Fertility trends in Serbia during the 1990s

The 1990s represent an exceptionally complex period for the population of Serbia. In addition to the impact of long-term factors, various tumultuous events affected its demographic development, such as breaking apart of former Yugoslavia, armed conflicts in the neighboring countries, sanctions imposed by the international community, social changes (transition transformation or regression), deep economic crisis, collapse of social stratification political problems, institutional crisis, and NATO military intervention. Maladjustment to the changed system of values and norms, lower level of personal attainment, feeling of insecurity, and living under permanent stress are the main features of life at an individual psychological level. Deprivation or living at the subsistence level are the main elements of the economic cost sustained by the majority of the population. How have these changes affected an individual's decision to have children? The analysis of futility indicators points to an obvious decline in the number of births across low fertility regions of Serbia. Also, the analysis has raised the question why the decline in population fertility in the low fertility regions was not even higher, bearing in mind the experiences undergone by the countries with economy in transition as well as the depth of the crisis in society. In that sense several factors come to mind. The most important are the universality of marriage socio-psychological investigations confirmed domination of the traditional character or mentality in Serbia during the 1990s, and the government’s approach to the issue of fertility improved during this time. Besides demographic needs were carefully taken into account in all amendments to the old and formulation of the new measures in the area of social policy. Mention should be made of measures ensuring employment rights of women and their entitlement to maternity leave, maternity pay, and provision of institutionalized care for the children. On the other hand under-reporting of live births, lack of knowledge on the size and characteristics of emigration flows limited the analysis of population fertility in Kosovo and Metohia. But, registered data as well as survey results show to the perseverance of the fertility model of transitional type displaying obvious traditional elements

Student standpoints relevant for future reproductive behavior

This paper deals with the various standpoints of students on their motivation for parenthood, planning and deciding on birth giving, influence between marriage and parenthood, parent role complexity and responsibility, on the knowledge of effect and consequences of the problem of insufficient birth giving, with an aim of getting to know the main characteristics of their possible reproductive behavior. The analyzed standpoints are part of a more comprehensive and inclusive research, carried out on a sample of 1494 surveyed persons (1000 secondary-school pupils and 494 students) in four biggest regional centers - Belgrade, Novi Sad, Kragujevac and Niš. The orientation only to student’s standpoints had an aim to more completely analyze the already abundant empirical material, which is acceptable due to the fact that students are closer to beginning of birth giving according to their age-situation characteristic. The willingness and desire of the students to become parents is significant, but this is only one of their varied life aspirations (importance of partnership, professional engagement…). The intention is to bring into accordance the realization of the most important roles, which actually indicates to a fairly uniform importance in satisfying the basic individual needs. Apart from that, the need for parenthood is dominantly emotional and altruistic, which can be satisfied by having only one child. Possible reproductive norms - which are directed to having two children, whereby they are higher than the current fertility rates, but also somewhat lower normatively determined expectations in relation to the desired number of children, as well as a significant orientation towards marriage and parenthood and the existence of the knowledge on the problem of the impossibility of simple reproduction and conscience of social need for population reproduction - represent a gap for realization of measures for motivating birth giving and parenthood rehabilitation. The possible reproduction model is not significantly determined by gender, because the noted differentiation in frequency of certain standpoints does not indicate to formation of "female" and "male" reproductive models. On the other hand, possible qualitative changes in relations between partners are noted which are manifested in more uniform engagement in birth control and decision making, as well as a more uniform representation of motherhood and fatherhood in realizing the basic needs of the child