Gender norms and couples’ conversations on childbearing intentions: A spontaneous speech corpus-based text analysis

Couples need balance in their relationships and, at the same time, try to adjust to the expectations of their social environment. These expectations create challenges particularly if they come from and are surrounded by an environment dominated by traditional gender values. We collected a unique corpus of 100 hours of unfiltered spontaneous dyadic conversations by couples living on the same floor of a Hungarian dormitory. We analysed the topics of their conversations to gain insight into their relationship characteristics and concepts of childbearing with Structural Topic Models (STMs) jointly with survey information. We found that while dyadic conversations were balanced, couples with more traditional attitudes related more to the topic of housework. Survey self-reports indicated that housework-related tasks and their division caused most conflicts within the couples. Couples spoke about housework and in relation to their views on becoming a parent, and these discussions were not packed with emotion-laden words. Overall, our results imply that couples rationally plan childbearing irrespective of the gender norms they follow.