Narratives of the future and fertility decision-making in uncertain times. An application to the COVID-19 pandemic

The sociological and demographic literatures have widely demonstrated that fertility decisions are shaped by individuals’ previous life experiences and socioeconomic status – i.e., the “shadow of the past.” However, rising uncertainty in contemporary societies necessitates an analytical framework that acknowledges the influence of the future in the fertility decision-making process. Based on the Narrative Framework, we argue that personal narratives of the future, and their constitutive elements of expectations and imaginaries – i.e., the “shadow of the future” – represent crucial drivers of fertility intentions under conditions of uncertainty. Our arguments are tested empirically by exploiting the exogenous uncertainty shock provided by the COVID-19 pandemic, and unique data we collected during the Italian lockdown. Results suggest that, because of COVID-induced uncertainty, subjective perceptions and personal narratives of the future – also shaped by media “shared narratives” – gained the upper hand over the shadow of the past in influencing fertility intentions. In addition, we provide evidence of a causal impact of shared narratives of the future on fertility intentions through an online experiment simulating a “real” exposure of the respondents to a new media narrative on the expected length of the emergency.