This study aims to contribute to the broad field of research regarding changes in fertility and postponement of parenthood. To accomplish this, I combine Richard Sennett’s exposition of “the new culture of capitalism” (2006 s. 126) and one of Daoud and Larsson’s (2014 s. 52) interpretations of the sociological term embeddedness. More particularly, the present study intends to investigate whether the social institutions that, in line with Sennett (2006 s. 25, 35), promote short-termism and flexibility, have come to be internalized (i.e., embedded) in the way women relate to the long-term investment of making a parental debut. The data consist of statements derived from eight semi-structured interviews with women aged between 20 and 28. The interviews executed to answer the following questions: • How can we understand the way young Swedish women, without children, relate to committing parental debut? • Which factors do young Swedish women, without children, emphasize regarding a possible parental debut? Although the results were not unambiguous, there are indications that women choose, or have chosen, to postpone their parental debut due to ambivalence regarding making long-term commitments. Another result was that a possible parental debut not always is considered as a priority to other aspects. This included education and career, as well as the ability to be “free” and make self-sufficient decisions. To a certain extent, this rationale and reasoning were prevalent regardless of age and occupation, which was positive concerning the generalizability of the results. On the other hand, it was also clear that other aspects were considered important, which stresses the importance of taking the theoretical context into account. A suggestion is that further research should enlarge the number of survey units to increase the possibility to generalize the results. Furthermore, my opinion is that prospective research should take this kind of institutional approach into account in the attempts of understanding other trends and phenomena in society.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-101122 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Lundin, Kalle |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för socialt arbete (SA) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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