The first step of the proposed project is to find out who the childless are. The question to be answered is: how do the childless differ from parents in terms of (a) demographic, socio-economic and socio-cultural characteristics, and (b) their life courses? The second step is to find out whether the childless have different life outcomes. The question to be answered here is: is there a difference in social, financial-economic, psychological and physical well-being between the childless and parents, and if so, how can these differences be explained? The first question pertains to characteristics from the past, the second pertains to current characteristics. Explicit attention will be paid to diversity among the childless (e.g. voluntary versus involuntary childlessness, outliving one's children, childlessness in- and outside marriage). The implications of leading a life that is not subject to the structuring influence of parenthood will be elaborated in the theoretical framework, which will draw upon the life course perspective. The project will make use of data from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (NKPS), which has extensive data on the marital and parenthood histories of approximately 10,000 men and women. This project is a dissertation project, for the duration of four years (June 2005- June 2009). The project is funded by the NWO as part of the program "Family relations: the ties that bind" (De bindende kracht van familierelaties).

Supervisors: Pearl Dykstra (NIDI/UU), Anne-Rigt Poortman (UU), Rafael Wittek (RUG)