Explanation of experiences of Delijan parents in terms of only child: A qualitative study

In Iran, the tendency to have only one child has increased. This study explored the experiences of Delijan parents in terms of only child.

This qualitative study was conducted in 2020. The starting point of sampling was among the health records of comprehensive health service centers of Delijan city that had voluntary only child and the mother’s age was over 35 years old. Parents from different age, gender, educational and occupational groups were interviewed to get maximum diversity in the data and deep insight from the experiences of individuals. Thirty semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted. The participants (18 women and 12 men) were asked about their experiences about only child. Data analysed by conventional content analysis method. Continuous analysis of data began and continued up to data saturation. To increase the validity and reliability of the data, the suggested proposed methods by Lincoln and Cuban were used (including prolong engagement with the participants, peer check, member check, and data saturation).

The mean age of participants was 41.7 years with a standard deviation of 5.5. Predisposing factors of one child with 5 subcatrgories including family causes, physical causes, negative previous experiences, psychological causes, socio-economic-political causes and decisional balance with 2 subclasses including perceived pros of having one child and perceived cons of having one child were emerged as participants, experiences of having only one child.

Identifying the experiences of parents having only one child may be a kind of needs assessment to design interventions to increase couples’ tendency to have more children.