Are the Childlessness More Likely to Report Loneliness in Early Adulthood?

Mental health problems have long been recognized as a strong association with loneliness, defined as ‘a discrepancy between one’s desired and achieved levels of social relations’. Gerontological research in 1980s suggested that childlessness was related to significantly higher risks of social isolation, but there has little empirical evidence about whether childlessness is associated with loneliness in young adults. This issue yet becomes particularly important in the low fertility countries such as Taiwan. We thus assess whether social and emotional loneliness cluster and have conceptual meaning, especially with respect to whether the social and emotional loneliness are complementary or in competition with one another for young adults. We then further explore how remaining childlessness is associated with the likelihood of being in specific clusters of loneliness for the two genders.

Using the longitudinal panel surveys of Taiwan Youth Project (2000-2014), we compare young men and women with respect to their marital and childless status on loneliness (n=2,726, aged 27-32). Loneliness was assessed by six questions of the De Jong-Gierveld short scale with two distinct dimensions: social and emotional loneliness. Among the participants, one-fifth are married; 28% of these married people are childless. Preliminary results from multivariate regression models indicate a significant lower level of emotional loneliness observed among married women and men either with or without a child, compared to never-married single counterparts. In contrast, a significant lower level of social loneliness is observed among childless married men (β = -0.35, p<0.5), not among childless married women, compared to never-married single counterparts.

The preliminary findings underscore gender differences in the association between marital status and childless status in social loneliness. Further investigations will conduct cluster analysis on two distinct domains in loneliness, model its relationships with marital and childless status, and explore the social network characteristics as covariates on loneliness clusters.