Bezdzietność – wybór, ograniczenia, czy splot okoliczności? Jakościowa analiza procesu pozostawania bezdzietną

Even though survey studies recurrently show that Poles want to have children and that parenthood is important to them, more and more Polish women remain childless. This discrepancy calls for a closer consideration. We need to understand a nature of childbearing desires and intentions much better and investigate obstacles which might prevent women from fulfilling them. In this paper, I analyse 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews with childless women aged 37–46. The qualitative methodology is applied to explore what preferences, circumstances and life-choices of the respondents have led them to childlessness. The respondents discussed several factors: A lack of a partner, fecundity problems, postponement of childbearing related to employment or life priorities other than family and childbearing. However, the results show that it is rarely possible to find a single reason for remaining childless, as various factors collide and interact in women’s lives.