Authors

• Väkeväinen, Nina (University of Jyväskylä. Department of History and Ethnology)

Keywords

birth control, childlessness, family planning, family size, fertility, sterilization (medical), voluntary childlessness

Abstract

The dataset consists of self-administered written texts on voluntary childlessness and sterilisation. The writing invitation was open to all voluntarily childless individuals who have considered sterilisation or have been sterilised. The data were collected for a Master's thesis.

In the writing guidelines, participants were asked to write about how they had arrived at the decision to remain childless, and to describe what they thought about sterilisation. The study aimed to collect data on the reasons that had led the participants to seek sterilisation, and how the sterilisation procedure had impacted the lives of voluntarily childless individuals who had been sterilised. The views of those participants who would like to be sterilised but did not meet the conditions set in the Sterilisation Act were also examined.

Background information included the participant's gender and age group. The data were organised into an easy to use HTML version at FSD.

The dataset is only available in Finnish.