A Phenomenological Study of Childbearing Pressure from Relatives

and Social Stability in Early Adulthood

A Concept Paper for

Department of Psychology
College of Education, Arts, and Science
National University – Laguna

By

Rene Ven P. Daria

Clarisse Marie M. Eroles
Jasmin R. Labatete
Hyacinth Gabriel R. Manalo
Althea Cassandra B. Mendoza
Wendy A. Rosero

In Partial Fulfillment of the Interim Assessment for

Developmental Psychology (PSYCH03X)

January 2023

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 Table of Contents

Title Page 1

Chapter 1: Introduction 3
Theoretical Framework 5
Conceptual Paradigm 5
Statement of the Problem 6
Significance of the Study 6
Scope and Limitation 6
Definition of Terms 7

Chapter 2: Methodology 7
Research Design 7
Participants 8
Description of Instruments 8
Data Gathering Procedure 8
Data Analysis 9
Ethical Considerations 9

References

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Chapter 1
Introduction

Emerging young adulthood are referred to the developmental stage between the end of
adolescence and beginning of adulthood. This period is characterized with the emergence of
independence and autonomy since young people will begin their transition to adulthood. Thus,
this is a critical period for people to begin their future as parenthood and prepare for this important
role.

Involuntary Childless Couples. Women would feel the loss that result to the isolation from friends
and families as a coping mechanism while men are depicted as accepting of the situation that
does not describe the grief leading to a judgement of men incapable of handling children (Marsh,
2017). Moreover, the findings shown social role supported the condition of involuntary childless
women that remain their strength with their comments related to the infertility through the respond
to each question and socialization with interaction between people (Ilmia, 2020).

These women would make decisions without understanding the potential influence to procreate
which involuntary childless are responsibility with fertility issues that are not accurate resulting to
the public in understanding the pathways towards childless condition (Williamson, 2019).
Childless with negative effect on the sexuality of the couple which made them feel stressed that
contribution that lacked of sexual desire and psychological problems. Providing the data towards
their expectation and affect their relationship can deal with problems (Heikkurinen, 2019).

Voluntary Childless Couples. Individuals are unrecognized in societal environment since most
people cannot accept the decision, but these people would not have remorse while some would
choose to be childless although this was not discussed because of the belief that children is an
integral part of the family (Chrastil, 2019). Further, there are relatives that will have more negative
reaction towards the situation than parents and friends which resulted to the intrusive behavior,
but this could increase the relationship satisfaction between couple without children (Parlak and
Tekin, 2020).

Inability of the women for the suitable partner with the disappearance that resulted to happiness
of the couple since this was underlined with the deliberate choice of conscious decision for
remaining childless that contrast to parenthood which is difficult and regret. This would benefit
and scheme for the child free decision of couples as autonomous decision that is difficult to
change (Szelewa, 2022). Voluntary childless encounter issues such as pressure, sexism, racism,
negative perception and lacked that will serve for the betterment of the population which would
experience high levels of cohesion and marital satisfaction when controlling religious affiliation
(Powell, 2020).

Intentional childless women have implication of norm expectations that contribute to the spectrum
of voices within the psychology towards women which explained those that did not adopt to
motherhood would have dichotomous gap between motherhood and childless women that provide
the holistic vision of the collective lived experiences of women (Brooks, 2019). Further, increased

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in childless individual and postponement of motherhood with the average of duration without
reproduction has increased (Mogi and Del Mundo, 2020).

Childbearing Pressure. Married couples experienced negative behavior such as sadness,

disappointment, and anxiety that lead to skepticism in the relationship. Moreover, family members
would ask about children that could result to a negative reaction towards their situation which
would lead them to feel stigmatized. Most couples often doubt whether their relationship will last
with the concern whether their partner will be able to accept the situation (Patnani and Colleagues,
2020).

Findings have revealed that homosexual adults are less to be parents than heterosexual couples
since parenting intentions were tied with sexual orientation that resulted to disparity towards
discrimination, social norms, and cultural expectations towards homosexuality (Patterson and
Levy, 2019). Queer reproduction have decision towards childless couples that lead to parenthood
and exploration of engagement with assumption in increased childlessness

Reproduction of homosexual has their decision towards childless that could lead to parenthood
and exploration of engagement with assumption in increased childless. Heterosexual would fulfill
the function that include the companionship, intimacy, and social reproduction (Clarke and
Colleagues, 2018).

Social Stability. Conditions towards childlessness would made them feel embarrassment,
incompleteness, and pressure which men are exposed to a higher risk for psychological disorder
than women. Previous studies have shown that the couple would often struggle with coping due
to the alienation, misunderstanding, and stigmatization of the cultural expectations but there are
couples that manage to deal with the situation through optimism (Tudy, 2020).

Yeshua – Katz (2017) said that rejection among social circle is one of the negative experiences
that most married couple could encounter which led to them avoiding these situations due to the
fear of rejection to protect themselves from questions regarding children. Besides, some couple
have experienced ostracism within the public view since most individual is seen less as a person
due to the childless condition.

Moreover, there are nine coping strategies of childless couples such as (1) surrounding yourself
with people, (2) acknowledgement of your emotions, (3) ask for help, (4) avoidance of something
that can remember, (5) preparation of plans, (6) care for yourself, (7) writing your emotions, (8)
redirection of maternal instincts, and (9) distracting from thinking about the situation (Castaneda,
2018). Negative experiences from the environment has increased the psychological distress of
involuntary childless couples while communicate, understand, reframe, and enhance (CURE) was
proposed for the psychotherapy in addressing the relationship between married couples (Espinol,
2021).

With that, this present research will determine the phenomenon of pressure towards pregnancy
with social stability towards single and married couples which the conflict was rooted within
increasing levels of distress such as sadness, anxiety, and disappointment with the result of

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psychological disorders. Thus, stigmatization and alienation has led to isolation from childless
individual which will be added to the passage of pressure within pregnancy.

Theoretical Framework

Structural Role Theory was referred with expectations of psychological and interactional aspects
with the role within the family that influence their decision. Parsons (2018) explained that structure
and function is recognize through social system which are defined with duties and responsibilities
that contribute towards the understanding of their specific position that affect their social stance.

Family Systems Theory is the underpinning of interaction and dependence within the family that
could influence the character and unresponsive mental stability. Members could interact with each
other but could affect the behavior of each individual because of continuous beliefs, rules, and
values (Kerr and Bowen, 2021). Self – regulation involve the stabilization of the interaction
patterns could cause rapid change which followed with emotion regulation while self –
organization is the adaptation around their environment (Cox and Paley, 2022). This will explain
the possible consequences of intrusive behavior within established relationships and emotional
regulation to the dependent affection towards their individual.

Emotion Regulation Theory would emphasize that people can control their emotions at different
situation which could help regulate the pressure from social position. Gross (2019) described the
factors of emotional process in regulation: (1) situation selection, (2) situation modification, (3)
attention deployment, (4) cognitive change, and (5) response modulation which the process in
reducing the experience of emotion depending towards the psychological necessity of the person
while this will handle the pressure.

Conceptual Paradigm

Previous studies have shown the decision for children to have a personal problem which some
would view as selfish for the decision of living without a child that result to feeling hurt (Majumdar,
2022).

Along with repeated patterns of intrusive behavior, this will explore how pressure can affect the
social stability within family. This will show the experiences of childbearing pressure and social
stability towards single and married couples.

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 Figure 1: Proposed Model with Triangulation

As shown in the figure, this will highlight the pressure and social stability among the participants
while managing relationships. Thus, data will be reduce and classified into a narrative form
through using triangulation that the participants have observed for confirmation in interviews.

Statement of the Problem

This research will explore the subjective experiences of people that suffered from pressure of
relatives to have children and how this pressure their social stability in maintaining their
relationship.

Specifically, these will be questions that are sought to be answered:

1. How does childbearing pressure from relatives affect the relationship of a couple?
2. What is possible behavior of single who experienced pressure from relatives?
3. How can couple manage their relationship from pressure of relatives?
4. How does childbearing pressure affect the social stability in maintaining the relationship
towards their family?
5. What are possible interventions for individual that experienced pressure among relative?

Significance of the Study

With that, this research will be added to the field of childbearing pressure and social stability to
further findings and assumptions toward this topic. Moreover, social and developmental
practitioners will determine the possible behavior of couples that experienced pressure which
affect their social stability. Lastly, this will understand how pressure could affect the social stability
within single and married couples that experienced stigmatization from relatives.

Scope and Limitation

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This will focus on fifteen (15) people that are single and married couples who experienced
pressure towards their intention to have a child and how social stability was endured with pressure
in maintaining the relationship. Therefore, data collection will be conducted with a purposive
sampling of fifteen people that will be conducted within Calamba, Laguna.

Thus, those that are not within the age range of twenty to forty and couple that has children would
not be included in the interview. Further, this research was limited due to the location that is within
Calamba, Laguna. Thereby, interpretative analysis will be used for this research.

Definition of Terms

Pregnancy – an offspring is developed inside the womb.

Childbearing – process of conceiving and giving birth to a child.

Pressure – coercing someone into doing something.

Family Pressure – occur when there is an imbalance of power within the relationship.

Social Stability – maintain equilibrium of thoughts and disagrees with the popular opinion of other
people.

Emotion Regulation – respond to the demands of experience with the range of emotion in a
manner.

Chapter 2
Methodology

This chapter will provide the procedure which will determine the details of the participants,
research design, description of instruments, data gathering procedure, and data analysis that will
be discussed within the research.

Research Design

As such, researchers used phenomenological design that obtain the data from the participants
who experienced pressure from relatives and social stability in handling the situation. Moreover,
there is a process known as “epoche” that was conducted before and during the interview which
eliminate all theories and knowledge with a blank knowledge to understand the experiences of

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the participants with new knowledge towards pressure and social stability for childbearing. Thus,
this will use mixed method but will heavily lean on qualitative research for the interview.

Participants

The participants within this research will include fifteen (15) individual which ten (10) among them
are couples while the rest are single that was recruited through purposive sampling that feel
pressure.

Further, this will explore the experiences of single and married couples which the interview will
include their experiences that will be done individually. Therefore, criterion will be based on the
participants that are within the age range of twenty (20) to forty (40) years old while this interview
could take several minutes because of the sensitive issue of infertility.

Description of Instruments

Social Pressure for Pregnancy Scale was developed in 2019 that is consisted with 5 item which
will determine the pressure from relatives towards pregnancy. Therefore, participants will have
rate from 0 (never true) to 2 (true) for some examples would be (2 questions; “I feel pressured by
my parents to get pregnant” and “I feel pressured by my in laws to get pregnant”) which has the
reliability towards alpha coefficient of .78 that was validated through professionals (Ross and
Hess, 2019).

After the questionnaire, researchers will conduct an interview guide questionnaire will be used for
this research such as (3 questions; “How can your childless condition affect your present?”, “How
can pressure affect your relationship with your family?”, and “How can you maintain your
relationship with other people through disagreement with their opinions?”) while this interview was
prepared through the research questions of the researchers. Discussions will not be restricted
which will obtain the perception of the participant regarding the pressure of the phenomenon in
pregnancy that will last until 40 minutes with each participant.

Data Gathering Procedure

This interview will be conducted online through google meet that will include their consent and
letter to the office for the approval of the interview. Participants will have the right to withdraw from
the interview which would be voluntary.

During this interview process, this will last until 40 minutes which the participants will be asked
regarding the research questions. The questions would be about (1) how the participant is feeling?
(2) how can pressure affect your relationship within the family? (3) how can you maintain your

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relationship under the disagreement of opinions? that will show that these will represent the
objectives of this research.

Data Analysis

Colaizzi’s Descriptive Phenomenological Analysis Steps that will transcribe the audio recording
of the participants which will have the aim of understanding the experiences and perception
towards pressure from relatives. Moreover, researchers will formulate meaning from rising
intonations and expression within the voice that will be clustered into common themes described
in full detail.

Thus, researchers will give a structural definition of pressure from the phenomenon of the
pregnancy which after the identified themes the researcher will participate in a reflective process
with the permission of the participants. With that, feedback will be obtained through the
participation with precision of data for the validation of anonymity among the participants which
will determine whether the theme is compatible with the data.

Ethical Considerations

At the beginning of the interview, the objectives of the research will be explained to the participants
and acquire their permission for the interview. The participants will be informed of their right to
withdraw from the interview at any point. Besides, researchers will ensure the confidentiality of
their information using pseudonyms and remove any words that could relate to the participant.

The data analysis and interpretation will be anonymous, and researchers will be careful in
ensuring that the interview will be preserved which will be returned to the participants to verify
that the interview is acceptable.

References

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