Expected Family Size and Perceived Status Deprivation among High School Senior Women

Abstract

Abstract Recent research and the increased visibility of the women’s liberation movement have raised questions concerning the influence of changing attitudes of women on their family size intentions. A sample of 238 high school senior women was drawn to test a causal model in which several structural variables and attitudes concerning the role of women were seen as influencing career, education, and marital expectations. It was proposed that these life-style expectations along with the causally prior structural and attitudinal variables would influence family size expectations. Although very little variation in fertility expectations was explained, the differential effects of the model on the two transformed expected family size variables yielded substantively significant results.