Reproductive motivation in the context of the COVID-19 epidemic: Is there evidence for accelerated life history dynamics?

Abstract

One of the key life history assumptions is that mortality rates are positively associated with fast life history dynamics. Since the COVID-19 pandemic has elevated mortality rates throughout the world, we tested this assumption using reproductive motivation (desired number of children and desired age of first reproduction) as a key output measure using a repeated cross-sectional design. We assessed reproductive motivation in Serbian young adults before the pandemic started (N = 362), during the pandemic-caused state of emergency (the peak of the epidemic's first wave: N = 389) and after the state of emergency (i.e., after the first wave: N = 430). Furthermore, in the third time-point we measured experiences during the state of emergency and additional measures of reproductive motivation (reasons for and against parenthood). Subsamples were matched by sex, education, and the sampling procedure. We found the between-group differences which are congruent with life history theory: the desired age of first reproduction was lowest after the state of emergency compared to the 2 previous time-points. However, there were no differences in the desired number of children. Furthermore, the analysis of the links between experiences during the epidemic and reproductive motivation yielded the results which are incongruent with life history theory - adverse experiences during the state of emergency were negatively related to the reproductive motivation. Since the findings were only partially in accordance with life history theory, we discuss possible reasons which may explain the heterogeneity of results.