The Mechanism Through Which Gender Roles Influence Childbearing Decisions Among Working Women

Against the backdrop of sustained negative population growth and accelerated population aging, the reluctance of urban working women to bear children has become a critical bottleneck constraining China's long-term balanced population development. Drawing on the gender role perspective and employing a mediation effect model, this study systematically examines the influence pathways of gender roles on women's childbearing decisions and tests the mediating role of work–family conflict, based on self-administered questionnaire data from 1,407 women with work experience. The results show that gender roles not only exert a significant direct effect on women's childbearing decisions but also generate a significant indirect effect through work–family conflict. Among the three dimensions of work–family conflict, stress conflict exhibits the strongest inhibitory effect on childbearing decisions, followed by behavioral conflict, whereas time conflict significantly suppresses only future fertility intentions and shows no significant effect on actual childbearing behavior. This study suggests that traditional gender role norms constitute a core mechanism suppressing fertility intentions by intensifying women's work–family conflict. Promoting gender equality and alleviating work–family conflict represent key leverage points for enhancing women's fertility motivation and fostering long-term balanced population development.This conclusion resonates with recent scholarly arguments calling for the urgent development of more comprehensive and gender-sensitive fertility support policy frameworks in light of the new demographic realities (Zheng, 2023).