ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1612384
This article is part of the Research TopicParenthood and Parental Wellbeing: Exploring Diverse Trajectories and InfluencesView all articles
What Do We Need Kids For? Childbearing Motivations, Personal Values, and Socio-Demographic Differences
Provisionally accepted
Eugene Tartakovsky*
Mor Mizrahi- Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
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In this study, we propose a new conceptualization of childbearing motivations and examine their links with personal values and socio-demographic variables during the preconception period. To test our theoretical model, we conducted a cross-sectional study using a stratified sample of young Israeli Jews without children (aged 18-35, n = 1,122). We found that childbearing motivations form four clusters, reflecting different goals people strive to achieve through childbirth. We referred to these clusters as life enrichment, authority, preservation, and perpetuity. The four clusters formed a two-dimensional circumflex paralleling the structure of values. The pattern of connections found between childbearing motivations and personal values revealed a contextualization mechanism linking general and specific motivations. We also discovered indirect effects of socio-demographic variables on childbearing motivations through personal values. These findings indicate that differences in childbearing motivations across socio-demographic groups may be partly attributed to variations in general motivational goals that characterize the groups.
Keywords: childbearing motivations, general and context-specific motivations, personal values, Preconception period, socio-demographic differences in values and childbearing motivations
Received: 15 Apr 2025; Accepted: 11 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Tartakovsky and Mizrahi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Eugene Tartakovsky, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
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