Female university students' attitudes to future motherhood and their understanding about fertility

Abstract

Objectives As highly educated women tend to postpone childbearing, the purpose was to explore female university students' attitudes to future motherhood and their understanding about fertility.

Methods Female students (n = 300), visiting a Student Health Centre in Sweden, answered a questionnaire with mainly multiple choice questions and verbal rating scales.

Results The women wanted to have two to three children at the age of 29 for the first birth and 35 for the last. Only 2.7% did not plan to have any children. Six out of 10 would consider having an abortion if confronted with an unplanned pregnancy ‘right now’. The most important circumstances for women's decision to have children were to be sufficiently mature, have a stable partner to share parenthood with, have completed studies and have a good economy. Having children before they got ‘too old’ was only ranked as very important by 18% of women. The women had an acceptable understanding about fertility.

Conclusions It appears that female university students are not very concerned about having children before they get ‘too old’. Therefore, it is important that caregivers, working with contraceptive counselling also include information about fertility, especially to women who intend to postpone their motherhood.

Key words:

• Attitudes
• Knowledge
• Fertility
• Motherhood
• Female university students