Childless by choice: a clinical study.

The authors report on a longitudinal study that involved the interviewing and testing of 33 young women volunteers who chose either contraception (N=18) or tubal ligation (N=15) to achieve infertility. They found that for these women the choice to be childless was multidetermined, persistent over time, and ego-syntonic. Comparison with other samples of women indicate that this is a distinct and nontraditional population.