The Social Norms of Childbearing and Attitudes on Assisted Reproduction in Hungary and in Europe

There have been considerable changes in childbearing during the past few decades all over Europe. The fertility rate has been decreasing in most of the countries while more and more children are born out of wedlock, for example, in less stable partnerships, such as cohabitation. Single women are also more likely to choose having children alone. The mean age of becoming parents shifted to later ages and the childlessness rate is increasing in spite of the fact that more and more people turn to assisted reproduction technology in order to receive help. 

The aim of this study is to investigate how the social meaning of children changed, and to reveal the attitudes towards assisted reproduction all over Europe. We found that people became more tolerant towards the different types of families. However, the changes were more pronounced in Northern and Western European societies than in post socialist countries in the observed period. As for assisted reproduction it can be stated that people are rather tolerant with it in each county.

We used data from the second (1990), third (1999) and fourth (2008) waves of the Gene- rations European Value Studies. We applied descriptive statistics and regression models.