Доброволното бездетство е културно все по-допустимо в развита Европа
Voluntary Childlessness is Increasingly Culturally Acceptable in Developed Europe

Summary/Abstract: The study analyses societal norms about voluntary childlessness in 29 European countries in the context of 1) achieved human development measured by its three main components: health, income and education and 2) some cultural norms towards inequalities and exclusion and the degree of individualism and collectivism in societies. The comparative analysis uses microdata from two waves of the European Social Survey, the third from 2006 and the ninth from 2018/2019, as well as aggregated data from Eurostat. The main statistical methods are descriptive and principal components analysis. Countries were classified according to their degree of modernisation. We registered unidirectionality across countries in the change of cultural norms relative to voluntary childlessness over time. We found convergences in the classification of countries according to attitudes towards voluntary childlessness and according to human development and cultural norms achieved, with human development leading the way. The study interprets the results in the context of traditional, modern and postmodern. The results of the study raise more fundamental theoretical questions related to the direction of change in cultural norms, such as what can we expect to happen in Central and Eastern European countries.

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