Attityder till barnfrihet : (Icke-)reproduktionens betydelse

Sammanfattning: This thesis is a study in attitudes towards voluntary childlessness. The specific aim is to investigate attitudes towards voluntary childlessness in a society with pronatalist values: how are they structured and how can the structure be interpreted in the Swedish context? As inspiration and theoretical framework the theory of “the value of children”, that was developed by Lois W. Hoffman and Martin L. Hoffman in the 1970’s USA, was used. In order to fulfill the aim a quantitative survey was conducted on the Internet with 2,283 respondents. The data were factor-analyzed and three main factors were interpreted. These factors were named “The natural parenthood”, “Freedom” and “The personal experience”. They were interpreted as three collective dimensions of thinking about parenthood and voluntary childlessness. The study contributes to our knowledge of pronatalist norms as well as the ways in which attitudes towards voluntary childlessness are shaped. The thesis proposes that pronatalist norms can hide under a supposedly individualistic discourse or under internalized beliefs about naturalness. Positive attitudes towards voluntary childlessness seems to contain, above all, beliefs about freedom.