Period fertility declined in much of the developed world to below-replacement levels in the late twentieth century. By the early twenty-first century, more than one-half of the world’s population lived in countries with below-replacement fertility (Wilson 2004). Despite recent increases in fertility (Goldstein et al. 2009; Myrskylä et al. 2009), low fertility continues to be one of the key social challenges for the developed world because of its implications for population aging (European Commission 2006).

Research has identified several important social and demographic determinants of low period fertility. The rise of individualistic values and the increase of women into the paid labor force have led to low levels of desired and actual fertility (Brewster and Rindfuss 2000; Lesthaeghe and van de Kaa 1986) and to fertility postponement. The postponement of births also suppresses period measures of fertility (Bongaarts and Feeney 1998). Although postponement is a major contributing factor to low period fertility (Myrskylä et al. 2013; Sobotka 2004), a decrease in quantum driven by stopping at one or two children, or having none, is also important (Frejka 2008).

Qualitative work suggests that the way in which new mothers and fathers experience becoming parents is an important determinant of further fertility plans (Newman 2008). However, no quantitative work has analyzed how the experience of becoming a parent influences future fertility. Newman’s (2008) qualitative results suggest that this represents an important gap in our understanding of fertility behavior. In this article, we examine how the experience of becoming a parent, as measured by changes in parental well-being during the process of having a first child, influences further parity progression.

We argue that the relationship between parents’ well-being and fertility at the first birth is important for individuals’ further reproductive behavior. Parents’ experiences with the transition to parenthood would be unlikely to be a major factor if people predicted well how they will experience parenthood. However, although parenthood itself is mostly expected, the experience of parenthood is often unexpected, in both positive and negative ways. For example, people underestimate the daily burden of caring for a child (Dyck 1990) but may not anticipate the positive and playful aspects of parenthood. Thus, the unexpected dimensions of parenthood may shape future fertility behavior up or down. If parenthood is more difficult than many new parents expect, and this suppresses parity progression, then micro-level patterns and individual experiences can have large effects on aggregate fertility.

Parents’ Experience of the Transition to Parenthood

Fertility is a choice for most people in the developed world. Before people have children, they are uncertain about what pregnancy and childrearing are like. They may observe how peers or other family members cope with children, but they have no direct experience. After having a first child, though, they learn firsthand about parenting. Therefore, having a second child is a more informed decision than having a first. The experience of the transition to parenthood will inform new parents’ decisions about whether to have another child. If having a first child is an overall positive experience, or more positive than anticipated, then people should be more likely to have another. However, if the transition to parenthood is very difficult or more difficult than expected, then people may choose to remain at parity 1.

Parity progression as learning aligns with several theoretical frameworks, which all lead to similar hypotheses. Learning theories in psychology predict that people will avoid activities that they anticipate will negatively affect their physical or mental health (Rotter 1954). Similarly, the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen 1991; Ajzen and Klobas 2013) predicts that the experience with a first child influences the perceptions of the potential consequences of a second, which influences subsequent fertility behavior. Also, sequential decision theory (Wald 1947) and the conjunctural theory of action (Johnson-Hanks et al. 2011) posit that people make decisions in the present by taking into account their past experiences; a decision about having a baby today will depend on how a past decision has affected well-being.

Earlier demographic research, much of it qualitative, touched on the potential effect of subjective parenting experiences on further parity progression (Callan 1985; Cartwright 1976; Newman 2008; Presser 2001). For example, Presser (2001) predicted that new mothers would be shocked by the unrelenting demands of childrearing, which would discourage additional births. Recent qualitative work conducted among new parents in Australia explicitly examined how the experience of a first birth shapes fertility intentions and behavior (Newman 2008). “The balance of negative and positive experiences was important in decisions about how many times to ‘go through’ the Baby Stage again, although it was perhaps less influential on those who had had a strong desire over their lifetime for a particular family size” (Newman 2008:15). Surprisingly, positive experiences were the minority, but these positive experiences positively affected fertility. More common in Newman’s study was the parenting experience as a “parity progression hurdle” if the pregnancy, birth, or baby stage was particularly difficult or unexpectedly stressful.

Difficulties experienced by new parents that affected their achieved family size fell into three categories. First, new parents reported being strongly affected by difficulties conceiving and experiences of pregnancy. New mothers reported that their medical conditions, physical pain, and pregnancy nausea conflicted with their desire to work, and new fathers were concerned about medical issues for their partners (Newman 2008). Second, the experience of the birth influenced new parents’ desired family size. Long laboring or complications with Cesarean sections shaped parents’ desire not to “go through that again” (Newman 2008:7). Third and most importantly, two-thirds of Newman’s respondents reported that difficulties in the first year after a birth led to downward revisions of plans for additional children. The continuous and intense nature of childrearing in the first year was stressful for most parents, especially for those who had limited knowledge of baby care and social support. Parents with more than one child report that exhaustion in the baby stage was greatest with the first baby, especially if the exhaustion was unexpected. Other important factors for temporarily or permanently postponing having further children were trouble breast-feeding, sleep deprivation, depression, domestic isolation, and relationship breakdown. This qualitative research highlights the importance of the psychosocial experience of the transition to parenthood, but no quantitative work has tested this hypothesis or examined its relative importance net of other factors known to affect final parity.

Subgroup Differences in the Importance of the Transition to Parenthood for Parity Progression

Parents’ experience with a first birth may be a more important factor in determining final parity for some groups rather than others. For example, parenting experiences may be more important for women than men in deciding whether to have another child because women physically experience the pregnancy and birth, do more childcare, and are more likely to take leave from work (Bianchi et al. 2000; Haas 2003). Moreover, the woman’s fertility preferences may carry more weight in the couple’s decision making than the man’s (Testa et al. 2011, 2014).

The transition to parenthood may be a more or less important predictor of further parity progression for parents of different age or different socioeconomic status (SES) groups, although the expected pattern is ambiguous. On the one hand, parenting experiences might be more critical in determining final parity for high-SES or older parents, perhaps because of a greater absolute opportunity cost of unpleasant physical consequences of pregnancy or parenting for high-SES working parents or those who are more advanced in their career (Morgan and Rackin 2010; Quesnel-Vallée and Morgan 2003). High-SES parents may also value their careers more and therefore may be more likely to stop after one child if they decide they cannot accomplish their professional goals after having another child (Newman 2008; Presser 2001). Men and women in higher-status occupations have higher average levels of work-to-home conflict than those in low-status occupations, which may be due to higher demands and involvement with work after hours, known as “the stress of higher status” (Schieman et al. 2006). The transition to parenthood could therefore disproportionately increase work-to-home conflict and stress of high-SES parents more than their low-SES counterparts, leading to a lower probability of having a second child. High-SES women may also be more effective at implementing lower fertility preferences through contraception after learning from negative parenting experiences (Ranjit et al. 2001).

On the other hand, a negative transition to parenthood may be more important for younger and low-SES parents in inhibiting parity progression. Taking time off work to deal with pregnancy, birth, or childcare issues may be more difficult for parents in low-skilled jobs because these jobs offer little flexibility (Anderson et al. 2003). Another reason is that even though the opportunity cost of work is, in absolute terms, lower for low-SES parents, losing a week’s salary to deal with a sick child may be more consequential for low-income parents. A third reason is differences in discounting of the future. Gregory (2007) argued that women who become parents at relatively old ages may place less value on short-term difficulties associated with becoming a parent because they are more “ready” for parenthood and have been anticipating it more intently. If high-SES parents place more weight on the future than the present, then a difficult short-term situation may be downplayed to reach the ultimate goal of a larger family.

The German Context

Germany is the context for our study of parental well-being and parity progression. This decision is dictated by both conceptual reasons and data availability. First, understanding fertility behavior in Germany is important because the country is the largest in Europe (United Nations 2012). Second, across Europe, a major component driving the level of fertility is the transition from parity 1 to 2 (Van Bavel and Różańska-Putek 2010). In Germany, relatively low transition rates to parity 2 is an important component of persistent low fertility. The proportion of mothers who stopped at having one child has been increasing rapidly, from 25 % for the 1935–1939 birth cohort to 32 % for the 1965–1969 birth cohort (Kreyenfeld and Konietzka forthcoming). Moreover, the gap between desired fertility, which is about two, and actual fertility among Germans is very large (Bongaarts 2001), providing a fruitful ground for analyzing the determinants of the transition to parity 2.

The focus on Germany is also dictated by the fact that it is the only country with rich, nationally representative panel data available to test our hypotheses about the parental well-being and fertility behavior over a long period and for a sufficiently large sample. The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), described in detail in the Data section, is the longest data set in the world that includes panel information about both subjective well-being and fertility behavior. Using these data, we are able to analyze how an overall measure of well-being changes annually for new parents and how these changes predict further parity progression. We measure life satisfaction before a first birth and over a long period to observe parity progression, as well as many other factors that affect progression to second birth, such as changes in partnership status and employment.

German fertility can be characterized by persistent low fertility. The period total fertility rate (TFR) has been below 1.5 since 1983. For a period of four years following the unification of East and West Germany in 1990, the TFR dropped below 1.3. There is also important regional variation. In West Germany, the TFR has been very stable, between 1.4 and 1.5, since the 1980s. However, in East Germany, the TFR declined from about 2.0 in 1980 to 1.5 in 1990, and fell below 0.8 after the unification in the early 1990s. By 2010, the TFR in East Germany climbed back to the West German level of approximately 1.4 (Goldstein and Kreyenfeld 2011; Human Fertility Database 2014).