Early Stages and Methodological Process

I began my doctorate training in the Department of Sociology and the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in August 2021. Much of the beginning stages of this project involved brainstorming with my adviser about the number of possible directions and ways to study fertility intentions from a social demographic perspective. I knew early on that underneath this project (and like most projects I’ve worked on), there were some questions that motivated its inception and would continue to motivate me in writing a dissertation on this topic.

The questions are “What keeps people together over time, and what returns are offered by marriage and parenthood in contemporary society?” Hence, my interest in voluntary childlessness as it relates to relationship outcomes and health. I knew this project would not simply be a question of what predicts voluntary childlessness, but would also address what are the health and relationship consequences for such a choice. By the end of summer 2022, I became more interested in the notion of “choice” as it relates to reproductive intentions, and I consider this the beginning of when I began to feel more like an interdisciplinary sociologist. A very rewarding moment.

Fall 2022: Having very little quantitative research experience upon entering the program (with only my Bachelor of Arts degree), I utilized what I learned in my statistics course sequence and worked with a statistician who helped me with importing multiple datasets from the CDC’s National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) survey into Stata. I began with analyzing the data collected from 2017-2019, and have since continued examining demographic trends all the way back to 2002. Much of my quantitative training and experience has so far involved familiarizing myself with this dataset, and focusing on variables pertaining to reproductive decision-making, relationship history, and health.

Winter 2023: I worked on finalizing my conceptualization of voluntary childlessness as distinct from other forms of childlessness. This was an essential first step before continuing on with data analysis.

Summer 2023: I continued to use both Stata and Python to run analyses using the final “childless” variable as my (dependent) variable and running multiple regression analyses to examine the complex relationships between this choice and relationship and health experiences and outcomes.

More to come!

Summer 2025: I will be presenting this paper at the 2025 Population Association of America Conference in Washington, D.C.!

I will also continue to work with my academic advisers to submit this paper to a social demography journal.