Differences between Women's and Men's Reproductive Goals in Developing Countries

Clearer understanding of the impact of gender on reproductive decision making is important for the formulation of family planning policy in developing countries. In general gender differences in fertilty goals are most likely to be found in highly patriarchal low-income high-fertility lineage-dominated societies in which formal schooling is relatively uncommon. It is unclear however whether men or women are likely to be more pronatalist in such settings. The physical costs to women of bearing children their responsibility for the day-to-day care of children and mens control over most of the resources could result in higher family size desires on the part of men in patriarchal societies. On the other hand womens economic vulnerability in these societies and the dominance of the maternal role could make women more favorable to higher fertility than men. Under relatively modern gender-equal conditions there is most likely to be a similarity of mens and womens fertility goals. A review of available empirical research on gender factors suggests 4 generalizations: 1) there is considerable variation in the relative fertility goals of the sexes across countries and studies; 2) the area of greatest gender asymmetry is the extent to which sons are preferred over daughters; 3) mens tendency to strongly prefer sons may account for their weak tendency to desire additional children more than women do; and 4) more often than not mens and womens fertility goals are the same.