Work, Family, and Fertility: Determinants of Childbearing among Married Working Women in Georgia

The research was conducted to investigate the personal, familial, social, economic, and institutional factors that are linked to fertility rates among married working women in Georgia, taking the background of the rapid change in social and economic requirements, as women started to take a more active part in labour market. It took an descriptive-analytical research design and utilised a structured questionnaire to collect data on the population of 320 married working women through a random sample of the population. The results showed that the respondents upheld that all the analysed determinants had a high percentage of perceived influence on fertility-related decision-making. The economic and institutional factors were the highest, including those that relate to financial stability, cost of living, childcare in the workplace, maternity leave policy, and flexible work schedule. Nevertheless, the ANOVA data did not indicate any statistically significant fertility level differences that could be attributed to these determinants at the level of significance (0.05) with the indicators of effect sizes relatively small. The research arrives at the conclusion that the lifestyle decisions of working and married women concerning fertility do not appear as a result of one parameter as an isolated entity, but as a result of a multi-faceted interplay of various interdependent forces. Based on the results, therefore, it is suggested that social and institutional policies are required that engage both social and institutional policies to facilitate work-family balance and the reproductive decisions of working women in the modern societies.