All the choice and all the responsibilities: an exploration of the agency perceived by women with children around their childbearing

Findings from an exploratory study of agency around childbearing perceived by women with children from a feminist perspective are presented. Contemporary women‘s childbearing has confusedly been portrayed as chosen but constrained and also a duty. Most recently women have been considered to have a duty to reproduce to stimulate economic growth. Furthermore, a plethora of fertility theories have been put forward to explain recent declining fertility but these have found to be incapable of explaining fertility trends and the complexity of childbearing negotiations. Amongst these deliberations women‘s interests tend to get lost. This research attempts to reverse that tendency. Taking part in this research were 26 women each of whom had at least one child of nine years of age or younger from in and around Orange, NSW. Data was collected using in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus groups. As agency is ill-defined within sociology, seven criteria for recognising agency were constructed from a review of sociological theory. These criteria were used as a series of lenses through which the data were viewed; allowing for the explanatory powers of theories to be compared. The findings show that women‘s agency around childbearing was intermittent and imperfect but not completely absent. Important to the discourse of choice prevalent in the popular media and expounded by economic rationalists, the concept of choice was shown to be simplistic. Rather the women described complex negotiations between biological factors, social influences and personal preferences. This research demonstrates that despite making some progress in workforce participation, women‘s expected role in the home curtailed what they could achieve. The thesis furthers understanding of women‘s childbearing agency, has implications for public policy, provides insights into the relevance of sociological theories to women who have children and provides a novel methodological approach for assessing agency