Wanted to but Did Not: The Diverse Faces of Involuntary Childlessness in a Low Fertility Country

Involuntarily childless women (ICW) are a growing group in societies with low fertility, making it important to understand their characteristics and life paths to inform public policies. In Spain, 15% of women born between 1962 and 1973 are ICW. Using retrospective longitudinal data from the 2018 Spanish Fertility Survey, we apply Multichannel Sequence Analysis to identify different "types" of ICW and explore how their shares change across birth cohorts. We find four distinct clusters, proving the existence of diverse pathways to involuntary childlessness. Cluster 1, labeled "Family", consists mainly of ICW who never worked, finished their education early, left the parental home early, and lived with a partner throughout most of their reproductive lives. These women fit the "family-oriented" type described by Hakim, often living in traditional male-breadwinner households. Cluster 2, the "Adaptive" type, includes ICW who entered the workforce and completed their education early but never achieved job stability. They left the parental home and started living with a partner later than the "family-oriented" women, reflecting Hakim’s "adaptive women". Cluster 3, "Career," contains ICW who studied longer, achieved job stability (often before age 30), and left the parental home later than those in the other groups. Fewer women in this cluster lived with a partner during their reproductive years. Cluster 4, called "Stayers," consists of ICW who stayed in their parental homes for very long, not living with a partner for most of their reproductive lives. Our results show that the proportion of "family-oriented" ICW is shrinking, while the share of "career-oriented" ICW is growing across cohorts.