Motivations for Childbearing Among Malaysians

Summary Economic reasons for wanting children predominate among 541 Malaysian adults and 2014 children, followed by happiness, love, and companionship, the latter group especially in several subgroups of young Malaysians identified as demographic innovators. Five empirically constructed value and cost of children indices with known reliability were used to predict variation in the achieved family size of parents as well as the desired family sizes of parents and children. Completeness of family appeared to be the best predictor of achieved family size, whereas intrinsic value of a large family was generally a good predictor of family size preferences.