On an individual level the connection is likely to be that “traditional families” have more children than “modern families” in “conservative” systems – I’m using the termonology which is common in social policy research – but that the share of traditional families compared to modern ones is falling. In “social democratic” systems there would be fewer “traditional” families and the gap between the number of children would be smaller.

Btw: I noted that the author of one of the posts, that the original post in this thread linked to, complained about the difficulties of being (and wanting to be) a full-time mother while at the same time doing academic work. A Scandinavian mother would leave her child/ren in day care after the end of parental leave and go on with her work. End of story.

It seems to be the case that the one child policy is a progressive thing. The less progressive view is that you aren’t allowed any.

What are the parameters in the relationship you describe?

What measures social conservatism and how much does it lower fertility rates?

How does it relate to the single-breadwinner model you describe, for example, are you saying couples with one breadwinner have fewer children than couples with two-breadwinners.

Does the data hold for the USA also where social conservatism is correlated with fewer births? Is this a trend over time or a trend across areas?

But that just could be because I’ve seen the story in three different communities today, so I’m sort of primed… ;)

No weasels here.

In a modern society, a system which is based on the single-breadwinner model discourages women from having children.

The question then is: Can this macro-level observation be reproduced at the medium- and micro-levels? And: Can we conversely say something about the degree of social conservatism of medium- and micro-level institutions (such as segments of the labour market and individual workplaces) by looking at the rate of births among women who work there? (Just to state the obvious: Is academia to a higher degree than other parts of society still based on a socially conservative or a single/male breadwinner-model?)

The article, that I link to, also have a really fascinating discussion about how demographic statistics are politicised in Germany. Basically, the Christian Democrats do not want reliable statistics about variations in fertility rates.

PS: At “my” department, two of our female grad students have had children recently and the overwhelming majority of the female staff are in a relationship (yes: I didn’t write “and have children” but I suspect that the rate of infertility isn’t much higher than in Sweden-at-large). It is the men who are more likely to be unmarried and childless.

But this is of cause anecdotal evidence – I would need numbers for all of “my” university or Swedish universities to be able to say something reliable about this.

…that said, I have noticed that grad school in general is not very compatible with child-rearing, and that a successful academic career, with frequent traveling (for fieldwork, conferences, invited talks, archival research etc) appears much less so.

…and yes, I am already aware that the idea of fieldwork or archival research alongside an academic career is laughable… but allow me my illusions for the moment.