling.

According to the qualitative findings the categorisation of childless people is quite fluid. For example, postponers became definitely childless while some originally voluntarily childless respondents became parents. However, the qualitative analysis allowed us to understand the mechanism behind this. In addition, using mixed methods also highlighted some inconsistencies between the qualitative and quantitative results.

Adolescents in their late teenage years are commonly faced with the difficulties of making important life decisions, such as whether to marry, whether to have children, and in particular, what type of occupation they wish to pursue. Researchers have often posited that such decisions are best understood as the end product of socialization within the individual’s specific learning environment (see Bronfenbrenner, 1994). Aspirations, particularly occupational goals, do not occur within a vacuum; rather, they will be affected by a variety of factors, such as gender (e.g. Davey, 1993; Mau & Bikos, 2000), race/ethnicity (Arbona & Novy, 1991; Marjoribanks, 1985), and social class (Weinger, 2000). In particular, there exists a need to better recognize and understand the familial context in which these decisions are made (see Marjoribanks, 1997). Researchers have addressed many of the potential predictors of adolescents’ aspirations, yet typically have focused on only one set of factors. This study will attempt to provide a more comprehensive understanding of adolescents’ occupational aspirations by focusing on how they are affected by the familial context, and how such effects vary by race/ethnicity and gender.

Purpose – Utilizing the intersectionality framework, this study examines how a racially diverse group of adults aim to balance work–family life.Methodology/approach – This chapter uses qualitative data from the Intersections of Family, Work, and Health Study consisting of 132 black, white, and Mexican-American adults.Findings – We find that socioeconomic status and marriage provide social and economic capital to more easily fulfill role obligations. Individuals with more capital have more choices and are offered a chess board and a variety of pieces to facilitate the goal of creating work–family harmony. Individuals with less capital end up with less job flexibility and play checkers through rigid concrete roles because work decisions are in the hands of their employers instead of their own.Social implications – This chapter sheds light on the influence of high social status and the ability some individuals have to maximize both job flexibility and autonomy in managing work–family life. As we show here, married middle-class whites are able to manage work–family life better than professional black single mothers and working class Mexican Americans by having the ability to choose to play checkers or chess.Originality/value of chapter – We argue that the concept of “balancing” does little to express the ways individuals negotiate the constraints of work and family. By using an intersectionality perspective, we show that conceptualizing work–family life as “checkers or chess” games allow for the cognitive process of decision making (in terms of, for example, time pressures and perceived role demands) to be assessed more efficiently across work–family domains.

This paper aims to explore how couples reflect gender role–related attitudes in their family formation process and whether these processes could be described through the lens of ambivalence. Using qualitative methods, semi-structured interviews with Estonian married and cohabiting couples were conducted (all together 24 interviewees). Analysis revealed themes of ambivalence toward gender roles among married and cohabiting couples. The present study could be classified as exploratory in identifying ambivalence, with open-ended and emergent analysis.

It is known that Estonians have adopted Western values and their family behavior resembles that of Nordic countries. However, our interviews showed that on the level of the individual, gender role–related attitudes in relationships have remained traditional. The reason for this might lie in the rapid change of values that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Western lifestyle was seen as an ideal, and copied in behavior before the actual family or gender role values could undergo the transformation needed to support egalitarian family values.

Our study reveals that the societal context of a rapid change in values and norms might create confusion and ambivalence in attitudes. Therefore, a high proportion of cohabiting couples might not be the product of egalitarian gender role–related attitudes but a product of ambivalent couple relations where the couple has not discussed thoroughly the vision and expectations they have for each other and their relationship.

During the transition to parenthood, the gender division of paid and unpaid work undergoes a profound redefinition in response to both attitudes and resources. These attitudes may be concordant or discordant between two partners, they may or may not clash with perceived financial or labour market constraints, and they may or may not provoke explicit conflicts and negotiations. In this study, by combining quantitative and qualitative data, we focus on Italian couples with young children or in transition to first child, and we explore what happens when partners have discordant views. The findings show that the division of domestic and care work seems more resistant to change and more responsive to the husband’s attitudes than does the division of paid work, as the latter is mainly driven by the woman’s education and attitudes. The findings also show that very few couples overtly disagree. If they do so, the main issue in dispute is the allocation of domestic work and the main solution consists more in hiring external help than in obtaining the husband’s greater participation. Compared with domestic work, the allocation of care is a less disputed and more flexible issue: when women start negotiations on a more equal sharing, men are more willing to increase their participation. However, when a more equal sharing is not attained, couples’ narratives tend to give the “cause” to the constraints of the man (typically his work) than of the woman, while they point at a redefinition (for the best of the family) of her rather than his preferences.

This study explores the interplay between macro- and micro-level predictors of psychological well-being related to work and family. We use nations as the context and investigate how country-level gender equalities and gender norms affect individual well-being and its relationship to micro-level predictors.

Social role explanations suggest that women’s vulnerability in mental health is due to socially assigned gender roles and gendered socialization. We utilize multi-level modeling and data from the International Social Survey Programme 2002, to examine how the societal level gender climate impacts the effects of gender roles on psychological well-being for married and employed men and women in 33 countries.

Gender differences in mental health remain, but larger differences are observed in less egalitarian countries regarding gender. Also, caring roles are negatively associated with women’s psychological well-being to a greater degree than men’s, and the negative impacts are stronger in more egalitarian countries. Furthermore, men show lower well-being regarding work responsibility, but the gender effects are weaker in more egalitarian countries.

Our psychological well-being is affected not only by the actual role behaviors but also by how we each perceive these roles.

This study provides a broader picture of the relationship between gender and psychological well-being related to work and family. It also illustrates complex relationships between macro-level gender climate and individual-level psychological well-being and how structural differences may impact individual outcomes.