Childbearing Challenges for Working Women; a Qualitative Study

In recent decades, the fertility rate in Iran has gone through dramatic changes due to different reasons. One of these reasons is women’s increasing participation in the workforce and modern employment which has imposed changes to the childbearing behavior. On the other hand, working women face different challenges regarding childbearing. The present qualitative study investigates the childbearing challenges for working women using grounded theory approach and purposive sampling. The participants were 24 married women working in both governmental and nongovernmental organizations (age range: 24 to 36). The data was collected through deep semi-structured interviews. Some of the main questions in this study included the determining factors in childbearing challenges for working women, the working women’s approaches to face the challenges of childbearing and the consequences of this situation. The results show that working women face challenges both inside and outside their jobs in regard to childbearing, which force them to choose low fertility as their lifestyle. The participants viewed low fertility as an inseparable part of the modern social behavior and lifestyle.